Sermons preached by Pastor Darryl Dash

One of the keys to reading the Bible is to notice details in the passage that are unusual, and to then begin to probe why they’re there. We say, “That was odd,” and then begin to look for clues for why things are different in that passage.

Today is a good example. There are many different miracles in the Gospel of Mark, but none like this one. In verses 22 to 26, Jesus heals a blind man. But something happens that doesn’t happen any other time in this Gospel or in any other. The man is only partially healed. Jesus partially heals him, and then like a physician who’s checking the results of surgery, asks, “Do you see anything?” Jesus never does that. He never has to check to see if his healing worked. But he does here. Jesus never has any trouble healing blind people any other time. All he has to say is, “Receive your sight.”

But surprisingly, this time, the healing doesn’t take the first time. The man says, “”I see people; they look like trees walking around” (Mark 8:24). If you’re a careful reader then you have to stop and ask exactly what is going on here. And I think you have to conclude that Jesus is giving us a picture of something.

And as we look at this passage and the two preceding events, we’re going to see three things. First, we’re going to see our spiritual condition. Then we’re going to see the two different types of this condition. Finally, we’re going to see the cure.

It’s very important that you take note of this passage because this is one that will both give you confidence and humble you at the same time. If you really understand this passage, you’ll be humbled, but at the same time you’ll be filled with hope that God is not done with you yet.

So let’s look first at what this passage reveals about our spiritual condition.

As we get to this passage, we’re getting near the climax of the first section of the Gospel of Mark. The big question as the Gospel unfolds is: who exactly is Jesus? It’s still actually the most important question we face, because if Jesus is indeed God’s Son, then it changes everything.

As we come to Mark 8, we encounter two groups of people who are dealing with this question. The first are the Pharisees. “The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven” (Mark 8:11).

At first glance, this seems like an innocent request. There are lots of examples of authenticating signs in Scripture. When Moses went before Pharaoh, God gave him signs like his staff turning into a snake. “This is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers–the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob–has appeared to you,” God said (Exodus 4:5).

Here, though, Jesus reacts very strongly to their request. He sighs, tells them that they won’t be getting any authenticating signs, and then takes off and leaves them. It’s almost like, at this point, Jesus writes off the Pharisees and says that there’s nothing more that can be done with them. He doesn’t try to convince them or reason with them. He’s done with them.

Why such a strong reaction?

You get a hint as Jesus talks to his disciples about the Pharisees. Jesus says in verse 15, “Be careful. Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”

This makes absolutely no sense to us, so let me explain what Jesus is saying here. In those days, when you baked bread, you would bake with leaven or yeast so that the bread would rise. You would keep some of the bread containing yeast for the next batch. The problem is that the yeast could become tainted and spread poison when baked with the rest of the dough, and the contamination would spread from batch to batch. Jesus is saying that the Pharisees, and Herod, have a condition that will spread to them if they’re not careful.

And then Mark, with some humor, lets us know that it’s too late. They’ve already been contaminated. They think that Jesus is talking about something completely different. They completely miss the point. Jesus identifies the condition in verse 18: “Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?”

It’s no accident that Mark follows this with the story of blindness that is hard to heal. What Mark is telling us is this: that the blind man is a parable of the spiritual condition of both the Pharisees and the disciples. The enemies of Jesus (the Pharisees) and the friends of Jesus (the disciples) have exactly the same problem: spiritual blindness. They can’t see.

What Mark is telling us is that we are all in the same boat. We all suffer from the same problem. We have a spiritual perception issue. Years ago, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached on this passage and said:

I have no hesitation in asserting again that one of the reasons why the Christian Church counts for so little in the modern world is that so many Christians are in this condition…I believe he dealt with the blind man as He did to give them a picture of themselves. He adopted this technique in the case before us, in order to enable the disciples to see themselves as they were. It goes beyond that, however: it is a permanent lesson always for God’s people.

We are all spiritual versions of Mr. Magoo. Do you remember that cartoon character? He was a wealthy, short-statured retiree who gets into a series of sticky situations as a result of his nearsightedness, compounded by his stubborn refusal to admit the problem. That’s exactly our problem too. Not only can’t we see, but we can’t see that we can’t see.

So this is our problem. As we read the story of the blind man in verses 22 to 26, we’re supposed to say, “That is a picture of me.” It’s not only a picture of the enemies of Jesus; it’s also a picture of his friends. Every person here is or has been spiritually blind. John Newton, the man who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace, once said, “There are many who stumble in the noon day, not for want of light, but for the want of eyes.” That includes all of us.

So we’ve seen what Jesus and Mark are telling us about our spiritual condition.

We then need to see that there are two kinds of spiritual blindness.

There is something in this passage that is very humbling. It’s that there really isn’t much difference between the friends of Jesus and the enemies of Jesus. Both are blind. This means that if you consider yourself to be a friend of Jesus, there really isn’t any room for feeling superior. You’re really no different from anyone else. One of the commentaries I read on this passage used this title for this passage: “Both opponents and supporters still have a lot to learn.” This should give us great humility. Spiritual blindness is not something those people have. It’s common to everybody. You’re either spiritually blind right now or you have been in the past.

It’s important to see this. Being an insider – even a disciple – is no guarantee that you understand. Proximity to Jesus is no guarantee that you have spiritual perception. You can go to church all your life and be spiritually blind as the enemies of Jesus.

So, in one sense, everyone is blind. Yet in this passage we see that there are two types of spiritual blindness. When Jesus confronts the Pharisees, you get the sense that there isn’t much hope for that type of blindness. Jesus abandons the Pharisees at this point. Why? It’s because they had already seen more than enough to demonstrate who Jesus was. They had chosen to reject Jesus even when the evidence was right in their face. They were already plotting his death. They weren’t looking to be convinced. They wanted an excuse for refusing to respond. They had chosen a permanent case of spiritual blindness.

Henry Fonda starred in a 1957 movie called Twelve Angry Men. A young man is on trial for the murder of his father. The twelve jurists walk into a hot, cramped jury room. All but one of the jurists (Henry Fonda) is ready to be done with the inconvenience of this trial. They’ve heard all they want to hear and seem unwilling to consider the possibility that the young man could be innocent. Only Henry Fonda’s character seems sensitive to the fact that something important hangs in the balance–a man’s life.

As Fonda’s character argues for reasonable doubt, the others don’t want to listen. One man points to the unique murder weapon as proof positive of the defendant’s guilt. Everyone seems convinced the knife is so rare and the boy’s story so implausible that the defendant must be guilty. Frustrated with Fonda as the lone holdout, he says, “Take a look at that knife. It’s a very unusual knife. I’ve never seen one like it.” The other men in the room murmur agreement.

“I’m just saying it’s possible,” says Fonda. One of the jurists steps forward angrily and shouts, “It’s not possible!” At that moment, Fonda reaches calmly into his pocket, pulls out an identical knife, pops the blade, and plants it into the middle of the table.

“Where did you get that?” one jurist asks. Fonda responds, “I went out walking for a couple of hours last night. I walked through the boy’s neighborhood. I bought that at a little pawn shop just two blocks from the boy’s house. It cost six dollars.”

Fonda’s character alone stopped long enough to take an honest, careful, unbiased look at the evidence. One by one, through honest struggle, all the jurists come to the same conclusion, and a young man facing death is set free. It’s possible to make up your mind, just like the Pharisees and just like these jurists, before honestly examining the evidence. If you willfully refuse to see what is right in front of you, there isn’t much hope for your blindness.

There’s another type of spiritual blindness. You see it with the disciples. They were blind, but you get the sense that there’s hope for them. Their type of blindness is almost comical. They’re so distracted by temporal things – really, by lunch – that they don’t get it. Jesus had fed nine thousand people with next to nothing, and they are worried about fixing lunch for 13. They are so trapped in their own little worlds, with their petty concerns, that they can’t see the kingdom of God breaking into history right in front of them.

We can’t be too hard on the disciples because we’re really not too different. There is something about us that tends to be distracted by our daily needs, so much so that we can’t see what God is doing all around us. We miss what God is doing because we’re too busy thinking about what we’re going to have for lunch.

That’s us, but there’s hope. Jesus doesn’t give up on the disciples. He asks them questions to lead them towards what they need to see. Gradually, and with great difficulty, they will see. There’s hope for these disciples. They will eventually see.

That’s why I love that Jesus healed the blind man in two stages. If Jesus had left him only halfway healed, he would have spent the rest of his life saying hi to trees and chopping down people. This should give us confidence. Even if we aren’t there yet, even if we can see only part way, we can know that God isn’t done with us yet. We will see clearly. Jesus can heal even the most difficult cases.

John Calvin puts it this way:

No one will travel so badly as not daily to make some degree of progress. This, therefore, let us never cease to do, that we may daily advance in the way of the Lord; and let us not despair because of the slender measure of success…Our labour is not lost when today is better than yesterday…If during the whole course of our life we seek and follow, we shall at length attain it, when relieved from the infirmity of the flesh we are admitted to the full fellowship of God.

These are the disciples that have been chosen by Christ himself. They still don’t get it, but they will. I told you that this passage humbles us, because we realize we aren’t so different. We’re all blind. But it should also encourage us, because Jesus will not leave us halfway blind. He will complete the work that he’s begun in us.

So you really have two kinds of blindness here. I’m afraid that there isn’t much hope for the first kind of blindness. But the story of the blind man, healed in stages, gives us hope that if Jesus has started to heal our blindness, then he will certainly finish his work.

So what, then, is the cure?

I want you to see this morning how encouraging this passage is. If you ended at verse 21, you’d be discouraged. The question that Jesus asked – “Do you still not understand?” – would be an open question. But the passage doesn’t end there. The passage ends with a picture of someone who is blind seeing. It may be slow, and it may come in stages, but some who are blind now will one day see clearly.

This morning there is hope for those of us who can’t see. There isn’t hope if you’re like the Pharisees. If you are looking for excuses not to believe, willfully turning your back on what you know to be true about God, then there is not much hope for your blindness.

But if you can relate to the disciples, there is hope for you. You may be distracted by immediate needs. You may find that you are falling flat on your face. Spiritually speaking you may find that things look as clear as they did for this blind man part way through his healing. People look like trees. But be thankful. If you have the smallest insight spiritually into the gospel, that is evidence that Jesus may be at work in your life restoring your spiritual eyesight so that you can see.

I’m going to close this morning by giving you some advice from Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who preached a famous sermon from this passage. It’s found in his book Spiritual Depression. He describes those who are half-way healed: “They seem to know enough about Christianity to spoil their enjoyment of the world, and yet they do not know enough to feel happy about themselves.” He says that the good news is that nobody has to stay in this condition. Lloyd Jones offers some advice if your spiritual eyesight is lacking and you’d like to be healed.

First, he says, avoid making a premature claim that your blindness is healed. In other words, face up to reality. What a tragedy it would have been if the blind man had settled for seeing men as trees permanently. It would have been a big improvement, but it wouldn’t have been enough. So don’t settle for where you are right now. Admit that you have need to see better than you do.

Secondly: don’t be discouraged. You’re going to probably get frustrated. Lloyd-Jones says:

Such people come often come to me and say that they cannot see the Truth clearly. In their confusion they become desperate and ask, “Why cannot I see? The whole thing is hopeless.” They stop reading their Bible, they stop praying. The devil has discouraged many with lies. Do not listen to him.

When Jesus asks, “Do you see?” answer honestly, but don’t be discouraged.

Finally, come to Jesus. Submit to him and trust him to heal your spiritual eyesight. Jesus is our only hope; he will not leave anything incomplete.

Do you believe that the Son of God came from heaven and lived and did all that He did on earth, that He died on a Cross and was buried and rose again, that He ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit, in order to leave us in a state of confusion? It is impossible. He came that we might see clearly, that we would know God…

Come to Him, come to His Word, wait upon Him, plead with Him, hold on to Him…[and] You will be able to say, “I see, I see in Him all that I need and more, and I know that I belong to Him.”

Let’s pray.

Father, this passage humbles us, because we see our problem. But it gives us confidence, because you know how to deal with our problem. Thank you that we can be “confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

We plead with you to heal our spiritual blindness. Let us see Jesus, and to see in Him all that we need and more We pray in his name. Amen.

