Tag: Crowd

Episode NT19 – A Little Faith

tale2tell original Bible Stories series – New Testament

Based on Mark chapter 9

A Little Faith! –The Demon-Possessed Boy

As Jesus and the three disciples Peter, James and John came down from the mountain where they’d seen Jesus transformed and heard the Words of God, they talked about a common belief Jews held that Elijah must ‘return’ before the Messiah could come.

‘Why do the teachers of the law say this?’ they asked Jesus.

‘Well, Elijah has already come to set everything in order,’ Jesus answered them. ‘But he was badly mistreated, just as the Scriptures predicted.’

It was then that the disciples realised Jesus was talking about John the Baptist who’d been murdered by Herod.

As they came to the foot of the mountain they saw a huge crowd gathered around the other nine disciples who were having a blazing row with the teachers of the law. The teachers of the law were always looking for something they could use against Jesus, for any weakness they could exploit to run Him down and discredit Him. And now, they thought they’d found something! Jesus’ disciples had failed to heal someone and so the teachers of the law were pressing home their advantage over the disciples – and a row had broken out.

As Jesus approached the crowd, the people ran to meet Him. ‘What’s going on?’ He asked. ‘What’s all this arguing about?’

A man in the crowd, with a desperate look on his face, stepped forward and spoke to Jesus.  ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘My son can’t speak because he’s possessed by an evil spirit that won’t let him talk. Whenever the spirit takes hold of him, it throws him violently onto the ground and he starts to foam at the mouth, grind his teeth and his body becomes rigid! I brought him to You so that You could heal him. But as you weren’t around, I asked your disciples to make the evil spirit go, (P) but they couldn’t do it!’

When He heard this, Jesus felt so disappointed. After all, He’d taught them, after all, they’d seen! Not just His disciples but also the people, still they refused to really trust Him, to believe that He had the power to deal with whatever situation they could possibly come across. And so, with a slow shake of His head He said, ‘You faithless people! How long is it going to be until you believe? How long must I put up with your unbelief?’ Then looking at the father’s worried face He said, ‘Bring the boy to me.’

At once the boy was brought before Jesus, but as soon as the evil spirit saw Jesus it threw the boy into a violent convulsion and he fell to the ground thrashing around and foaming at the mouth.

Rather than just heal the boy there and then, Jesus wanted to find out if his father still had the same belief he started with when he’d first brought the boy to see Jesus. Had seeing the disciples fail to heal the boy stopped him believing? So He asked, ‘ How long has this been going on?’

The boy’s father, desperate at seeing his child once again thrown into convulsions looked at his son while he answered Jesus. ‘It’s been happening since he was a small boy. And what makes it worse is that the evil spirit often makes him fall into the fire or into water – it’s trying to kill him! Please, if you can, do something.’

Jesus turned to look at the man. ‘What do you mean, ‘IF I can’?’ He asked. ‘Anything’s possible if a person believes.’

The man quickly shifted his gaze from his son and found Jesus’ eyes. ‘Oh but I do believe,’ he answered. ‘But please, help me not to doubt!’

Jesus had got his answer, the boy’s father did believe, even if it was a wavering and weak faith. Because what mattered wasn’t the strength of his belief, but the power of the One he believed in! And as Jesus saw other people beginning to run over and the group of onlookers start to grow, He rebuked the evil spirit. ‘Spirit of deafness and muteness,’ He said, ‘I command you to leave the boy and never enter him again.’ At this, the spirit screamed and threw the boy into another violent convulsion and then left, just as Jesus had commanded. As the spirit left, the boy lay motionless on the ground. He lay so still that the crowd started whispering to each other saying, ‘Look, he’s dead!’ But Jesus walked over to the boy, took him by the hand and helped him to his feet.

A while later, when the crowds had gone home and Jesus was alone with his disciples in the house where they were staying, they asked him. ‘Why couldn’t we cast out that evil spirit like the ones we cast out before when you sent us out to preach?’

‘This kind of evil spirit can only be cast out by prayer,’ Jesus answered.

Episode NT15 – Feeding the Hungry

tale2tell original Bible Stories series – New Testament

Based on John chapter 6 verses 1 to 15

Feeding the Hungry

‘My name’s Andrew, I’m Simon Peter’s brother and I’ve been following Jesus since He started His work here. It’s been an amazing time. I’ve seen things you couldn’t even imagine. The sick being healed, the demon-possessed being freed and even the dead brought back to life.’

‘But even though Jesus did such amazing things, He was always concerned that the people heard His message. There was an urgency within Him that everyone should know that the Kingdom of God was coming and that they should be ready by turning away from all their sinful and selfish ways and turning back to God.’

