Mission to Babylon

Brooks Potteiger, (Mark 7)

SUMMARY In today’s sermon on Mark 7, the speaker introduces a thematic exploration of Jesus Christ’s power over sin and its effects on humanity, structured around three key areas: the heart, spiritual warfare, and physical ailments. The Pharisees confront Jesus for not following their traditions, leading to His critique of their legalism and hypocrisy in neglecting God’s commandments. Jesus clarifies that true defilement comes from within the heart, not external factors, and declares all foods clean, signaling a shift in the old ceremonial laws. He then showcases His compassion and authority by healing a Gentile woman’s daughter and restoring a deaf man’s speech, illustrating His triumph over spiritual and physical afflictions. The sermon emphasizes the transformative power of Christ, urging believers to embrace His ability to heal and liberate, while acknowledging the ongoing reality of sin and suffering in the world. Ultimately, Christians are encouraged to walk in faith, confident in the victory Jesus has achieved over sin and death. TRANSCRIPTION Choose show more to view the transcription. Transcriptions are AI generated and MAY be incorrect. Rely on the spoken word heard in the audio file. show more Well, before I read our sermon text today, namely Mark 7, all of it, quick explanation on the series again, because it is admittedly a little unconventional as we’re taking significantly larger hunks of text than would be our custom. And there is a method to our madness here, I can assure you. It’s really twofold. We wanted to go through a gospel, and it turns out that after Amos, there was 16 weeks left officially, and there are 16 chapters in the book of Marks. And so we decided just to run with it and to take a different approach rather than doing a slower, deep dive. You can think of this series as more of a power walk approach to get over four months a strong, broad sweep of the life and the ministry of our Lord. And then after Mark, we’ll slow down again some. But for now, make sure your belt is fastened and your arms and legs stay inside the vehicle at all times today. We behold the glory of Jesus Christ and his power and his compassion in Mark 7, which I will read now. Mark 7. And do give careful attention to the reading of God’s holy and inspired word. Mark 7. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches. And the Pharisees and the scribes asked Jesus, In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men. You leave the commandment of God, but hold fast to the tradition of men. And he said to them, Oh, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandments of God in order to establish your tradition. For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother. And whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if a man tells his father or mother, Well, whatever you would have gained from me is actually Corban. That is, it’s been given to God. Then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do. And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about this parable. He said to them, And from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile the person. From there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon, and he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him, and she came and she fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And she answered him, yes, Lord. Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. And he said to her, for this statement, you may go your way. The demon has left your daughter. And she went home and she found her child lying in bed and the demon was gone. Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. And they begged him to lay his hand on him and taking him aside from the crowd privately. He put his fingers into the man’s ears. And after spitting, he touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and he said to him, And he spoke plainly. And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Our Lord and our God, we thank you for Christ and Holy Spirit. Amen. It exposed us spiritually, now vulnerable to the attacks of Satan and his minions. As the Apostle Paul says, our primary battlefront is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, dark forces. It also had a very physical impact. Our bodies would be afflicted. They would now ultimately die. And in Mark 7, we see Jesus Christ engaging with each one of these sin-wrought realities. The bentness of our hearts, our spiritual battles, and our feeble bodies. But even more, we’ll see that Jesus did not come to worth just to confirm our grim diagnosis. Rather, he came in power. To deliver us from all the maladies of sin that sin had cast upon his people. Or, as Isaac Watts pronounced, he came to make his blessings flow as far as the curse was found. And with that, let’s turn to our text, and we’ll take it with these three main categories in sight that kind of follow the flow of the text. Heart, spiritual war, and body. We’ll see his power. First, we’ll see his power to expose our hypocritical, sin-bent hearts. Beginning in verses 1 through 13, and it starts with the Pharisees teaming up again to confront our Lord. It says they came down from