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Today’s passage is unsettling at first. You can’t read it without wondering if Jesus is being a tad insensitive – even rude – to a woman who genuinely needs help. It also leaves you with some questions. Why is Jesus so dramatic when he heals a deaf person? And then it also seems a little repetitive. Jesus feeds another crowd with a few loaves and small fish. So it’s a passage that gets under the skin and raises all kinds of questions.

But it’s also a startling passage that actually gives a lot of hope to those of us who feel like we’re the least likely people to be part of what God is doing. If you feel like you don’t quite belong, or that there’s a whole list of reasons why you shouldn’t be in relationship with God and part of what he’s doing, then this passage is for you.

Let’s look at the three stories this morning. We’re going to see first why we’re not worthy to be part of Jesus’ kingdom, why this doesn’t matter, and then why this is good news for everyone here this morning.

First, let’s look at all the reasons that we’re not worthy, all the reasons why we shouldn’t be part of God’s kingdom and what he’s doing.

In verse 24 we read that Jesus leaves from the Sea of Galilee area to the area around Tyre, which would have been on the coast of the Mediterranean. To understand what’s about to happen here, you need to know why this is significant. Jesus is moving from a predominantly Jewish area to an area that was much more Gentile, much more Greek. He was traveling to an area that was known for its paganism. Tyre is a place known in the Old Testament as being wicked. It’s the hometown of Jezebel, one of the famous villains of the Hebrew Scriptures. Josephus, who was a Jewish historian who lived shortly after this time, said that the people of Tyre are “as our bitterest enemies.” It’s also an area that, at the time, was known to be economically oppressive towards where Jesus was coming from. Tyre was known for eating food produced in Galilee while Galilee itself went hungry.

Why did Jesus leave Galilee for this Gentile and, from a Jewish perspective, somewhat shady place? I think there are a couple of reasons. Twice now Jesus has tried to get away with his disciples for a period of rest. Every time he tries to get away, though, the crowds follow him. It looks like this may be another attempt. “He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it,” according to verse 24. If you study this passage carefully and map out Jesus’ route, you’ll notice that he goes way out of his way to avoid Galilee. Jesus is aware that the crowds want him as king, but that the political and religious leaders want him dead. So he takes some time to get away with his disciples out of the spotlight and away from all of the demands. They are trying to lie low for a while after Jesus has said and done some risky things. They are not there to preach and to heal. They just want to get away for a short time.

This helps us understand the emotional tone of the end of verse 24. “He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret.” It also helps us understand a little bit about the exchange between Jesus and the Greek woman born in Syrian Phoenicia. There is hardly a less likely person to get anything from Jesus in all the gospels. She’s Gentile and is not part of the covenant that God made with the Jewish people. She has no business approaching a Jewish rabbi.

She really has three strikes against her. One: she’s a woman at a time when women were not viewed as equal to men. Two: she’s a Greek Gentile at a time of great tension between Jews and Gentiles. The Messiah was expected to subdue and expel the Gentiles, not to visit and embrace them. Three: she’s from pagan Syrian Phoenicia, which is a pretty shady place for anyone coming from Israel, especially from Galilee. You could even add a fourth strike: Jesus isn’t there to heal or minister. He’s there to get away. There’s no reason to expect Jesus to respond positively to this woman.

That’s why Jesus responds the way that he does to her. She came to Jesus and begged him to drive the demon from her daughter. Jesus replied in verse 27: “‘First let the children eat all they want,’ he told her, ‘for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.’”

What is this? In Jesus’ day, Jews often referred to Gentiles as dogs. We’re not talking men’s best friend either. We’re talking about wild dogs, repulsive scavengers that get into your garbage and eat everything and are never satisfied. They were seen as the most despicable, insolent, and miserable of creatures. It seems shocking that Jesus would buy into this type of language. It’s pretty hard to avoid seeing these words as being somewhat scandalous, somewhat offensive.

But if that’s all you see, then you aren’t seeing enough. Jesus didn’t use the normal word for a scavenger dog. The word he actually used was not the one that was normally used by Jews to refer to Gentiles. He didn’t call her a wild scavenger dog roaming around the countryside. He used a word that means small dog, the type of dog you would keep as a household pet.

This still sounds offensive, and it probably should sound a little offensive, but we need to see what this woman actually came to see. Jesus was speaking using a parable. He’s giving us an image that communicates a message. When Jesus had sent the disciples out, we read in Matthew that he said, “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel” (Matthew 10:5-6). Jesus was clear about his purpose. His purpose at this point was not to spread the gospel to the Gentile world, but to tell the Jewish people that their long-awaited salvation was at hand. He came to bring salvation to Israel. Later on the gospel would be shared with the entire world, but not yet. Jesus had a specific task and limited time, and this woman was jumping the queue. Jesus was saying, in essence, “I really need to feed my family first. Your turn is coming.” Jesus wasn’t called to go around and be helpful to everyone. He had to bring his salvation and his kingdom to Israel before it could be offered to the whole world.

We’re going to see in a minute that this woman actually gets and agrees with Jesus’ statement. But let’s pause for a minute and consider that there are probably some of us here who can relate to this fascinating woman with four strikes against her. There are probably some of us here who would have to say that there’s no real reason why Jesus should choose to respond to our cries. There are some of us who were raised in church, and you’ve never done anything scandalous in your life. You look like you’ve been in church every Sunday in your life, except for two weeks when you were sick back in the second grade. But there are others here who could easily come up with four reasons why Jesus should look at you and say, “Sorry, not interested.” We can come up with lots of reasons why Jesus should look at us and say that it’s not our turn just yet. What happens to this woman matters a lot to us.

And that’s why it’s so surprising to discover what did happen. This woman finds a way through.

Let’s look at how this woman teaches us that our unworthiness doesn’t even matter when we come to Jesus.

What’s shocking is that this woman, with so much against her, actually gets it. This is amazing. Hardly anyone in Mark’s gospel grasps what Jesus says to them, but she does.

How would you respond if Jesus said to you like he did to her? Some of us would slink away. Jesus has used the image of a dog. You’ve seen a dog with its ears tucked down, tail between its legs, scampering away. That’s what some of us would have done. Jesus’ challenge would have been enough to put us off.

Some of us would have defended ourselves. We would have said, “How dare you compare me to a dog?” We would have put up a fight saying that we deserved some of what Jesus offers. Our argument would be about who we are and what we deserve.

But this amazing woman doesn’t scamper away, nor does she defend herself by arguing based on her merit. Look at what she says instead: “‘Lord,’ she replied, ‘even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs’” (Mark 7:28).

This woman has a clearer understanding of Jesus’ mission than anyone else we’ve met in Mark so far. She’s the first person in Mark to get it and to engage Jesus in a constructive dialogue. She refuses to take no for an answer, and she becomes like a female version of Jacob wrestling with the angel, saying, “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26).

And what is the basis of her argument? Her argument is that the life-giving bread of Jesus’ kingdom is so abundant that there is more than enough to feed not just Israel, but the entire world. She gets it. Bread here is an image of all the blessings of the Messiah’s ministry. She understands that there is so much blessing found in what Jesus is doing that there’s food enough for her, even though she is the most unlikely of persons to share in what God is doing.

Do you understand what she’s doing? She’s actually given us insight into the only way we can share in the blessings of Jesus’ salvation. We’re not worthy. We should never come to Christ arguing that we have a right to the blessings that he brings in his kingdom. We clearly don’t. But we can grab ahold of Jesus, admit that we don’t deserve the blessings of his kingdom, and then argue based on the abundance of God’s grace. Because God’s grace is so abundant, even the crumbs will be enough. The bread of Jesus’ saving kingdom is so abundant that it’s available to all, even the most unlikely person.

When we scamper away, or argue based on our merit, we forfeit the blessings of what Jesus has done. But when we down at his feet and argue based on the abundance of his provision, we’re on very solid ground. There’s more than enough in what Jesus provides to overcome anything that could keep us away.

Jesus replied to her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” And then we read, “She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone” (Mark 7:29-30).

Somebody’s said, “Her only cover letter was her desperate need.” But when we come to Jesus, all we need is need, because the bread of Jesus’ saving kingdom is so abundant that it’s available to all. Martin Luther said of her, “She took Christ at his own words. He then treated her not as a dog but as a child of Israel.”

We’ve seen all the reasons why this woman shouldn’t have received the blessings of Jesus’ kingdom. And we’ve seen why this didn’t matter: because she understood that there’s more than enough in what Jesus is doing for everyone. Mark wants us to see one more thing from this passage.

He wants us to understand why this is good news for everyone here this morning.

Mark follows this incident with two other ones, not because they happened next. In fact, there are some hints that the last incident he mentions didn’t necessarily happen next. He ties them together because he wants us to see that this woman was right. He wants us to see how the abundance of the bread in Jesus’ kingdom is really good news for everyone.

In verses 31 to 36, Jesus travels to another Gentile region on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. There Jesus encounters a man who’s deaf and has a speech impediment. You’ll notice the drama involved with the healing. Jesus takes him aside, touches his ears and tongue, looks up to heaven. What’s Jesus doing here? His healings aren’t usually this dramatic. What’s he doing? He’s signing. He’s communicating through his movements what he is doing to someone who can’t hear his words. Just as Jesus has healed those who belong to Israel, Jesus now heals a Gentile. Remember that the miracles of Jesus point to what the kingdom will one day look like? Jesus demonstrates here that Gentiles are going to share in all the blessings of the kingdom, where there will be no evil or illness or death. What Isaiah prophesied is true even for the Gentiles:

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened

and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then will the lame leap like a deer,

and the mute tongue shout for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness

and streams in the desert.
(Isaiah 35:5-6)

And then we read about Jesus feeding four thousand with just a few loaves of bread and a few small fish. He’s just fed five thousand back in chapter 6. Why include a similar event here? There are some differences. There are fewer people, more loaves, and less food left over. The biggest difference, though, is that this meal takes place among the Gentiles. Jesus makes his bread available to a wider Gentile community. He is the living bread for Gentiles as well. They also ate and were satisfied. Mark is telling us that everyone is invited to participate in the Messianic banquet. All are invited to come and be satisfied.

And that’s why it’s good news for everyone here this morning. Even the most unlikely person is invited to come. Your invitation to eat the bread has nothing to do with your worthiness; it has everything to do with the abundance of what has been provided for us in Jesus Christ. All you need is need. You can come eat the bread of life, and be satisfied.

Father, this morning I pray especially for those who are the least likely to experience the blessings of the kingdom. There are many here today who would never think they would have a place at the table with Jesus.

But today you’ve shown us that the blessings are available to everyone, because the blessing is not based on how worthy we are. It is based on the abundant provision of blessings that are available in Jesus Christ.

This is very good news. So I pray that the most unlikely people today would come and wrestle, refusing to leave until they get a blessing. May they fall before Jesus’ feet and argue for even crumbs from his table. May their ears be opened, and may they find their place at the table. May they understand the salvation that is available to them through Jesus and what he has done, and may they eat and be satisfied. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

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At first glance, today’s passage seems like it’s a fight over an arcane issue that doesn’t involve us at all. But, actually, this passage is very much about an issue that concerns all of us. The issue is really what is wrong with us, and what we should do about it. In this passage, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day point out a problem that, when we think about it, affects all of us. Jesus even agrees with them that there’s a problem. But then Jesus shows us that the way we normally deal with the problem is wrong, before we get a hint of the right way to deal with the problem.

So first, what’s the problem?

The real issue in this passage is simply moral purity. It’s easy to lose what’s really under discussion in this passage because the problem is expressed in terms of the Jewish laws and traditions about being clean, but the underlying issue is one that touches all of us. It’s the sense that something is wrong with us, and that we need something that is going to cleanse us, something that is going to change us so that we are who we know we’re supposed to be.

If you read the Old Testament laws, especially in the book of Leviticus, then you discover that there are a lot of laws about uncleanness. Over and over again you read about clean and unclean and holy in the book of Leviticus. Some of the laws seem so arcane that when we read them we get frustrated and wonder what in the world they have to do with us.

