Can you please enlighten me about what Jesus meant in Mark 16:18, about picking up snakes?
Listen: 106.1
Let’s consider the words of the Lord to His disciples in Mark 16:15-18, “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” At this point, the Lord had died and risen from the dead. These words were spoken to His disciples just before He ascended back to Heaven. We get more details of that event in Acts, chapter one.
The commission given to the disciples is so important. The Gospel was to go to the whole world. Salvation was no longer limited to the Jewish people as the Lord had once said in John 4:22 where He said, “…salvation is of the Jews.” Since He had been rejected by His own people, the Lord now sends the Gospel to the world. Along with sending out His disciples, the Lord gave them the ability to perform certain miracles to authenticate the Gospel message they were taking to the world. The reasonable question is: do these types of miracles still occur today?
These ‘sign gifts’ were really for the early church to show that the Lord was truly behind the message being given. Along with the Gospel message, the believers of that time could perform certain miracles so that people could see the power of God in their message. So, we see these miracles were primarily given for the apostolic age before the Word of God was complete.
Let’s read Hebrews 2:3-4 which says, “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?” In the early days of the church, some may have asked the Lord’s disciples to prove that the Gospel message was truth from God. To confirm His message, the Lord allowed some of those in the early church to perform signs and wonders, diverse miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost. Do we really need these miracles today to show the truth of the Gospel? No, we do not. If someone asks us to prove the Gospel message is true, we simply point out from the scriptures the truth of God’s love and desire for the salvation of sinful men and women. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” The Gospel of Christ is powerful. It can give salvation to everyone that believes on the Lord Jesus.
Even in the Lord’s time on the earth, there were those who wanted to see signs. They wanted the Lord to do miraculous things to verify His word of salvation. We read in Matthew 12:38-40, “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” It is an evil and adulterous people that long to see signs and miracles. Dear fellow believer, we are to walk by faith, with the Word of God convincing us of the truth of its content. (106.1)