Jerusalem to do so. Now, it should be noticed the distance from Jerusalem to Galilee was 90 miles. It’s this. That Jesus’ disciples didn’t wash their hands before they ate. To which I say, if they only knew the eating habits of my four-year-old, they would be totally undone. But of course, there’s much more going on here. This was not about simple hygiene. So what’s that mean? That’s actually a really important question. This is key to understanding the dynamic between Jesus and the confrontation, the hostility with the Pharisees, and their dynamic of lording that over the common people. Understand that the Pharisees were the religious leaders who enforced the laws, namely God’s laws. However, over time, they had come up with hundreds and hundreds of laws that were not actually in the Bible, but which had been added as safeguards against breaking the law of God from the Bible. The problem is, they had then, seeing that this gave them great power, elevated these rituals to the level of Scripture. And side note, a general rule in this world is the more corrupt society becomes, the more laws and regulations increase. Something we might know a little bit about in our day. As Chesterton said, Interestingly, when Jesus came, he did the exact opposite. He took the ten, he boiled it down into two. Love God, love each other. That’s the entirety of the law. If you can do that. But the Pharisees went in the opposite direction. They piled laws on top of laws. And to be clear, to give clarity to what’s happening, this is what legalism is. Legalism is not being too strict about obeying the Bible. You can’t be too strict about obeying the Bible. You ought to obey the Bible. No, it’s making rules that are not in the Bible as authoritative as the Bible. And then judging others when they don’t follow your rules, the fence that you had put in front of the scriptures. For instance, the Bible says, don’t get drunk. So the legalist says, well, if you don’t ever drink, you can never be in danger of getting drunk. Ergo, drinking is sinful. Which is a problem because the Bible says in Psalm 104 that God made wine to gladden the heart of man. Now, of course, you can also get drunk with wine. And you must not do that either. So we have the twin ditches in this fallen world of legalism on the one hand, which says God forbids what in fact he has not, and then license on the other, using that freedom as a cover to actually sin. And the mature Christian sees both ditches and drives down the path of Christian freedom grounded in glad obedience to the word. But back to the Pharisees. Intessential legalists traveling 90 miles to tattletale about something that was not, in fact, a sin, while themselves eaten up all over with egregious, overt lawbreaking and wickedness. Our Lord points to their cleverly running roughshod over the fifth commandment. Honor and care for your parents. They would do this through a practice that was called Corbin. So what’s that mean? Essentially, that meant rather than using the inheritance or the resources that you would use to care for your elderly parents, you’d promise that once you died, you’d offer that to the temple. I’m going to give it to God. I’m so holy that I actually can’t care for you. The financial pinch of having to sacrifice to care for your parents. All while feeling quite spiritually shiny the whole time. Oh, how bent is the human heart. How masterful of a defense attorney. Able to justify our most unjustifiable moments while straining gnats and swallowing camels, as our Lord will say elsewhere. And so our Lord goes hard at them. On their hypocrisy. On their sin-bent, eaten-up hearts. Explaining that Isaiah, their beloved prophet, was actually talking about them when he said this. This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me, because they teach as doctrine the commandments of men. Jesus is the truth. And this harsh, exposing light is the grace of God to reveal our great need for a heart transplant that would replace the heart of stone with a heart of flesh that would actually hunger and thirst for true righteousness now. It’s all of us. We see this in verses 14 through 23. Jesus makes the point clear as he now turns to the crowds and his disciples. He says in verses 14 through 16, hear me all of you and understand there is nothing outside of a person that by going in can defile him, but it’s the things that come out of a person that actually defiles him. And in the context, we know Jesus is still speaking in the vein of law keeping. So this is not just a treatise on the human condition generally, but he’s still actively undermining, instigating the authority of the Pharisees who had the power to say who was clean or who was unclean. And Jesus is now sunsetting that entire notion. He’s taking that authority away from them. He cannot blame or point to anything external as the cause of true uncleanness. Rather, it’s what leaks out naturally out of all of us that came from our hearts within us that exposes the real problem with the human condition. Well, the disciples are a little slow on the upstart as we would have been as well. And so after the crowds leave, when it wouldn’t be so embarrassing, they go to the Lord and ask him, what did you actually mean by