One of the problems we have is that we think that clean means hygienic, like when your mother tells you to wash your hands because they’re dirty before you come to eat your lunch. Clean in the Bible really doesn’t have to do with hygiene, but of being purified and cleansed so that you could approach God. Because God is completely holy and without any defilement at all, God required that the people approach him in purity. And so Leviticus spends a lot of time explaining what makes people clean and unclean. The term occurs over 70 times in the book of Leviticus. We don’t understand all the reasons behind all of these commands, but we kind of get the idea that we can’t approach God just as we are because we’re unclean. We know that there’s something wrong with us. The issue, again, isn’t hygiene, but our readiness to approach God.

The bottom line in Leviticus is that if you’re unclean – and there are many ways that you can become unclean – you have no access to God. If you’re an ordinary person and you are unclean for whatever reason, then you are temporarily cut off from the other people until you’re made clean again. But if you’re a priest, then it’s even more serious. God says to the priests, “For the generations to come, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean and yet comes near the sacred offerings that the Israelites consecrate to the LORD, that person must be cut off from my presence. I am the LORD” (Leviticus 22:3).

As you read the Old Testament, you at first think that it’s all about these arbitrary rules about what you can touch and what you can eat. It’s frustrating too because there’s no real way you can avoid becoming unclean at least some of the time. It’s only later that you begin to see that it’s not really about rules and technicalities. All of these point to something much deeper: our hearts. So when Isaiah encounters God, he’s filled with fear and cries out, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty” (Isaiah 6:5). He knows that he’s in no condition to stand in God’s presence. His very life is in danger. Isaiah says again in chapter 64, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”

If we’re honest, all of us can look at ourselves as well and acknowledge that yes, no matter who we are, that this is a problem. All of us sense that there’s something deeply wrong, deeply unclean about our hearts. And it affects even the best of us. Kay Warren, a pastor’s wife, tells of the first time she visited Rwanda. She had heard about the 1994 genocide that had left a million people dead – tortured, raped, and murdered. “I naively assumed I would be able to look men and women in the eyes and tell if they had ben involved,” she says.

I was full of self-righteous judgment…Instead of finding leering, menacing creatures, I met men and women who looked and behaved a lot like me…There were no monsters in Rwanda, just people like you and me…Before that trip, I can’t tell you the number of times I reacted to evil I read about or witnessed by saying, “I would never do that!” But thousands of years of bloody human history prove differently. Fifty-four years of my own history prove differently. We are all proficient in our ability to conceive, plan, and execute evil…You might as well face the shameful truth: You and I, put in the right situation, will do absolutely anything. Given the right circumstances, I am capable of any sin. I’ve grown more afraid of the monster lurking in the dark corners of my soul than of any monster lurking in the dark corners of my house.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn puts the problem well:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

This is our biggest problem. And if you look carefully at this passage, Jesus agrees that this is our problem. In fact, he even raises the stakes in identifying the seriousness of the problem. We are unclean. We’re like Lady Macbeth, crying, “Out, damn’d spot!” This is our problem.

So how do we normally deal with this problem?

As detailed as the laws in the Old Testament are, they only required priests to wash hands before offering a sacrifice. Only priests, and only when offering a sacrifice. Exodus 30:18-21 says:

Make a bronze basin, with its bronze stand, for washing. Place it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and put water in it. Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and feet with water from it. Whenever they enter the tent of meeting, they shall wash with water so that they will not die. Also, when they approach the altar to minister by presenting a food offering to the LORD, they shall wash their hands and feet so that they will not die. This is to be a lasting ordinance for Aaron and his descendants for the generations to come.

God’s Law never required that ordinary people eat regular meals in a state or ritual cleanliness. But we get to Mark 7, and we read in verses 3 and 4:

The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.

They had taken instructions meant for priestly washing at the moment of sacrifice, and applied it to all of life in a way that God had never intended. This wasn’t written in Scripture, but we read that these traditions had developed – as yet unwritten rules that many held to be on par with God’s written commands.

What had happened is that people had identified a legitimate problem: the impurity of our hearts. And they had devised a system of dealing with this problem: manmade rules that, if kept, made them feel like they were no longer unclean. And not only did they adopt these manmade rules for themselves, but they used them as a club to judge others. In this passage, they use their manmade rules as a way of clubbing Jesus. When we sense the uncleanness of our hearts, we always look to some other justification, some other standard by which we approve ourselves and judge others. This is actually the basis of all religion and even many within Christianity: we think that if we meet certain standards and do certain things, unlike those dirty people, then we’re in. Then we’ve dealt with our uncleanness problem. These are outside-in approaches. We think if we adopt certain behaviors and meet certain standards, then we’re in.

Let me give you a test. If I said, “What makes you acceptable to God?” what would you say? Most of the answers we give reveal what we’re looking to in order to be justified before God. If we think that there is anything that we have done or can do to make us clean before God, then we are in the exact same position that these religious leaders were in. We’re trusting in something to justify us before God that won’t work no matter how well we meet the standards.

Jesus had very harsh words for this. He just tears into the religious leaders. There are two basic problems with trying to justify God through our manmade, external rules.

First, Jesus says, we end up undermining the Word of God. When we create manmade rules in what starts out to be a well-meaning attempt to justify ourselves with God, it isn’t long before we create rules that end up rejecting God-given priorities. He gives the example of somebody making a vow to dedicate some of their money to God, therefore making that money unavailable for honoring their father and mother. But there are other examples:

• being so careful about morality that we forget that Christ died for the ungodly;
• being so focused on church attendance and activities that we neglect our families and our neighbors;
• being so concerned with good theology that we stop loving those who don’t agree in every detail with us

Religion always gets us focused on the wrong things at the expense of what God wants us to be about. “You do many things like that,” Jesus says in verse 13.

The other problem is that our when we try to justify ourselves using manmade, external rules, we never really get to the heart of the issue, which is the heart. To illustrate this, Jesus uses a crude example. If you eat a piece of unclean food, he says, it goes into your mouth, and down to your stomach, and eventually, he says, it goes into the latrine. It never gets to your heart. So the problem is actually more serious than you think, because all the hand-washing in the world, all the external manmade rules, never get to the heart of the issue. The heart of the issue is that we have impure hearts. The problem is that at our core, and the center of who we really are, there’s something seriously wrong.

Jesus says in verses 21 to 23:

For from within, out of your hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile you.

Nothing you do externally will deal with the problem of an unclean heart. This is actually very depressing. Jesus says that yes, the Pharisees and scribes are right that there is something fundamentally unclean with us. But he rejects religion as a way of dealing with this. There is nothing we can do to scrub ourselves and make us clean no matter what we do. The ultimate problem with us is the impurity of our heart, and religion can’t solve that problem.

So this passage shows us the extent of our problem. It also shows us the impossibility of cleansing ourselves. As one theologian put it, “Even saints cannot perform one work which, if judged on its own merits, is not deserving of condemnation” (John Calvin). Where does this leave us?

This passage also points us to what has to happen, what is, after all, our only hope.

So we see we have this problem. We also see that religion and manmade rules really don’t solve this problem. So what do we do?

There’s an interesting parenthetical comment at the end of verse 19. It’s significant because Mark hardly makes any editorial comments. He says, “In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.” What does Mark mean by this? There are all kinds of laws about clean and unclean food in the Old Testament. What Mark is telling us is that Jesus is the fulfillment of all of these laws, and that he has done something that renders all of the laws about clean and unclean food obsolete.

Hundreds of years earlier, God revealed that the day would come that he would deal with this problem.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness. (Ezekiel 36:26-29)

The day will come, God said, when we won’t have to worry about our unclean hearts anymore, because God will give us new hearts. “I will save you from all your uncleanness,” God promises.

One of the most beautiful pictures of this is found in a passage in Zechariah 3. Zechariah sees a scene in heaven in which Joshua, the high priest at that time, appears before God. Remember how much work the priests had to go through in order to cleanse themselves? The High Priest would only come before God once a year at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, after a week of preparation because you can’t appear before God in an unclean state.

Zechariah sees Joshua appear before God. Satan is there too to accuse him. And we read, “Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel” (Zechariah 3:3). In the original it says he’s in clothes that are covered with excrement. It’s a picture of how we must look to God as we come before him in all our righteousness. He’s there on the Day of Atonement, but there’s big trouble because he’s unclean. There’s no way he can stand before God, and Satan is there to accuse him. It’s a disaster.

But before Satan can even speak, the angel says, “Take off his filthy clothes.” And then the angel says to Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you” (Zechariah 3:4). God strips away his uncleanness and provides clothes that he couldn’t provide for himself. He’s reclothed in God’s presence and even given a turban, which at that time would have signified royalty. He comes before God covered with excrement, and in God’s presence he’s given ceremonially pure garments as a sign that God accepts him and the people that he represents.

The prophets point us to the cleansing that only God can provide. God, they say, will deal with the uncleanness of his people by providing cleansing and acceptance at the deepest level. God will take away our filthy clothes in his presence, and Satan our accuser won’t be allowed to say a word.

Mark has told us that the laws of clean and unclean laws have found their fulfillment in Christ. Christ cleanses the heart.

No condemnation now I dread; Jesus, and all in Him, is mine! Alive in Him, my living Head, And clothed in righteousness divine, Bold I approach the eternal throne, And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

Father, we repent of our efforts to cleanse ourselves. We thank you that in your presence, our filthy clothes can be removed, and we can be clothed with the righteousness of Christ. May everyone here experience that cleansing and sing: Amazing love! How can it be, That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

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This Fall, we’ve been studying the Gospel of Mark, which is the earliest account of Jesus’ life and ministry. Today we come to a passage of Scripture that has a lot to say to us. If you’re like me, you’re going to recognize yourself in this passage, and this passage is going to give you a much-needed rebuke and some hope as well. At least that’s what it did for me.

In this passage we learn something about our situation, something about Jesus, and then we face a test. It’s important that we pay attention to what this passage teaches us, because if we pass this test we’ll be prepared to deal with anything that comes our way.

So let’s look at what this passage teaches us about us and our situation.

Jesus has just fed five thousand men, as well as additional women and children, with five small loaves of bread and two fish. In verse 45 we read, “Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd.” You sense an urgency in Jesus’ actions. He wants the disciples gone, and according to verse 46, he wants to be alone to pray. What’s going on here?

What had just happened – the five thousand – became a test for both Jesus and for the disciples.

For Jesus, the test was one that we usually don’t recognize as a test. We read in the Gospel of John that the crowd that Jesus fed was ready to force him to become King. Jesus was so popular at that point that he faced the temptation to get sidetracked from his mission due to the acclaim of the crowds. Jesus also knew that the path ahead led to the cross, not to glory and conquest. The glory and victory would come, but not before betrayal and death. So Jesus was going through his own storm, and so he retreated and spent most of the night in prayer.

But the focus in this passage really isn’t on the storm that Jesus faced. Mark doesn’t even go there. Instead, he draws our attention to what the disciples are going through. We read in verses 47 and 48:

When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake.

Now notice this. Jesus has sent the disciples onto the boat alone. If you know these disciples well, you should have the same feeling that you have when the neighbor down the road goes out and leaves the kids at home alone. You know it’s not going to be a good situation. Almost every time these disciples are away from Jesus, they encounter some kind of problem.

But then notice what Jesus had sent them into. This wasn’t like the storm they had already faced in which their lives were in danger. This was more like a wind that wouldn’t let up. We read that they are straining at the oars making very limited progress. By the time Jesus does anything about it, it’s between three and six in the morning. It seems that he doesn’t even respond right away.

One commentator says:

This episode is a good illustration of the life of discipleship…It was not through stubborn self-will, but through direct obedience to the Lord’s command, that the disciples found themselves in this plight. Thus the storm in now way showed that they had deviated from the path of God’s will: God’s path for them lay through the storm, to the other shore of the lake. Moreover, it appeared as if the Lord had forgotten them; they were alone, at night, making heavy weather with the rowing. (R. Alan Cole)

Ask yourself: Why would Jesus allow the disciples to go through this crisis alone? The answer has to be that this is part of the preparation process that the disciples needed as part of their training. We are going to be placed in situations, believing that God has sent us. We are going to be straining at the oars making very little progress at all. It’s going to seem as if we’re alone and that Jesus is off somewhere else. We can expect this to be part of our experience.

