Mark 16:15-18 “And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. (16) He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. (17) And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; (18) they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
The above quoted passage of scripture confirms the truth to us that the Lord Jesus has called all of His saints, not just a select few, to lay their hands on the sick among the unsaved. We are all familiar with this passage of scripture in which our Lord Jesus gave us what is often referred to as the “great commission”. In this passage our Lord tells us what we, as His believers, are required to do. We are to go into the entire world and preach the gospel to every creature. When Jesus says that, we know that He is not saying that every believer must become a full-time minister of the gospel. But rather He is saying that every believer should witness to those around them about their testimony of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. Our Lord then goes on to list certain signs that will follow those who believe. In other words these are the signs that He will perform through those who believe, as they go into all the world and preach the gospel. Two of the signs refer to the Lord’s divine protection provided to His saints. The sign of taking up serpents refers to our divine protection in the spirit realm, because of the authority that the Lord has given us over all the power of Satan and his angels (Luke 10:19) The sign of drinking deadly substances without incurring any harm refers to our divine protection in the physical realm. As an aside, we need to understand that these divine protections are not given to us to test the Lord, for there are some foolish individuals who would fall for Satan’s temptation to drink deadly poison to prove that they are immune. You will recall that Satan tried to tempt the Lord to jump off a building to prove that God’s angels would protect Him, and our Lord’s response was that we do not tempt God (Matthew 4:5-7).
A key word used by the Lord in this passage is the word “signs”. Signs are always used by God for the unsaved and not for believers. One of the signs that our Lord said would follow those who believe is that they will speak with new tongues, and the apostle Paul teaches the church very clearly that tongues are for a sign to unbelievers (1 Corinthians 14:22). Two of the signs that our Lord mentioned in Mark’s gospel refer to His saints ministering to others, for He said that those who believe will cast out demons and that they will lay their hands on the sick and that the sick would recover. In context, our Lord is telling us that this is how He wants us to minister to the unsaved, for these are the accompanying signs that He will perform when we preach the gospel of salvation to the unsaved. And so we see that as far as Jesus is concerned, the ministry of casting out demons and laying hands on the sick is for every believer. In other words, just as Jesus expects every one of us to witness to the unsaved about Him, so He also expects every one of us to cast out their demons and lay our hands on their sick so that they may recover. Someone will say, how can Jesus expect every believer to cast out demons and heal the sick? In answer to that question, we can all agree (or should agree) that our Lord Jesus expects all of us to witness to those around us about salvation through Him. We also know that our Lord has called some to full time ministry and given them a special anointing to preach the gospel to the unsaved, and the evangelist Billy Graham would have been an example of someone like that. But even though the Lord’s evangelists are used by Him to add multitudes to the church, they are not going to reach everyone. There are unsaved people that we know who have never heard Billy Graham preach the gospel and most probably never will. But those same unsaved people encounter us every day and they can see our changed lifestyle since we were saved. And so it is to those people that our Lord Jesus expects us, as His ambassadors, to tell them about Him. I want you to notice that Jesus does not expect us to get them saved, for we can’t do that, only He can. Jesus only expects us to tell people about Him, and He then works the miracle of the new birth in those who choose to believe.
Michael E.B. Maher
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