all of that? We weren’t actually tracking. And our Lord essentially says, really? That wasn’t obvious? Let me spell it out. Consider these two realities about humanity. Contrast these two things. You eat food, the miracle of digestion happens, it converts the good stuff into energy, expels the rest, on you go. Now, so that’s one reality. You’re this reality. You have evil thoughts, naturally. You commit sexual immorality, either by acting out on it or by lusting. Humans murder, humans steal, humans commit adultery, humans envy. So what is the fundamental problem with humanity, ultimately? Something external that goes in or something internal that causes all of that to come out? And when put like that, it becomes crystal clear that the problem is not what’s in your grocery cart, unclean food. The problem is what’s in your sinful heart that leaks out in all of these ways. And to really understand the significance of what Jesus was getting at within this Jewish culture, Mark makes a passing commentary note that might seem insignificant on the surface, but in fact, at an earth-shaking transformation that our Lord was bringing about through these words. Mark says in verse 19, so casually, thus he declared all foods clean. Or to say it another way, he was now sunsetting all of Israel’s ceremonial law. So what does that mean and why does that matter? So bear with me for a second. The Old Testament law had several layers or buckets which fell into three primary, though not airtight, but three primary categories. You had the moral law and the civil law and the ceremonial law. The moral laws are universal and eternal. They’re always in effect. They cannot be rolled back because they are grounded in the nature of God himself. You cannot murder and you cannot lie. That was moral, immutable law because God in his very person is justice, is for life, is truth. And so that’s always in effect. Then there are the civil laws, which were the law of the land for the nation of Israel and which we today can still draw principles from. And how that affected one’s ability to go to worship or to sacrifice. If you got unclean, there was a process to go through to enter back into the life and the liturgical life of Israel. But they weren’t grounded in creational or moral realities necessarily. Rather, they were instituted by God to make obvious to Israel that they were a holy people. It was teaching them with grammar school simplicity that they were set apart from the rest of the world. And with the coming of Jesus, these laws were now sunsetting because he was the fulfillment of them. The cross was the fulfillment of every cleanliness law and every ceremonial law in the Torah. And so Mark helps us read between the lines here. There is no food or drink or lack of hand washing that in themselves defiles a person or can cleanse a person. And even the apostles won’t fully grasp this until Acts 10. This is when Peter has his aha moment. So you can read that on your own time this week. Now verses 24 through 30. Mark mentions how our Lord, in his humanity, was hoping to go there to fly under the radar and to likely see some respites. However, in his sovereign wisdom, our Lord also knows that there is necessary and essential ministry to accomplish there as well. And so it is. And having just looked at the discussion between what makes a person clean and unclean, we see our Lord pressing into this unclean category in a way that expands and transforms our understanding. Of what God intends to accomplish through the gospel. For you do not get more un-Jewish, more unclean, more person to be avoided in that time than a demon-possessed Gentile. So how will our Lord respond to this woman? This woman who somehow has gotten word that this man has the power to do something that I am completely powerless to do. How will he respond? Before we consider that, something else we must zoom out on and acknowledge as straightforward from the text is that the spiritual realm is real. Spiritual warfare is real. Satan and demons are real. And they really do hate God, and they really do hate the image of God and the glory of God, and destroy and disfigure humanity. We see this in Job. We see this in 2 Corinthians 12, where Paul says that he had a persistent affliction, a thorn that came through a messenger from Satan that was sent to harass him. So there is a very real spiritual battle raging in the world around us, even right this second. It will look like, and this is important for reading the story, it will look like trying to obscure and surgically obfuscate. That’s not how you say that word, but you get the point. Trying to confuse, trying to blur the lines between man and woman. And the creational glory of God in declaring them such, it will look like that. Because Satan hates the image of God and the glory of God in that. It looks like calling baby dismemberment health care rights. It looks like vulgar hostility to the proclamation of the pure gospel. So make no mistake. Our primary battle is not against flesh and blood. And this account only further confirms this. Back to the text. Well, initially, he seems to respond somewhat harshly. He says, it’s not right to give the children’s bread to dogs. That is, while the gospel would