There really are three lessons we’re expected to learn:

We will face adversity and hardship. Following Christ does not mean an exemption from suffering. Following Christ will sometimes lead us directly into a position of suffering and hardship. We should not be surprised to encounter times of suffering. When we follow Jesus, adversity and hardship will be part of the path.

There are going to be times when we’re at the end of our own resources. The picture of the disciples “straining at the oars” is a good one for us. There are going to be times that we are working very hard but seemingly making very little progress. Reaching the point of helplessness and desperation is actually a step forward spiritually.

There will be times that Jesus seems absent. We will be in the storm and it will seem like God has abandoned us.

If you are in one of these moments right now of suffering and hardship, of being at the end of your resources, feeling that God is perhaps absent, then you are in a very good spot. As Eugene Peterson says:

Suffering is not evidence of God’s absence, but of God’s presence, and it is in our experience of being broken that God does his surest and most characteristic salvation work.

There is a way to accept, embrace, and deal with suffering that results in a better life, not a worse one, and more of the experience of God, not less.

God is working out his salvation in our lives the way he has always worked

We’re going to face situations like this, and it’s in these very situations that we learn something about Jesus.

Well, what does this passage help us learn about Jesus?

As the disciples face this hardship, what does Jesus teach them, and us, about himself?

There are a few details here that point to something deeper going on here. Verse 48 says, “Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them…” Throughout the years, people have struggled with the idea of Jesus walking on the water. They should too. We all know that people don’t walk on water. Scripture teaches that treading the water is something that only God can do. Job 9:8 says:

He alone stretches out the heavens
and treads on the waves of the sea.

This is, by the way, the point. Jesus walking on the water reveals that he is more than a teacher or a prophet. Once again we’re forced to ask, “Who in the world is this?”

Then we come to the phrase, “He was about to pass by them…” This seems to make no sense. The disciples are struggling to make progress. Why would Jesus just pass by? Bible scholars have proposed all kinds of theories. To really understand what’s happening, you need to understand what it means to “pass by.”

In Exodus 33, Moses said to God, “Show me your glory.” God replied, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence…When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by” (Exodus 33:19,22). In 1 Kings, God told Elijah, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by” (1 Kings 19:11). Jesus is not only walking on water here, which tells us that this is no normal person, but now he’s also passing by. This is the language of God revealing himself. As God revealed himself to Moses at Sinai, and on Horeb to Elijah, God now reveals himself in the person of Jesus Christ to the disciples.

There’s one more clue that we need to spot. When the disciples saw Jesus passing by, walking on the water, they thought he was a ghost. Jesus immediately spoke to them and said – in my translation – “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” What Jesus said is actually, “Take courage. I am. Don’t be afraid.” Do you know what this means? When Moses asked God for his name when God first revealed himself to Moses, God gave his name as “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). I AM is God’s personal name. It’s how God describes himself. Jesus is saying that the God who created the world from nothing, who set the stars in place, who gave us life, who made a covenant with his people, and who delivered Israel out of Egypt – that great I AM is now walking on the water in the middle of the storm. Jesus passes by them and reveals his presence and identity so that they can have confidence in the storm. The point isn’t that Jesus will rescue them from the storm – although, as we’ll see in a moment, he does that. The point is that I AM is with them in the storm.

When you begin to put this together with the other events that have taken place, you begin to realize what Mark is teaching about Jesus. Can you of another time that God led his people safely through the waters and fed them in the wilderness when there was no food? During the exodus, when God brought his people out of slavery and into freedom. Mark is saying that Jesus is the new and better Moses bringing his people out of slavery and into freedom. But he’s even better than Moses: he’s the great I AM in person. That who Jesus is, and that is what he’s up to.

Now, let’s just pause here for a moment. We said that this was part of the disciple preparation process. Jesus knew that these disciples were going to face many hardships in the future. Jesus knew that the path for him would lead through many sufferings to the cross. He would be rejected and killed and suffer many terrible things (Mark 8:31). He knew that the path for the disciples would also involve suffering and hardship.

If the point of this passage was that God will deliver us from every hardship, and that he will rescue us from every storm, then we wouldn’t be very well prepared for what lies ahead. As we’ve already said today, we will face adversity and hardship. There are going to be times that we’re at the end of our own resources, and Jesus seems absent. Every single person here this morning is going to suffer. The point is not that we will be exempt from storms. The point is that the great I AM is with us in the storm. Because he is Lord, we don’t need to be afraid no matter how the sea may rage or the winds blow.

But now, this is what the LORD says–
he who created you, Jacob,
he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you;

and when you pass through the rivers,

they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

you will not be burned;

the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the LORD your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…”
(Isaiah 43:1-3)

God reveals his presence and identity so we can have confidence in the storm. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Horse and His Boy, “Aslan was among them though no one had seen him coming.”

We’ve seen that this passage teaches us that we’re going to experience times of hardship in which we’re at the end of our resources, and in which it seems that Jesus is absent. We’ve also seen that this passage reveals that Jesus is the great I AM who assures us of his presence. This passage also does one more thing.

This passage leaves us with a test.

Verses 51 and 52 say, “Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.”

Mark ties together the feeding of the loaves to Jesus’ revelation of himself as God on the water, and concludes that they had missed something that they should have grasped. They’d witnessed the miracle of the loaves, Jesus walking on water, and many other miracles, but their hearts were hard – a description, by the way, that Mark usually reserves for Peter’s opponents.

It seems that things get delayed. The original destination was Bethsaida, we read in verse 45. They don’t get there for another couple of chapters. And Mark contrasts the hard hearts of the disciples with the crowds in verses 53 to 56 who come to Jesus with faith.

The disciples failed to grasp who Jesus is. They also failed to consider how God had worked in the past, and apply that knowledge to their current situation.

We’re left with the same test. If we understand that God has visited us in the person of Jesus, we can be assured of his presence no matter what we go through. We can have confidence in any storm that we go through.

Let’s pray.

The disciples failed the test. But when Jesus passed through the mother of all storms – when he was betrayed and killed, and when he bore our sins – he passed the test. Because he remained faithful in the storm, there’s hope for all of us who are faithless. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful” (2 Timothy 2:13).

Father, we will go through hardships. May we grasp that Jesus is the great I AM who is present with us in the storm, and may that change us. Soften our hearts. May his presence give us confidence no matter how the sea may rage or the winds blow. In the name of the one who stills storms and multiplies loaves and walks on water, in the name of the great I AM, in the name of the one who died for our sins and who invites us to repent and follow him – in Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

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At first glance, the story that we’ve just read is a simple one. It’s one that we tell our children in Sunday school. Jesus sees a need, and miraculously he provides for that need in a way that can’t be explained using just a few loaves of bread and fishes. It’s a story that warms the heart.

But as usual, there’s more than meets the eye in this passage. This morning I’d like to simply look at three things that this passage shows us: what we need; how Jesus meets that need; and what this means about our role today.

First, let’s look at what we need.

The apostles have just returned from preaching and teaching and healing. They were so overwhelmed by ministry that they didn’t even have time to eat. Jesus suggested that they get away to a solitary place. But before they even got there in the boat, verse 33 tells us, “But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.” You can imagine their disappointment. They needed to rest, but what they got was more ministry.

The apostles may have been disappointed, but Jesus saw the crowd and saw their need. Verse 34 says, “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

What does this mean, “sheep without a shepherd”? Thousands of years earlier, Moses was a leader over Israel. He brought the people out of Egypt and led them as they wandered through the wilderness for forty years. When Moses was about to die, we read that he said to God:

May the LORD, the God of every human spirit, appoint someone over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the LORD’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd. (Numbers 27:16-17)

In other words, a shepherd was a leader who could lead and care for the people. God answered Moses’ prayer by telling him to appoint Joshua, who led Israel to battle as they entered the land that God promised them. When David was made king, the Lord said to him, “You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler” (2 Samuel 5:2). But all of that paled compared to the promise God had made to them.

For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As shepherds look after their scattered flocks when they are with them, so will I look after my sheep…There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD. (2 Samuel 34:11-15)

Do you see what this means? The people came with a need. You don’t go outrun a boat around a lake unless something drives you there. They came wanting more of what Jesus had to offer. Maybe some of them wanted more teaching or healing. Some of them may have been coming for political deliverance. I’m sure many of them didn’t even know what they were looking for.

But Jesus saw them and recognized their real need. He looked at the crowds and he saw there deep hunger for something they longed for but had never experienced. They were starved and impoverished, and nobody seemed to care. Their forefathers had even experienced hints of what they longed for, but they had never experienced the real thing.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes their need this way: “There were questions but no answers, distress but no relief, anguish of conscience but no deliverance, tears but no consolation, sin but no forgiveness.”

Now, I know that we’re a long way from where these people were. But the irony is that this passage also reveals our need. Mother Teresa once looked at the Western world and said, “The spiritual poverty of the Western world is much greater than the physical poverty of our people. You in the West have millions of people who suffer such terrible loneliness and emptiness.” Did you hear that? We have everything – success, family, wealth, pleasure – and yet there’s still a sense that something is missing.

Most of us can’t even put our finger on what the problem is. As a result we try all kinds of things to address our deep hunger. One author said:

It is the desire for God which is the most fundamental appetite of all, and it is an appetite we can never eliminate. We may seek to disown it, but it will not go away. If we deny that it is there, we shall in fact only divert it to some other object or range of objects. And that will mean that we invest some creature or creatures with the full burden of our need for God, a burden which no creature can carry. (Simon Tugwell)

We all have this hunger within us. We can’t deny it, because the hunger comes from our most fundamental appetite, one that we can’t eliminate. Because we don’t recognize our deepest hunger, we try to fill the hole our relationships, our careers, our accomplishments, our positions, our experiences. But none of these can fill the hunger, because our need can only be met by God. It puts pressure on ourselves, our careers, our families, because we are putting a pressure on them that they were never meant to bear. Jonathan Edwards put it this way:

The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied…. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends are but shadows, but enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.

So this passage first of all confronts us with our need. We are experiencing a deep hunger that we’ve never had satisfied, and nothing has filled it no matter what we try.

Secondly, then, let’s look at how Jesus meets that need.

Verse 34 says, “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.” Later on he feeds them miraculously with bread and fish. From this passage we learn that Jesus meets our deepest spiritual hunger in two ways. First, he feeds us with his Word. Then he points us to the future feast in which our deepest needs will be finally satisfied.

When Jesus saw the need of the people, he responded first by nourishing them with his Word. Now don’t forget that we are talking about an ultimate hunger, a hunger that nothing in this world can fill. What Jesus is showing us here is that what they really needed to hear is a word from God. If his teaching was anything like what we read in the rest of the Gospel of Mark, then what they really needed to hear was about the arrival of the Kingdom of God, that God is setting things right, and that they needed to repent and believe. It’s why we spend time looking at God’s Word every Sunday. What we need at our deepest level is found in God’s Word for us. God reveals himself through his Word, and we desperately need it. Jesus himself makes a connection between the Word of God and our deepest hunger. When he was tempted by Satan, Jesus said, “People do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). What we long for most can only be met through the God who is revealed in His Word.

So Jesus meets their deepest need through nourishing them through his Word. But then he does something that points forward to when our deepest needs will be met and completely fulfilled. He gets them to sit down in groups, takes a quantity of food that would barely even feed the Apostles, and nourishes the entire crowd so that, according to verse 42, they were all satisfied. Not only that, but there were leftovers. What is all this about?

In the Gospels, miracles are never random displays of power. Jesus never does something to just demonstrate his power or wow the audience. Every miracle is a signpost that points to when the kingdom of God is fully here. So when he heals, he’s pointing to the day that there will be no illness. When he casts out demons, he points to the day when evil will be defeated. When he raises people from the dead, he points to the day when there will be no more death. And when he feeds the people in this miracle, he points to the day when there will be no more hunger. Our deepest longings will be met, and we will be fully satisfied. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).

What Jesus points us to is the banquet that we’ve always longed for, the one that’s promised in the ancient Scriptures. Jeremiah had written:

They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion;

they will rejoice in the bounty of the LORD–
the grain, the new wine and the olive oil,

the young of the flocks and herds….

