Today's Devotion
Monday of Lent 1, February 23, 2026 - Mark 3:1-19
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
Jesus is the rightful King of the Universe who has come to reclaim creation for His dominion, and to wrest control from the pretender prince of this world. And the front line of the battle isn’t among the pagans who worship deified emperors and statues of imaginary creatures that are both man and beast. Jesus isn’t finding opposition from the people who worship Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. The battle line is in the temple and in the synagogue – where the Word of God is taught and preached.
The Pharisees are our Lord’s main opposition – pious, conservative Jews who, unlike the liberal Sadducees, believe in the Bible. The Sadducees also oppose Jesus, but those who are leading the charge for Him to be arrested and killed are the Pharisees, who believed that they were the lords of the Sabbath. And the question isn’t really how to interpret the Sabbath, but rather, who Jesus is. For He is the one who established it at creation. He made the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). The real issue is not Jesus’ teaching, but Jesus’ divinity. And the incarnation of God into human form, no matter where He is, is going to be the front line of the battle.
The Pharisees are – whether they know it or not – servants of the devil. They oppose the very God they claim to serve. Jesus tells truths that they don’t like, and so they will tell lies in order to silence Him. The healing of a man whose hand was withered should unite all people in praise of God, but instead, it stirred up the Pharisees and the demons like hornets. And our Lord looked upon them with a mixture of grief “at their hardness of heart,” and “with anger,” knowing what lies behind this entrenched mindset of opposition to God and His Word.
Ordinary people, however, rejoicing in their liberation from both Pharisee and demon, seeing in Jesus the hope of a restored creation, of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev 21:1), flock to Him in a “great crowd.” The people are ready for the kingdom and for their King. And the demons, the “unclean spirits,” cannot help but recognize their Creator, their God who has taken on flesh, who has come to rid creation of evil spirits. “And whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, ‘You are the Son of God.’”
And here, St. Mark gives us a preview of what many call “the great commission,” which Mark will report to us in the last chapter of his Gospel. For even here, at this early stage of His ministry, Jesus “appointed twelve,” training these men in a three-year in-person seminary program to prepare them for their work in the kingdom after Jesus returns to the Father. For they will be “named apostles” (a word that means “the sent”). They are with Him now, but after the resurrection, He will “send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.”
And through the apostolic ministry, Jesus’ war of reconquest will continue. The apostles will battle their own fears and denials: the faithlessness of their own sinful flesh. They will fight against the Pharisees and the demons who control them. And they will, in time, broaden the warfare to include the world – including the pagans whom Satan has deluded into worshiping creature instead of Creator.
We take up this battle in our own day. Jesus is still working through His church, still preaching through His ministers, still silencing and casting out evil spirits, still upsetting and upending those in power.
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.