go out to the Gentiles, we see it all over the book of Acts, Jesus came first to confront Israel and to offer her bread. That is, salvation, manna from heaven through the Messiah. He came first to the Jews, not first to the Gentiles. And some people have stumbled over our Lord’s words here. Isn’t Christ being decidedly un-Christlike by saying this? Why would he do it? Well, I believe our Lord is pressure testing the faith of this woman. He’s pressure testing her faith. Can she be easily dissuaded or does she truly trust? That he is who he says he is and has the power to do what she knows he can. There is one grammatical note that softens it some. The word for dog here is actually in the diminutive. It’s more like puppy rather than mangy scavenger. So that helps a little bit, but it’s still dog. Still not great. At the same time, the point is made clear. I came first to feed Israel. That’s my first priority. We see this Gentile woman’s faith is made of sturdy stuff. And her simple faith towers over that of the professional theologians. And Jesus’ words only cause her to tighten her grasp on him. I love how she responds. She says, yes, Lord, but don’t even puppies sometimes get crumbs when the children drop them. This is an amazing faith. This is a precious faith. This is a beautiful picture of gritty faith that knows Jesus, and Jesus alone has the power to save. Or as he would say in the Gospel of John, when he said to the disciples, do you want to go? Where else would we go? There is nowhere else to go. You alone have the words of eternal life. And we see that in this Gentile woman, and she will not let go of Jesus. Jesus commends her with great compassion, great demonstration of divine power. From a distance of physical miles, he commands the demon to leave. He tells the demon to leave. Now, Mark doesn’t actually recount our Lord verbalizing this. But we know somehow, whether internally or vocally, the command was given because when she got back, the demon was gone. The demon had fled. Jesus Christ is the champion in our spiritual war. And He and He alone can send the demons hightailing it away from His people. And it’s not even hard for Him. Now we turn to the last scene in chapter 7, where our Lord displays His power over the effects of sin on our physical, actual body. Verses 31 through 37, He has now traveled southeast, back nearer to the Sea of Galilee, a region called the Decapolis, the Ten Cities. And word continues to spread about His incredible power to bring relief to our suffering. So that some folks bring to Him a man who is deeply afflicted. This is a deeply afflicted man. Specifically, He’s deaf and He has a speech impediment. Caught up together. And this is an affliction that cuts straight to the core of our image bearing. Our God is a God who speaks, who creates with words, who resounds with singing. And when that is inhibited, when our words are bound up within us, it is terrible suffering. If you’ve ever suffered with a stutter, you’ll have a taste of the strange visceral pain this can cause. But Jesus first does something unexpected. And I think it’s very powerful. The text says that he took the man aside, away from the watching eyes of the crowd. He was not going to make this man a spectacle. He takes him away from the crowds. He deals with him very carefully. Very personally. And with a level of tenderness that frankly makes us moderns a bit uncomfortable. He puts his fingers in the ears of the man. And then he puts some saliva on his finger. And he touches the man’s tongue. That is, he meets this man away from the crowds directly, personally, viscerally, in the place of his greatest pain. And frankly, in the place of his greatest helplessness. And then Jesus does three things. He looked to heaven, the source of his power. He sighed, which is an expression of deep love and sympathy for this man. And then he spoke. He said, be opened. And immediately, at the word of Jesus Christ, this man’s ears were opened. And his tongue was released and loosened and freed and came back to the crowd, healed and made whole. And they were, as Mark says, I love it how it’s translated here, astonished beyond measure at the marvelous things that Jesus had the power to do. And so this is the main thing I want for us today, beloved. Astonished beyond measure, believing beyond measure like the Gentile woman in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. The astonishing manifold power. Power to straighten everything sin bent. Power to make blessings flow as far as the curse is found. From our sinful hearts that no law keeping could ever cleanse, but which he cleansed through his blood and set us free. So that you are no longer a slave to your sin. You are no longer to be tormented by your shame. But you can pursue the joy and the freedom of pursuing righteousness and holiness. And may we stand astonished at his power over Satan and his demons. Where he can send them running with the word. So that you, Christian, need not fear any spiritual oppression in this land. But can walk with a jovial swagger in power. And in victory in the name of Jesus Christ. Because yes, the forces of evil can be a nuisance. They can shriek and they can wail. But they possess no power over