I will satisfy the priests with abundance,

and my people will be filled with my bounty,”

declares the LORD.
(Jeremiah 31:12, 14)

And God said through Isaiah:

Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,

and your labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,

and you will delight in the richest of fare.
(Isaiah 55:1-2)

There will come a day, Jesus said, when our deepest longings will be met, when we will eat and be completely satisfied, and there will be no more hunger, no more illness, no more death, no more evil and injustice. What we long for will finally be true.

And here’s the thing: we haven’t experienced this yet, but we will. And knowing that this is coming is bread enough for today. Knowing this helps us endure almost anything. Paul wrote, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

So Jesus nourishes us with his Word and he points us to the day when our hunger will ultimately be fulfilled. But then there’s a hint of something else. Did you notice verse 41? “Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all.” Taking bread, giving thanks, and breaking it. In a few chapters, Mark is going to write these words: “Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take it; this is my body’” (Mark 14:22).

Jesus meets our deepest hunger with the bread we’re about to eat. But he did so at infinite cost. Bread must be broken if it’s going to nourish someone. Unbroken bread will never meet anyone’s hunger. Jesus took bread and gave it to his disciples and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24). At the cross, Jesus who is the bread of life was broken so that we may be filled.

In a few minutes, we are going to come to Communion. Jesus told us to regularly celebrate Communion so that we could look back to what he did for us at the cross. He forgave all of our sins, defeated evil, and conquered sin and death. But it also looks forward to the day when we will eat at the banquet we’ve always wanted, to when our deepest hungers will be finally satisfied. The reason he told us to celebrate Communion so often is so that we would never forget what he has done for us, and so that we would never forget that it he is the one who fills us, who meets our deepest needs.

The banquet has an infinite cost, but it’s been paid for. And now anyone can come and eat freely. There’s an open invitation. The only requirement is that you come hungry.

We’re going to come to that in just a minute, but there’s one more thing we need to see in this passage. We’ve seen our need. We’ve seen how Jesus meets our deepest need. This passage reveals one more thing.

Let’s finally look at what this passage says about our role today.

What is the role of the apostles in this passage? They are dispensers of bread. All they do is take what Jesus has given them, and they pass it out. That’s pretty much all we are as well: dispensers of bread. We have nothing to offer people other than what Jesus has given us to give to them.

The biggest thing that we have to offer anyone is the bread of life, Jesus Christ. The kindest thing we can do is tell them about the Kingdom of God and invite them to the banquet where their needs can be ultimately satisfied. That’s all. There’s nothing more. We’re simply dispensers of the bread that Jesus has given us.

But we also need to see that it’s a pretty impossible task. There’s lots of sarcasm in the Bible, but I can’t think of a more sarcastic comment than the one the apostles made to Jesus in verse 37. The ESV gets at the sarcasm better than some translations. Jesus told them to give something to the crowd to eat. The disciples replied, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” Two hundred denarii represented about 200 days’ wages for a laborer. The disciples were being a little testy in their response to Jesus. In their defense, they knew that what Jesus had told them was impossible. They didn’t have that kind of bread, and they didn’t have that kind of money. They were in way over their head.

And that’s just the point. Our struggle ever since then has been to believe that what Jesus offers us is enough, that the little pieces of bread and the little cups we’re about to use point us to what can meet the hunger of the whole world. Our greatest struggle is to do what Jesus tells us to do and pass out the bread, knowing full well that we’re in way over our heads, that what he’s asking us to do is humanly impossible. In the kingdom of God, only the inadequate are adequate. Only the hungry are filled, and only the inadequate get to pass out the bread to others.

I love how somebody put it:

It is not God’s intention that we should in ourselves be adequate for our tasks, rather He wants that we should be inadequate. If we only accept the tasks which we think are adapted to our powers we are not responding to the call of God. The church is always in a crisis and always will be. There will be difficulties, limitations, insolvable problems, lack of people and money, a menacing outlook, endless misunderstandings and misrepresentations. We are not only to do our work despite these things; they are precisely the conditions requisite for the doing of it.

Let’s pray.

Thank you for inviting us to the meal we’re about to celebrate. Thank you that it points us to what Jesus did for us, and to the day when our hunger will be fully and finally satisfied. Thank you for making us dispensers of bread. And thank you that in your kingdom, only the hungry are filled, and only the inadequate are adequate.

So we come hungry.

Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.

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We’ve been looking together at the Gospel of Mark, which is the earliest account of Jesus’ life and ministry. Today we come to a transition in the Gospel of Mark.

When Jesus began his ministry, he called twelve people. Chapter 3 says, “He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons” (Mark 3:14-15). From the very beginning, Jesus created a community of followers who would be with him and do the things that he does. Up until now in the Gospel, they’ve been with Jesus, and even that hasn’t been too impressive. They’re still trying to understand who Jesus is and what he’s all about. They’ve been with Jesus, but they haven’t done anything yet. In the passage that we just read, that all changes.

This morning’s passage tells us two things we need to know. First, we learn about our calling to ministry. Secondly, we learn the cost of ministry.

Let’s first look about our calling to ministry.

Verse 7 says, “Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits.”

As we’ve just said, up until now, Jesus has been preaching and healing and casting out demons, and the Twelve have been watching. They’ve now spent quite a bit of time with Jesus. He hasn’t always been easy to understand. They still haven’t come to really grasp who this is, but they know that God is up to something in Jesus. Three of the twelve have even seen Jesus raise a little girl from the dead.

Now Jesus turns to them and commissions them to do exactly what he has been doing. Everything that he has been doing, he calls them to do. Anyone who has ever delegated an important task to someone who just may not be ready understands what is happening here. It’s one thing for God in human flesh to go around preaching, healing, and casting out demons. But now God is going to entrust this job to a bunch of nobodies who don’t even get it yet? And yet that’s exactly what Jesus does in this passage.

Now in a sense, as we’re going to see, not everything here applies to us today. Jesus gave these commands to the Twelve and not to us. And yet there are implications for us. God is on a mission, and he invites us to join him. As Jesus is going to say later to his disciples, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). Or as the apostle Paul writes, “We are God’s co-workers” (1 Corinthians 3:9). We get to join God in what he is doing. We have been invited to join God on his mission.

This means that God is on a mission in west Toronto – in the townhouses at Clement and Martingrove, in WillowRidge, in Rexdale, at the Tim Horton’s at Westway and Martingrove, at the Residence, wherever we are. And he invites us as his people to join him in what he is doing. Jesus calls us to carry on his ministry, to do what he did as he travelled around Galilee. This should blow us away. God is on mission all around us, and he invites us to join him in what he is doing.

We learn three things about our mission from this passage.

First, we learn that our mission is comprehensive. Did you notice verse 7, and then verses 12 and 13?

Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits….They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. (Mark 6:7, 12-13)

You’ll notice here that their mission is a comprehensive one. It involves preaching and calling people to repentance, we read. The disciples go out and preach. They have a message that they proclaim, and they are calling people to respond. But that’s not all that they do. They also drive out demons and the heal sick people. They point people to God’s Kingdom, in which God deals not only with sin, but with all of the effects of sin as well.

This teaches us that our mission has to be a comprehensive one. Some churches are very good at preaching. They are excellent at telling people about forgiveness and reconciliation with God. They’re good at calling people to repent. But quite often these churches aren’t good at caring for the other needs that people have.

Some churches are very good at caring for sick people and those who are struggling with problems. They are good at social action and justice. But quite often these churches are not as good at proclaiming the gospel.

In this passage we see that we are called to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom and to care for people in every area of life. We are called to take the whole gospel to the whole person to the whole world. The gospel is comprehensive and touches every area of life. We’re called to point to a gospel in which God not only forgives sins but will also undo all the effects of sin as well. The gospel is good news to the poor and the sick and the imprisoned and the suffering. We’re called to preach the good news and to demonstrate God’s care in every area of life. Our mission is comprehensive.

Second, we learn that our mission is urgent. In this passage, Jesus tells the Twelve that they don’t really have time to waste packing for their trips. These are emergency instructions for a swift and dangerous mission. There’s no time to waste. They can’t get weighed down with extra stuff that will hold them back. Israel is at a crossroads.

God’s mission is urgent. It’s not something that can wait until next month or next year. Over 200,000 people live within five kilometers of where we sit right now. 20,000 of those people are going to move in the next year. 150 people are going to die. Many of those people have never heard about the good news of the gospel: that the Kingdom of God is near, and that God has come in the person of Jesus to bring people back to himself and to set all things right. God is on mission in this community, and he’s commissioned us to join him. But there’s an urgency. It’s not something that can wait. It means traveling light because the mission can’t be delayed.

Finally, we see that our mission involves dependency. When Jesus tells them to go out with no food or money, he’s telling them that they are going to be dependent on others – and ultimately on God – to provide for them. When Jesus tells them to enter a place and depend on the hospitality of others, it means that they aren’t always going to know where they are going to sleep the next night. Jesus even hints that it isn’t going to go well for them. There are going to be villages that do not receive them. There are maybe going to be nights that they don’t have a place to sleep. They are going to have to learn dependence on others – and ultimately they are going to have to learn dependence on God.

One of the subtle and deadly dangers that we face is self-reliance. Jack Miller was a pastor in Philadelphia. He went through some tough experiences in his life that were so bad that he quit his ministry. Miller looked back on those times and believes that God was teaching him to stop being so self-reliant. He came to realize that when we are self-reliant – when we depend on ourselves, our technology, and our skills – it shows that we aren’t dependent on Christ. He wrote to a missionary and said:

What we fail to see is that reliance on people, their capabilities, their keeping their promises is a demonic faith, a cooperation in heart with the powers of darkness. We join the enemy, Satan, when we fail to rely on the promises of God to move on our behalf.

Spurgeon, a famous preacher in Britain, believed that this was one of the greatest dangers facing his church. When the church was doing quite well, he turned to them one Sunday and said:

I tremble for the church of which I am the pastor. I never trembled for it when we were few, when we were earnest in prayer, and devout in supplication, when it was a thing of contempt to go into “that miserable Baptist Chapel in Park Street,” when we were despised and maligned and slandered. I never trembled for them then…But I tremble for it now, now that God hath enlarged our borders…O churches! take heed lest ye trust in yourselves; take heed lest ye say, “We are a respectable body,” “We are a mighty number,” “We are a potent people;” take heed lest ye begin to glory in your own strength; for when that is done, “Ichabod” shall be written on your walls and your glory shall depart from you.

The minute we lose our dependency and think we have what’s needed on our own, we’re in big trouble. Dependency is essential to mission. When a church is just starting out, they are dependent. They have to be. But churches get established, and by the a church gets to our stage it’s easy to lose our sense of dependence. We’re about to be tested in this area in the next few weeks. God is asking us to take on some things that are beyond what many of us think we can handle. When God calls us to mission, he calls us to dependence on him. God invites us to join him on mission.

Before we finish this morning, there’s one more thing this passage teaches us. We’ve learned about our call to ministry.

Let’s now look at the cost of ministry.

Mark describes the sending of the Twelve in verses 7 to 13. Then he switches the topic to the popular reaction to Jesus and the execution of John the Baptist in verses 14 to 29. Then in verse 30 he returns to the original topic. Verse 30 says, “The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught.”

Question: Why does Mark do this? Why does Mark get us going on a subject, then change the subject, and then continue his original subject all over again? Mark does this all the time. Is Mark easily distracted? Does he have ADD? Of course, the answer is no. Mark does this deliberately. They even have a name for this: a Markan sandwich. Mark takes two seemingly unrelated stories and ties them together, telling us that we have to learn something from the combination.

What could Mark possibly be telling us from these two stories? John the Baptist is the forerunner of Jesus, and here he becomes the forerunner of Jesus and all who follow him. Mark here shows us the cost of ministry. Preaching repentance can be deadly. It cost John his life. Later on it cost Jesus his life. His mission is a dangerous one. What happened to John in his mission will happen to Jesus in his mission, and to the disciples in theirs.

Next Sunday is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Today around the world over 200 million are suffering for their faith in Jesus Christ. Paul said that this is part of what it means to follow Jesus. “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him” (Philippians 1:29). When the apostles were persecuted, they rejoiced “because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name” (Acts 5:41).

Jesus calls us to take the whole gospel to the whole person even at the cost of our lives. This is the call and this is the cost of mission.