‘One day, Jesus called the twelve of us together and spoke to us. As He spoke, He gave us authority to make evil spirits come out of people and to heal every disease! Then He told us, ‘Go into the surrounding towns and villages, heal their sick and tell all the people that the Kingdom of God is about to come. Don’t take anything with you, no bag, no food and no money. And when you enter a village don’t stay in different houses, stay in just one house. And if the people in that village refuse to accept the message you bring them, then as you leave shake the dust off your feet as a witness against them.’’

‘So we did what Jesus asked us to do. With the power He’d given us we healed the sick and we cast out demons, and most important of all, we told the people the message Jesus had given us to pass on. ‘The Kingdom of God is coming.’’ (PAUSE)

‘When we came back we told Him of all the incredible things that’d happened, and Jesus decided it’d be wise for us to get away from the huge crowds that seemed to dog His tracks, and spend some time together alone. There were so many people constantly coming and going that we couldn’t even find time to eat! So we got into a boat and started to travel across the great lake once again.’

‘What we didn’t know, as we set sail and headed for a more peaceful area, was that some of the crowd had seen us go. And can you believe it, they ran round the lake to catch up with us, and as they went through each village, they’d point us out on the lake to the people of the village saying, ‘Look, you see that boat out there? That’s Jesus in there!’ But we didn’t know anything about this as we headed for a nice quiet spot a safe distance from the crowds, or so we thought!’

‘We saw them even before we landed. A huge crowd all wanting to see Jesus. The rest of us couldn’t believe it and to be honest we were – how should I put this – less than impressed. But not Jesus, He saw them for what they were, like sheep without a shepherd – needing to be taught and to hear from Him. So in His compassion He taught the great crowd many things and we all stayed there a long time.’

‘My tummy started to rumble about mid-afternoon. And by late afternoon we began to realise that if we didn’t get this massive crowd shifted soon there could be some real trouble. We’d come to such an isolated place, how were the people going to find food? We needed to send them on their way so that they could reach the villages and towns and farms in time to buy some food for themselves. So we went to Jesus, ‘Jesus,’ we said, ‘this is a pretty remote place and time’s going by. We think you should send the people away now so that they can get to the nearby farms and villages to buy themselves some food.’’

‘It seemed a reasonable enough suggestion to us, but can you imagine our astonishment when Jesus turned to us and said, ‘No, don’t send them away, you feed them!’’

‘‘What?’ we replied, ‘that’s impossible. It would cost a small fortune to feed this massive crowd! Not only that, but where are we going to find that much food in a place like this?’’

‘‘Well, how much food do you have?’ Jesus asked. ‘Go away and find out.’’

‘We didn’t have any food ourselves and to be honest we didn’t really know how to go about finding out how much food there was. As we stood there wondering what to do, a young lad came up to me. ‘Mister,’ he said. ‘I heard you talking to Jesus about needing some food. When my mum heard that Jesus was nearby and that I wanted to come and see Him for myself, she made me a packed lunch. It’s not much, but Jesus can have it if it’ll help.’ I smiled at him and chuckled to myself – his ‘packed lunch’ consisted of five barley bread rolls and a couple of fish!’

‘But even so I took it to Jesus. ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘there’s this young lad here with five barley bread rolls and a couple of fish. What good that’ll do amongst such a huge crowd as this I don’t know.’’

‘One of those things we’d come to learn about Jesus was that you couldn’t always predict what He’d do. If it had been me, I don’t think I’d have thought twice about the young lad’s packed lunch. But Jesus smiled at the lad and accepted the packed lunch from him. Then he told us to make the people sit down on the grass in groups of fifty or a hundred.’

‘Taking the small packed lunch in His hands, Jesus looked up towards heaven and asked God’s blessing on the food. Then He started to break up the barley bread rolls and hand the pieces to us to pass on to the crowd. He just carried on breaking the bread into pieces. On and on He went, and then He started to break the fish up and pass them on to us to pass out to the crowds. Again and again we handed out all He’d given us and went back to Him to collect more. And still He carried on passing out the bread and fish, in fact, He didn’t stop passing out the bread and fish  until every single person had eaten all they wanted! And when I say every single person, we worked out just how many men there were in that crowd, excluding all the women and children. There were five thousand! Goodness knows how many people there must have been including all the women and children.’

‘When the people had finished eating all they wanted, Jesus sent the twelve of us around to pick up the leftover food. Each of us picked up a complete basket full of left-overs – twelve baskets full of bits and pieces that had come from five small barley loaves and two fish!’