“Moved with compassion,Jesus reached out and touched him. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be healed’!” Mark 1:41
In the first chapter of Mark, John the Baptist appears preaching a different kind of message. It was a message that was quite different from the message people had been accustomed to hearing for hundreds of years. For all those years, mankind had mostly known of a Holy and Righteous God who seemed to have little tolerance for man’s faults and shortcomings. This is seen in the Book of Numbers, when Israel’s complaints were met with God’s wrath. Yet, the message that John the Baptist began to introduce was about God’s grace and mercy, and he called it the “Kingdom of God.” The “Kingdom of God” is defined as “God’s way of doing and being,” and it seemed as if God had changed the way He was doing things.
This change and New Kingdom were all because of Jesus and Jesus Himself set out to demonstrate what this new Kingdom looked like. This Kingdom was no longer about man getting what he deserved, but instead about man getting what he didn’t deserve; God’s undeserved favor and blessing. Everywhere Jesus went he healed the sick and opened blinded eyes. The town’s people poured out in droves to see this for themselves, and everywhere Jesus went He repeated these wonderful works of God’s love over and over.
For the doubters, like Moses who questioned God’s ability to feed all of Israel with fresh meat, God demonstrated through Jesus that “His arm was not too short.” And, Jesus also showed that not only did God have the ability, but because of this New Age of Grace, He was willing.
Until Jesus returns for His Bride, the Church, we are still in that same age of Grace that began over two-thousand years ago. And, in this Age of Grace and God’s Kingdom, two truths remain: God is still able, and God is still willing.