This morning I have the privilege of standing before you and saying that God is inviting every person here to join him on mission. Every person here has been called. If you look at yourself and feel rather ordinary, then you’re in good company. That’s exactly what each person in the Twelve was: an ordinary person.

God turns to ordinary people like us an invites us to join him in what he is doing. I know there are people here who are hearing God’s call to join him on mission. It involves announcing what God has done through Jesus, and calling them to repent and trust in him. And it involves caring for people in a holistic way.

If this morning you feel inadequate or that you lack the resources, then that’s a good sign. You’re well positioned to realize how dependent you are on God. I have the sense that the problem with a lot of us – maybe the problem with our church – is that we haven’t done anything in a long time that requires us to be dependent on God. We live in safe worlds and we never fail because we never try anything. God is calling some of us this morning to move into his dangerous mission in which it’s clear we don’t have what it takes. He’s calling our church to leave the safety and to join him in mission. It’s urgent. There’s really nothing more important.

Is it dangerous? Well, it got Jesus and John the Baptist killed. Not just them either. Next Sunday is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Over 200 million Christians today are experiencing persecution because of their faith. Is the mission dangerous? It could get you killed.

But it’s the only mission that lasts. Herod killed John the Baptist. Herod’s kingdom is long gone, but John’s message is still being heard around the world. They killed Jesus, but Jesus’ death led to our life. God’s kingdom advances despite murderous evil. Nobody wastes his life who gives his life for God’s kingdom.

Let’s pray.

God has been speaking to some of you this morning through this passage. I know he’s speaking to us as a church to leave our places of safety and move into his risky and dangerous mission.

It’s not a safe mission. And it’s not one that we can handle on our own. It requires dependence on him. If you aren’t in the place where you feel your sense of dependence, it probably means you’re not on mission yet.

God calls ordinary people like us to join him. How will we respond?

Thank you, Father, that Jesus came to announce the good news that the kingdom is near. Thank you that he left heaven to enter a dangerous world, and that he gave his life so that we may be saved.

Thank you that he invites us to follow him. May we serve as Jesus served. Move us to the place where we have to depend on you. May we even be willing to risk our lives to join you on mission. Move among us now we pray. We ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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For the past couple of months, we’ve been looking at the Gospel of Mark. It’s the earliest record of the life of Jesus based on an eyewitness account. In case you’ve missed any of what we’ve looked at so far, let me catch you up. Jesus, according to Mark, is introducing the Kingdom of God to earth. He’s setting things right again, announcing the good news that God is on the move. He’s forgiving sins and healing diseases – but he’s also making lots of enemies. Mark is asking us to consider what we do with Jesus.

This morning’s passage is a long one. In this passage you have four miracles and then a story that concludes by framing a question that we need to answer in response to what’s happened. We could have looked at each of these separately, but then we may have missed what Mark is communicating by tying these stories together.

So let’s look at the four miracle stories, unpacking them a little, and then let’s conclude by posing two questions from this passage.

Let’s look at the stories, which are all stories of hopelessness, of being at the end of human resources.

In this passage, Mark introduces us to four problems, four sets of people who have one thing in common: they face impossible problems. I’m not talking about big problems. Good stories have conflict, and the point of the story is for the character to overcome that conflict or that problem, and emerge on the other side triumphant. We’re not talking about that kind of thing. The people that Mark introduces us to do not face big problems. Their problems are impossible. They’ve exhausted every human hope. There is no where else to turn.

What’s even better is that every one of the situations Mark describes is real. What do I mean by this? Many people read these stories and think they’re wonderful, but that they’re not real. But if you look at these stories carefully, you’re going to see that they have all the marks of being eyewitness accounts. Back in Mark’s day, things were written very differently than they are now. Details were never included that were not crucial to understanding what took place. Now, when we’re writing, we like to set the scene, and we include details that help the reader visualize what things were like. Back then, they didn’t do that. But here in this passage we have all kinds of small details that don’t seem to matter: that Jesus went into the boat just as he was; where he was sleeping in the boat; that he had a pillow; the age of the little girl that was raised; that Jesus told people to get her something to eat after she was raised from the dead. Why did Mark include all of these details? Either Mark invented a style of writing that didn’t exist before this time and wasn’t used again for hundreds of years, or else this is eyewitness testimony. What Mark records here are stories that really took place with actual details, which is remarkable as we look at them.

Each of these stories deal with huge problems, impossible problems, that go far beyond any human help.

First, we see the disciples facing a life-threatening storm. At the end of chapter 4, Jesus and the disciples decide to cross the Sea of Galilee. He’d been teaching from a boat; now they use a boat to get away from the crowds. As they cross, a terrible storm arose. The Sea of Galilee is almost 700 feet below sea level. Nearby are valleys that funnel wind onto the lake. You have coo air from the Golan Heights meeting warm air coming from the lake, which leads to very unpredictable weather, and storms with waves that are over seven feet high.

That’s exactly the situation that comes up in this passage. As they’re crossing, this storm comes up. We read in verse 37, “A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.” They ask Jesus, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” Don’t forget that you have professional fishermen on the boat. If you’re on an airplane and the person beside you is hyperventilating, you may think nothing of it if it’s somebody who has a fear of flying. But if you’re flying through a storm, and the person sitting beside you is wearing an Air Canada pilot uniform and he’s hyperventilating, maybe you decide it’s not such a bad idea to be scared yourself. Jesus and the disciples are on a storm that’s threatening to kill him. Storms are something that no human can control. We still call them acts of God. Only God can help someone caught in a storm on a lake like Jesus and the disciples were.

Second, we have a man who has an army of evil spirits tormenting him. We live in a modern age. Some of us read stories about demons and think that this is hopelessly primitive. It seems irrational and illogical to believe in demons. But if you believe in God who is both supernatural and good, as most people do, then why would it be illogical or irrational to believe in supernaturally bad forces? C.S. Lewis warned us that there are two mistakes we can make: one is to disbelieve their existence; the other is to feel an unhealthy and excessive interest in them. The gospels tell us that demons are real. They make a distinction between those who have evil spirits and those who are sick or even mentally ill. We still don’t understand a lot about demons, but there is every reason to believe that they exist and that they are destructive and dangerous.

In the case of this man, they were both dangerous and destructive. Demons destroy everything they touch. We read:

This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. (Mark 5:3-5)

Here you have someone who has superhuman strength, who is isolated, self-destructive, and beyond any human remedy. In verse 9, when Jesus asks his name, he replies, “My name is Legion for we are many.” This isn’t just a man with one demon. You have a whole army here. A Roman legion consisted of some five to six thousand soldiers. You are dealing with an impossible situation here. To make it even worse, he was Gentile, which meant that he was not part of the people to whom God had committed himself. He was outside of the community of grace.

Then, finally, you have two stories of people who are beyond medical help. At the end of chapter 5 we have two medical crises sandwiched together. Both have things in common: they’re both involve women; both have medical issues that are beyond human help; both are ceremonially unclean according to Old Testament laws, the woman because of her illness and the young girl when she dies. But what’s even more striking are the differences:

• one has a name; the other is nameless
• one is in a family of influence and means; the other is destitute
• one approaches Jesus openly; the other is hidden and approaches Jesus from behind

They’re different, but they’re not so different. In the middle of suffering, they reach the same place of hopelessness. In fact, the person with the advantages ends up even worse.

The stories are quite sad. The woman has been sick for twelve years. Verse 23 said that she had “suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors.” In those days, some of the treatments for her disease included boiling onions in wine, drinking it, and being told, “Cease your discharge.” The worst was eating barley grain from the dung of a white mule for three days. Not only had she been subject to these bizarre treatments, but she had spent all of her money on them and had grown worse. She would have been socially excluded and hopeless.

Then you have a young girl who dies while all of this takes place. Her father, a synagogue ruler, came to ask Jesus to come and heal her, but before he got there, she died. This is the ultimate person beyond any human help. You can’t do anything to help a dead person. Sadly, her condition wouldn’t have been unusual. Sixty percent of children who survived childbirth died by their mid-teens. More children died than survived. This is the ultimate hopeless situation. It doesn’t get any worse than dead.

Somebody said that this chapter should be named after St. Jude, the saint of hopeless causes. Mark is piling up these stories to give us a sample of situations that are beyond any human help, where there is incredible human suffering and nothing that anyone can do about it.

When you think about it, pretty much every type of problem we face is here as well: natural disaster, evil spiritual forces, sickness, financial problems, loneliness and isolation, and death. When I think of the problems I encounter as pastor, that covers pretty much all of them. If we could just get rid of these problems, our lives would be a lot easier.

I love the honesty of Scripture as well. Scripture is honest about the limits of human ability to fix every problem. There are many problems too big for us to fix. Some problems are beyond professional help. Human might, medical knowledge, and money can’t fix many problems. As in the case of the man who has evil spirits, you can’t even explain every problem. If you are facing a hopeless situation beyond any human help, this passage is for you.

So we have five hopeless situations here. But then:

Look at how Jesus shows that he has authority over all the hopeless situations that nobody else can help.

It’s almost humorous to see what happens when Jesus meets each of these situations. They’re hopeless situations, destructive and even deadly, and yet look at how easily Jesus deals with them.

In the storm, Jesus says, “Quiet! Be still!” You could translate this, “Be quiet and stay quiet.” It’s how you talk to a child. Immediately, it says, the wind ceased, and there was great calm. It was dead calm. Even when a storm stops, the water remains choppy. Here the water becomes as still as a pool before anyone jumps in it. Nobody can do this, but God can. Mark is showing us that Jesus has authority over nature; and because only God has this authority, he’s forcing us to confront the question the disciples ask in verse 41: “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Nobody can deal with the demons that torment the man we encounter in chapter 5, but Jesus can. Instead of battling against Jesus, they immediately recognize his authority and beg again and again that they not be sent out of that area. These demons were out of control – until they encountered Jesus. Mark is showing us that Jesus has authority over demonic power. Jesus takes someone who is naked and demonized and and transforms him into someone in his right mind, the first missionary to the Gentiles.

Then you have the woman who had a discharge of blood. Jesus didn’t even do anything to heal her. She touched him. She was ceremonially unclean, which meant that anyone she touched would become unclean. But instead, Jesus’ uncleanness made her clean. Mark is showing us that Jesus has authority over disease.

Then there’s the twelve-year-old girl who died. Jesus simply touches her hand and says, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” and she does. What he says to her is remarkable because it’s so unremarkable. He says exactly what a mother would to a child on a sunny day when it’s time to get out of bed. And then Jesus tells them to get her something to eat. This isn’t the first time that a child was raised from the dead in Scripture, but when Elisha was used to raise a boy, it was much harder. Not only does Jesus have authority over nature, demons, and disease, he also has authority even over death. Every person in these stories is a victim of circumstances with no hope apart from Jesus. These problems are all beyond human help, but none of them are problems for Jesus. They almost seem inconsequential to Jesus in these stories that Mark offers us.

Mark is not saying that if you follow Jesus, he will calm all of the storms and heal all the diseases and deal with all of your problems. That’s the last thing he’s saying. What he is saying is that all of these problems came into the world as a result of sin, as a result of what the first Adam did. And now Jesus is the second Adam, who is undoing the effects of sin. He has authority over all the forces of evil that stand against his kingdom. He has authority over all powers that are hostile to God and that destroy us.

Jesus not only has authority, but he used that authority to save us. The one who had authority over evil took on evil at the cross. He was stripped and made unclean so that we could be clothed and be made clean and in our right mind. He who raised the dead died himself so that he could destroy death and bring life and immortality to light through the gospel. He became unclean so we could be made clean; he died so that we may live.

This leads us to the last story, and two questions we’re left to answer.

In chapter 6, Jesus returns to his hometown. Word of what Jesus did has reached them. They basically asked the same question the disciples asked when Jesus calmed the storm, back in Mark 4:41: “Who is this?” Look at Mark 6:2-3 as they react to his teaching and his miracles:

“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

Jesus has divine authority over nature, evil, sickness, and death, which leads us to ask: who is he? The people in Jesus’ hometown – even in his own family – couldn’t accept the answer. They saw only a builder, the son of Mary, a village son who had returned for a visit. Jesus, we read in verse 6, was amazed by their unbelief.

We’re left with two questions as we conclude this passage. The first question has to do with where we turn with our hopeless causes. Many of us here face situations that are far beyond human help. We’re desperate like many of the people in this passage. We haven’t yet learned what Martin Luther wrote about in an old hymn:

Did we in our own strength confide
our striving would be losing;
Were not the right man on our side,
the man of God’s own choosing.

This passage reminds us that our hope isn’t in human strength. God won’t take away all our suffering and all of our problems, but he has authority over everything that opposes him and destroys us. He has divine authority over nature, evil, sickness, and death. This gives us great confidence as we suffer. We may not have all the answers, but we can know that God is in control, and that he will one day set all things right.

This passage leaves us with a second question. Who is this? We can answer as they did in his hometown – or, like the Gentile man whose demons were cast out, we can tell what Jesus has done for us. Like Jairus, we can come and plead with him, presenting our hopeless case before him and pleading for him to do something with it. Or, if we lack faith, we can approach him quietly from behind trembling in fear. It’s not the amount of faith that matters; it’s that Jesus is the object of our weak faith.

Jesus has divine authority over nature, evil, sickness, and death. Who is he? The answer changes everything.

Father, we pray for those who have insurmountable problems. Some of us have problems beyond human help. We bring them to you today. We thank you that Jesus has authority over nature, evil, sickness, and death. Thank you that he became unclean so that we could be made clean; that he died so that we could live.

Help us to answer the question: who is this? “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” “Where did this man get these things?” May we come to understand who Jesus really is and what he has done. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Elisabeth Elliot is a well-known Christian author who’s written many well-known books, but, as far as I know, only one novel. It’s called No Graven Image. And when this novel was published, people hated it.

It’s the story of Margaret Sparhawk, a godly woman who goes to the mission field full of zeal and high ideals. She is going to completely surrender to God and she is going to give her life in service to him. She does go. She learns the language and creates a large body of work on the culture and language of the tribe. She works to build trust so she can spread the gospel. But after the tragic accidental death of an associate, the tribe of people turn against her and in minutes destroy all the work she has done, a lifetime of dedication taken away in an instant. That’s how the book ends.

You can see why people hated the book. Where’s the happy ending? How could God allow her work to go to waste? Many felt that God would never allow this to happen to somebody serving so faithfully. And yet others found the book to be refreshingly honest and realistic. Many missionaries do serve a lifetime and have nothing to show for it at the end. Many churches do work faithfully but never become what the world would term a success. Many parents do teach their children the gospel, but the children never respond. We’ve taught the youth group or a Sunday school class, but there’s nothing to show for it. And it causes us to get discouraged, and even to give up.

This is exactly the situation that the passage in front of us addresses. This passage teaches us three things that we desperately need to learn. First: what ministry looks like. Second: what’s really happening. And finally: the results. If we pay attention to this passage, it will renew us in our ministries like nothing else. I need to hear this, and maybe some of you do as well.

So let’s begin by seeing what this passage teaches us about what ministry looks like.

When I was a child, I sensed that God was calling me to one day be a pastor. I’m not sure that I really knew what it would look like, but I think I expected that it would be glamorous work. But Eugene Peterson got it right. He’s been pastor for much longer than me, and this is what he says about the people in the congregation:

…this haphazard collection of people who somehow get assembled into pews on Sundays, half-heartedly sing a few songs most of them don’t like, tune in and out of a sermon according to the state of their digestion and the preacher’s decibels, awkward in their commitments and jerky in their prayers.

I almost feel like I have to add what my grandfather used to say: “present company excepted.” But you know what he’s talking about. And here is what ministry is like:

It is like farm work. Most pastoral work involves routines similar to cleaning out the barn, mucking out the stalls, spreading manure, pulling weeds. This is not, any of it, bad work in itself, but if we expected to ride a glistening black stallion in daily parades and then return to the barn where a lackey grooms our steed for us, we will be severely disappointed and end up being horribly resentful.

There is much that is glorious in pastoral work, but the congregation, as such, is not glorious…I don’t deny that there are moments of splendor in congregations. There are. Many and frequent. But there are also conditions of squalor…

Now, he’s talking about pastoring, but I think we need to recognize that what he says is true of ministry in general. I don’t know what type of ministry you’re involved with. You may be a small group leader or a Bible study leader. You may be teaching kids or running the women’s program. Your ministry may not show up on an org chart anywhere, because a lot of ministry takes place under the radar where nobody sees it. But I’ll tell you this: ministry is unglamorous. It often looks insignificant, and the results are hard to measure. This is what ministry is like by its very nature.

We’re going to get to more encouraging news in a minute, but we need to realize this because if we don’t, we’ll give up. But look with me for a minute at this passage. The reason that Jesus told these stories is, I think, to explain what may have been perplexing to his followers. Jesus came announcing that the kingdom of God was at hand. He announced this good news, and he healed diseases and cast out demons as signposts pointing to what the kingdom looks like. You would expect that now that God had come in person that the results would be staggering. But we’ve seen already in Mark that it’s not staggering at all. Many follow him, but the reviews are mixed. The Pharisees, the Herodians, and the scribes from Jerusalem hated Jesus and his message. Even Jesus’ family thought he was crazy. By all accounts, Jesus’ ministry at this point was a failure. And Jesus stops to teach his followers something that they need to know: ministry looks insignificant and often looks like a failure. Even Jesus’ ministry did. But appearances can be deceiving. We should never judge ministry a failure just because it looks like a failure, because something much deeper is going on.

But just look for a minute at the stories Jesus told. In verses 1 to 20, he tells a story about a farmer who sows seed. Although the farmer works very hard, the seed fails three out of four times. Most of the time, it looks like failure.

Then, in verses 26 to 29, he tells the story of a farmer who scatters seed in the ground. If you’ve planted seed you know that it is an act of faith. I bought some grass seed a year ago, did all the prep work in the backyard. I eventually spread the seed. Every day I went out back and watered the dirt. The instructions said that I would start to see something happen in about 10 days. I have to admit that I had a crisis of faith on day 6, and again on day 7, and even on day 8. I’d done all the work and I had nothing to show for it yet, and there were no guarantees at that point that day 10 would be any different.

Then Jesus compares his kingdom in verses 30 to 32 to a mustard seed, which was a small, unnoticed, and insignificant seed that didn’t look like much.

And in these three stories Jesus is telling us that his kingdom and his work often looks small. It often looks inconspicuous. It often seems that nothing is happening. You don’t always see impressive results. The kingdom does not come in strength, but it comes in weakness. Quite honestly, it often looks like a failure.

Question: if this is what ministry looked like for Jesus, why would we expect it to be any different for us? If your ministry feels like a failure, if it feels small and insignificant, and if you don’t have much to show for it at this point, then you’re in good company. Jesus knows what it feels like. That’s the very nature of ministry.

Now, if we ended the sermon here, it would be a little like saying that life is hard and then you die. You’re all dismissed. Have a great week. But the passage doesn’t end here, and neither does the sermon. Jesus wants us to realize what ministry looks like, but then he wants us to see something else.

Let’s look at what’s really happening.

Jesus’ ministry looked like a failure. The religious leaders and even his family rejected him. But what’s really going on?

When something goes wrong, our first temptation is to look at the person responsible to see if there is some fault in what they are doing. So we tend to look at ourselves and think there is something wrong with us, or that we are doing something wrong. This is sometimes the case – but according to this passage, not always. When it looks like we’re failing in ministry, we should look at ourselves, but we should also look much deeper. Something else may be going on.

The first parable in verses 1 to 20 is often called the parable of the sower. But if you look carefully, the sower really isn’t the main point of the parable at all. Others call it the parable of the seed, but even that isn’t completely accurate. You could call the parable the parable of the soils, because the key and determining factor for the success of the crop is not the sower, or the seed. The sower is doing everything he can, and the same seed is sown everywhere. The difference is where the seed lands. When Jesus interprets the parable, he’s saying that the apparent lack of success is not because he has failed, or because his gospel is deficient. It’s because of the condition of those who are receiving his word: the Pharisees, the scribes, and even his family. He even quotes a puzzling passage from Isaiah, which a lot of people struggle over. But his point is that God’s Word and the gospel separate us according to our response. The fact that some people reject the gospel is not a failure of God or his gospel. It’s actually what’s supposed to happen. And given the nature of the soil conditions, failure is not at all surprising. We shouldn’t be discouraged, because even when it’s rejected, the gospel is only revealing the condition of the heart of the person who has rejected it.

Notice also in verses 26 to 29 something we need to see. The farmer scatters seed. It’s not that the farmer is unimportant. He has an important role. But notice what the farmer doesn’t do. The farmer doesn’t make the seed grow. He sleeps and gets up. Life goes on as it always does. It seems routine and mundane. But he contributes nothing in between sowing the seed and eventually harvesting it. All he does is wait. Jesus is telling us that we have a role in his kingdom. We have an important role. But the growth and success of his kingdom does not depend on us. It doesn’t depend on human effort, and human insight can’t even explain it. The seed grows, and so does the kingdom. God will take care of the results.

And then notice the mustard seed in verses 30 to 32 which looks small. But you see that the smallness of the mustard seed doesn’t tell the whole story.

What is Jesus saying? He is telling us that his kingdom does look small and insignificant. It even looks like a failure. But beneath the surface, it is accomplishing exactly what it should. Jesus gives us the confidence to see that we have a role in ministry. It’s an important role. He’s chosen to use us. But the growth doesn’t ultimately depend on us. He is in charge of the results. To human eyes, it looks futile and fruitless, resulting in repeated failures. But God is at work beneath the surface. It’s not up to us. God is at work. Ignoring all failures and against all odds, God is carrying on his beginning to completion. God is at work despite appearances.

So we’ve seen what ministry looks like: small, insignificant, and often like it’s a failure. We’ve seen what’s happening below the surface: that we have a role, but God is at work despite all odds and despite the appearances. That’s all good, but it still leaves us feeling like maybe things won’t turn out well. But there’s one more thing we have to see in this passage.

Let’s look at the results.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that if three-quarters of a farmer’s labor is wasted, that the farmer would be discouraged? But notice that story of the sower and the seed ends on anything but a sad note. Jesus says in Mark 4:8: “Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”

You would think, wouldn’t you, that a mustard seed doesn’t hold much promise? It looks small. But Jesus says in Mark 4:32: “Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

The kingdom begins in a small, unnoticed way. It mostly goes on unnoticed. It often looks insignificant. It’s weak and unglamorous. Things don’t go as we expect. But never look down on small beginnings. Never mistake apparent failure for true failure. The kingdom is growing. God is at work. He will bring about results that go beyond our asking or conceiving. The kingdom often meets with adversity, rejection, and delay, but Jesus says the results will be astounding in spite of inconspicuous beginnings. God is at work in hidden and unobserved ways. Despite discouraging odds, the harvest in Jesus’ ministry – and in ours as we join him will be beyond compare.

Years ago, G. Campbell Morgan visited a cemetery in Italy. And he noticed a huge marble slab right in the center of the cemetery. It was massive and thick. Yet, somehow, almost 100 years earlier, a small acorn had fallen into the grave where the man was buried. Over the years that little acorn grew and grew until one day it broke through the surface and cracked that marble slab into two pieces. Eventually, that tree grew up and rolled the marble slab into two pieces. With some good soil, a little water, and just a hint of light, that seed released the power to crack that massive marble slab in two.

When that acorn dropped, nobody said, “Bombs away!” It fell in weakness. But that acorn had the power to break through the thickest slab. Despite appearances, the strength of that acorn prevailed over the apparent strength of the marble.

Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson commissioned two men to find the source of the Missouri river. They kept following the river. They kept following until 15 months later they came to its source. The journal of the explorer records that a member of the expedition “exultingly stood with a foot on each side of this little rivulet and thanked God that he had lived to bestride the mighty and heretofore deemed endless Missouri.”

Where we stand may look small, but as we trace things back we will find that we are a small tributary connected to a large river that would stagger us if we saw it. David Neff writes:

Is our gospel too small? From what Jesus says, I think that God likes small. Small and hidden, actually.

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It is like yeast. It is like a perfect pearl. It is like finding just one lost sheep. Or just one lost coin. It belongs to little children and others who were “small” in the estimation of Jesus’ contemporaries.

God likes small beginnings. He likes to work in hidden ways that are easily overlooked. He loves any lost individual, even when he has 99 percent of the others safely under his care. He passionately cares for the socially unimportant whom others trample as they rush toward worldly prominence…

Small doesn’t mean “insignificant” or “of no consequence.” Indeed, the Good News of Jesus Christ is the most consequential news bulletin in the history of the world. And the individuals for whom he died are, as the old Sunday school song says, his “precious jewels.”

God offered us something that could have been small, obscure, and forgettable. He didn’t offer us some grand universal principle. His gift was the life and death (and resurrection!) of just one person in a small country repeatedly crushed and occupied by foreign powers. He does not give us love or peace or brotherhood. He gives us Jesus, who died like a common criminal.

But when we pay attention to the small thing God gives us, it changes our entire approach to life. We see the world differently. What had seemed insignificant now demands our full attention. What had seemed ordinary now seems interesting. What had seemed a dead end now promises great potential–the redemption of the whole world.

Let’s pray.

Father, may we see you at work even when it’s hidden and even when it’s small. As somebody has said, “At the end of the life of Jesus, he cried out from the cross, ‘It is finished.’ So it must have been a success. But by human standards, his ministry at that point would have been judged a failure.”

May we see that Jesus’ work on the cross changes everything and offers hope to the weakest here. And because of that work, and because of Easter, may we be stand firm, letting nothing move us, giving ourselves fully to the work of the Lord, knowing that our labor is not in vain. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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You can say a lot sometimes without coming right out and saying it. In this morning’s passage, the gospel writer presents a series of vignettes. He’s skillful in how he arranges them, and if you look carefully and meditate on them, you begin to realize exactly what he’s saying.

So what’s going on here? Mark presents three stories – about his disciples, the scribes from Jerusalem, and his family. And the picture he creates using these stories is of two groups of people.

• The first group are the insiders: those who are close to Jesus. Mark says in this passage that Jesus is creating a new group of people who may be the most unlikely group of people.
• And then there’s a second group of people: the outsiders. There is another group of people who are opposed to Jesus and his purposes, and it’s not who you would expect.

This passage is all about describing these two groups of people: insiders and outsiders. Mark intends for those of us who read this passage to ask which group we belong to. He wants us to see that those who assume that they are close to Jesus should think again; those who assume that they are far from him should take hope.

So let’s look at this passage, and ask two questions: what’s it like to be an outsider? And what does it take to become an insider, one who is in relationship with Jesus and on track with what he is doing?

Outsiders

The ultimate image of what it means to be an outsider in this passage is found in verse 31: “Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him.”

When you read this verse at first, you may think that Mark is simply describing the physical location of the people in the scene he describes. He is doing that for sure, but he’s doing more. Mark has just told us stories of people who are part of what Jesus is doing, but he’s also told us stories of people who are not getting it. The last story that Mark tells, in verses 31 to 35, tie the stories together, and give us a vivid image of what it looks like to be an outsider: standing outside. The contrast, of course, is found in verses 32 and 34: “A crowd was sitting around him” and “he looked at those seated in a circle around him.”

What is Mark telling us? He’s saying that there are two categories of people, two categories that apply to us today just as much as they did when these events took place. There is no third option. This morning you are either standing outside, or you are inside seated in a circle around Jesus Christ. One or the other.

Even more than that, this image is surprising, because Mark includes Jesus’ own family in the group of outsiders. We see in verse 21 that his family wanted to seize him because they thought that he was out of his mind. These are Jesus’ own brothers – those who knew Jesus best. I’ll grant that having Jesus as your older brother would not be the easiest thing in the world. I don’t know how many times they were told as they were asked as they grew up, “Why can’t you be more like Jesus?” It wouldn’t have been easy, but as they saw Jesus grow and as they began to see and hear what Jesus was doing – preaching, healing, casting out demons – I wonder if they recalled stories they may have heard as they were growing up about the birth of Jesus; of their mother being visited by an angel, and of her realization that this was no ordinary child. We don’t know, but we do know that at this point his own family stood outside. Even the holy family – including his brother who would one day be the key leader in the early church – are placed under question.

What this means is that relationship with God is not a matter of genetics. You can be a blood relative of Jesus and still be an outsider. You can grow up amid the trappings of Christianity, grow up in a Christian home, attend church regularly, be baptized, and give sacrificially, and still stand outside. You can think you’re in and still be out. Mark is asking us to consider where we stand, keeping in mind that sometimes those who are close to Jesus should think again, because they in fact are outside even though they think they’re in.

What does it mean to be an outsider? What does it mean to be an outsider? The two groups of outsiders in this passage give us two ways of being outsiders. They’re not exhaustive. There are lots more ways to be outsiders, but Mark highlights two especially that are relevant to us.

The first type of outsider is typified by Jesus’ family. Notice verses 20 and 21, and verse

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

…Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him.

We don’t know why Jesus’ family sent someone in to call him, but it’s possible that they were still trying to seize him, believing that Jesus had somehow become unhinged.

It’s impossible to know exactly what Jesus’ family was thinking in this passage. We should notice, by the way, how remarkable it is that Mark included this account. Later on, Jesus’ brother James became a key leader in the early church, and wrote the book of James. Jesus’ brother Jude wrote what we have in our Bibles as the second last book in our Bibles, the book of Jude. If Mark was simply making stuff up, he would never have included such incriminating and embarrassing information about the very family of Jesus. He’s clear that Jesus’ very own family, including those who became key leaders in the early church, were at one time completely wrong in their understanding of Jesus no better in a sense than his enemies.

What this tells us is that you can be an outsider if you are sincere but misguided about Jesus’ identity and mission. This is scary, because Jesus’ family were no doubt very sincere and well-meaning in their efforts. They weren’t willfully disobedient. They just didn’t get it. This means that some outsiders are people who in fact are very sincere, who actually like Jesus and want the best for Jesus, but who don’t completely buy in to what he’s doing. Outsiders are sometimes people who like Jesus quite a bit, and are very sincere, but are a little uncomfortable – maybe a lot uncomfortable – with some of what we read in Mark.

On one hand, this makes total sense if Jesus isn’t the Son of God. C.S. Lewis argued this very well. You can’t simply say that Jesus was a good man and a good teacher. Jesus Christ was one of three things; a liar, a mad-man or the son of God. You have to admire that Jesus’ family at least had the courage to face up to the only choices that exist. If you don’t believe that he is the Son of God, then you have to conclude that he’s completely off his rocker, or else a baldfaced liar.

But consider if Jesus is really who he says he is. To sincerely disbelieve would be a tragedy. A recent promotion by H. R. Block offered walk-in customers a chance to win a drawing for a million dollars. Glen and Gloria Sims of Sewell, New Jersey, won the prize, but they refused to believe it when a representative phoned them with the good news.

After several additional contacts by both mail and phone, the Sims still thought it was all just a scam, and usually hung up the phone or trashed the special notices. Weeks later, H. R. Block called one more time to let the Sims know the deadline for accepting the million-dollar prize was nearing and that the story of their refusal to accept the prize would appear on an upcoming NBC “Today Show.” Mr. Sims decided to investigate further. A few days later he appeared on the “Today Show” to tell America that he and his wife had finally gone to H. R. Block to claim the million-dollar prize. His final words were: “From the time this has been going on, H. R. Block explained to us they really wanted a happy ending to all this, and they were ecstatic that we finally accepted the prize.”

The Sims were sincere but misguided, and it almost cost them a million dollars. You can be sincere but misguided about Jesus, and end up an outsider at an even greater cost. Even Jesus’ family was in that position in this passage.

Mark describes another way to be an outsider. You can be an outsider by deliberately scorning the power and forgiveness of God. You see this verses 22 to 30. Jesus has now come to the attention of the religious establishment in Jerusalem. They can’t deny his power. There’s no questioning that he’s performing miracles. There’s only one way to dodge the issue: they attribute his power to Satan. Jesus easily refutes this charge, of course. “How can Satan drive out Satan?” he asks (Mark 3:23). Someone strong has arrived – Jesus – and has bound Satan and is plundering his house. It’s clear that Jesus’ power comes from the Holy Spirit. But the teachers of the law miss it.

This is not a case of sincere but misguided beliefs. This is not a mistake. This is informed and willful rejection. It’s a clear and intentional rejection of Jesus by people who should have known better. It’s a second way to be lost – one that continues to today. Some people are outsiders, even though they know better, simply because they are not ready to yield to what is obviously true about Jesus. They suppress the truth, and they deliberately reject him.

Jesus says that this is a sin that won’t be forgiven. Some people get worried when they read this, because they wonder if they’ve committed the unpardonable sin. The fact that you worry about this is probably a sign that you haven’t. It’s a sign that you probably haven’t deliberately scorned the power and forgiveness of God. What Jesus is talking about here is being so out of touch with God that you attribute his works to that of his archenemy Satan. If you persist in your deliberate rejection of God and his work, you are an outsider, and you won’t be forgiven. Your problem will be the same as the person who goes to the doctor who has medicine that can cure an illness, but that person refuses to take the lifesaving medication and dies.

These are two ways that you could be an outsider. They’re very different at first glance, but in the end they’re not that different at all. Whether you’re sincere but misguided, or willfully scornful, in the end you’re united as outsiders. You’re united in your opposition, even if you are a Bible teacher, or even if you have family connections. Those who think they’re close to Jesus need to be careful, Mark says, because they may in fact be outsiders. Remaining an outsider when Jesus is in the house is a tragedy beyond belief.

Insiders

What, then, does it mean to be an insider? The good news is that the insiders in this passage kind of look like outsiders, which means that you can be an insider even if you don’t feel like it. The image that Mark gives us is a contrast to that of the outsiders. Rather than standing outside, they are sitting around him, seated in a circle. And they’re not the Bible-believing religious crowd or blood relatives of Jesus. Those people are outside. Who is on the inside? The crowds. The rift-raft. Those who assume that they are close to Jesus should think again. Those who assume that they are far from him should take hope. They just may be insiders.

Jesus actually tells us what it means to be an insider. Verses 34 and 35 say:

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

The core family of God, Jesus says, are those who do God’s will. They’re the ones who obediently listen to Jesus and obey him.

Mark gives us another picture of those who are insiders. In verses 13 to 19 Jesus calls twelve out of the crowd to take on a special role. Israel had twelve tribes; this is like the formation of the new people of God.

They have a twofold job description, according to verse 14: “they might be with him.” Secondly, in verses 14 and 15: “that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons” – that they may be an extension of Jesus’ ministry. Later on, Luke described people’s reactions after observing some of these apostles: “they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

Being an insider means that we take our place before Jesus; that we commit to doing his will; that we enter into relationship with Jesus, spend time with him, and become extensions of his ministry. Anyone can be an insider who sits at Jesus’ feet and does the will of his Father, and no one can be an insider who does not. And if you’re an insider, Jesus says, you’re closer to Jesus than family. You are his family.

Mark wants us to realize that there is no middle way. He’s either the Son of God who’s bringing God’s Kingdom, or he’s a madman. And based on what you do with Jesus, you’re either standing outside, or you’re inside doing God’s will.

What you need to know is that, at the cross, Jesus became the ultimate outsider so that he could make us insiders. He became rejected by God so that we could be accepted by him. No middle ground. Some that you’d think would be in are actually out. Those who have no in actually are in – not because of who they are, but because Jesus has made them insiders.

I’d like to pray with two groups of people this morning. The first are those who, like the teachers of the law and Jesus’ family, have every reason to think they’re insiders. Some of you know the Bible well. You go to church regularly. You grew up in a Christian family. You are generous with your money. But you’re an outsider because you haven’t dealt with Jesus. Pray that God would reveal to you this morning that you’re an outsider if you really are. It’s far better to know. God prevent us from ever thinking we’re in when we’re not.

I’d like to pray for those here today who know they’re outsiders. Jesus became an outsider so we could be brought inside. He looks around today and says to the most unlikely people: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” You can be part of Jesus’ new and larger family circle because of what he has done to bring you in.

Father, thank you that “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). May this be true of everyone here. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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