those who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. And may you stand astonished at Jesus’ power to mend and to repair even our broken bodies. So that we would pray boldly for healing when faced with any affliction in this congregation. He moved with compassion for the suffering of His people as we saw today. He took that suffering man in His arms and in His embrace. And with divine love and power, He repaired him, sighing deeply with His eyes to heaven in His spirit. However, we must acknowledge, even here, that even if Jesus does heal us now, which He has the power to do, we will still ultimately die. In physical healing today. But this is the best part of the story. Because even death has no power over you anymore to tyrannize you with fear. Because Jesus, in His power, He has defanged even death itself. And all the terror it has struck in the heart of man since Adam brought this curse upon our head. And so Christian, behold the manifold power of Christ. Behold what Christ has wrought for you. And walk in the joy and the confidence and the freedom that is all yours through your union with the risen Christ. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Chapter, the power of Jesus. And we say yes and amen and we do believe, but we’ll walk out tomorrow morning and we will be tempted towards unbelief. And so I pray, Holy Spirit, you would strengthen us in faith, in Christ, in practical ways where we need it most this week. That he might be glorified and his power manifested through his church. And now we would pray the way our Lord taught us to pray. Amen. Amen. Let us now arise and respond with a most fitting hymn from Psalm 121. Let us pray. God bless Amen. and the Lord Jesus. God. God. God. I show less

Jody Simmons, (Mark 6)

SUMMARY In today’s sermon on Mark chapter 6, the narrative follows Jesus’ ministry as He returns to Nazareth, where He faces unbelief from those who knew Him, leading Him to marvel at their lack of faith. He sends His disciples out on their first mission, empowering them to heal and cast out demons, stressing their reliance on God for provision. The chapter highlights the fate of John the Baptist, who is beheaded due to Herod’s fear and the influence of Herodias, illustrating the dangers of following Jesus. As Jesus continues to teach and heal, He compassionately feeds 5,000 men with just five loaves and two fish, showcasing His divine provision. The sermon emphasizes that, like the disciples, Christians are called to a long-term commitment to faithful service despite hardships, and they must continuously seek Jesus’ strength and guidance in their ministry. The closing reflections encourage believers to recognize the greatness of Christ, beyond their fears and difficulties, and to embrace their role in His unshakeable mission. TRANSCRIPTION Choose show more to view the transcription. Transcriptions are AI generated and MAY be incorrect. Rely on the spoken word heard in the audio file. show more The sermon text for today is from the Gospel of Mark chapter 6. And I will read that chapter. It is 56 verses. So hear now the word of the Lord. And are not his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, And he went about among the villages teaching. And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. And he said to them, King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some said John the Baptist has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him. But others said he is Elijah. Others said he is Elijah. He is a prophet like one of the prophets of old. But when Herod heard of it, he said, John, whom I beheaded, has been raised. For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because he had married her. For John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife. And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death, but she could not. For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly. But an opportunity came when Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. For when Herodias’ daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guest. And the king said to the girl, ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it to you. And she said to her mother, for what should I ask? And she said, the head of John the Baptist. And she came in immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying, I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter. And the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guest, he did not want to break his word to her. And immediately the king sent and executed. And he went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl. And the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. For many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat. And they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd. And he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages. And buy themselves something to eat. But he answered them, you give them something to eat. And they said to him, shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat? And he said to them, how many loaves do you have? Go and see. And when they had found out, they said, five and two fish. Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men. Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And he went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out. For they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid. And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. When they had crossed over, they came to the land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplace, and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment, and as many as touched it were made well. The word of the Lord. Amen. Let us pray. Our Father, by your Holy Spirit, give us understanding of these verses that we might know you better. Help us to walk in obedience to your ways and to do so out of love for you. Make us more like Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen. So that was Mark chapter 6, 56 verses. And I do hope you brought some loaves and fish, because this might take a while. I’m just joking. I’m just joking. You and I are privileged to follow Jesus Christ. And we must not take this privilege for granted. Being a Christian is not simply about having that title given to us. It is about being in union with Jesus Christ and becoming more and more like Him, with the result that not only we as individuals are transformed, and not only that we as a church body are transformed, but that this transformation extends out into the world around us. In many ways, our culture is divided, and many of these divisions are extreme. They are really polar opposites. And because of this, the tendency of human nature, including our own, is to become angry and hateful. And while there are many things that should make us angry as Christians, what we do not want to do is engage with the world like the world. We are living outside of Jesus Christ, apart from Jesus Christ. We have to remember that their weapons are not our weapons. Jesus Christ said that He will build His church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. For over 2,000 years, this has been proven true. And this will be the case into the future, and this is the case right now in the present. Therefore, it is imperative that we look to Him by faith, obey Him, and trust that the way the world is transformed is through the church. And this transformation is most of the time slow. But in that slowness, we must not become sidetracked into thinking that Jesus’ plan isn’t working, and so we need to come up with something else. Even in the current climate, where evil seems so visible, so in our faces, we must not let this distract us or make us feel like we are backed into a corner and therefore desperate. We must not also allow this to make us become discouraged. Instead, even when things don’t seem to be going well, or all we can see before us are the many obstacles, or we are not making very much headway, we must not lose heart. Because when we lose heart, we lose the ability to see the awesomeness of our God, thinking instead that either He must not care, or that He is unable to help, or that He is too weak to bring about real gospel transformation in this world. Here in Mark chapter 6, I know this has been various pastors coming through, preachers coming through. We’re in chapter 6, and in this chapter, we continue to learn what it looks like to follow Jesus. And we are encouraged to see Him as He truly is, which is an important part, a very important part, of following Jesus Christ faithfully. So, in chapter 6, after ministering throughout the region of Galilee, Jesus then returned to the town He grew up in, which was the town of Nazareth, 500 or so people in it. So, very small town, a town where everyone knew everyone. And this visit that He takes to Nazareth is not a family visit. He’s not going to see His family, per se. Instead, this is a trip in which His disciples follow Him. He’s taking them there to teach them something. And what they learned, one of the things, is that unbelief can come from some of the most unexpected places. And it has very powerful effects in a bad way. In this situation here in Nazareth, their unbelief was so great, in fact, that we’re told Jesus marveled over it. So this must have been very noticeable. Yet, even though their unbelief was so great and He marveled over it, He was still willing to heal a few sick people, showing forth, even in the midst of all of that, He’s still gracious, He’s still powerful, and then we’re told He left and went to other villages. Unbelief, even widespread unbelief, is detrimental to those with the unbelief. But you and I as Christians must remain confident knowing that Jesus is still greater. And Jesus continues His work. He continues His ministry. He continues His mission. There is absolutely nothing that can ultimately stop Him. This is something else the disciples learned there in Nazareth that day. Jesus then does something that up until this point He had not done before. He calls His disciples to Himself and then He sends them out two by two. And He gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He sends them out on mission for the very first time. He doesn’t take anything with them on their journey. No bread, no bag, no money. Don’t even take your normal two tunics you would have taken. Just take your sandals, take your walking stick. By telling them that, He’s reminding them right up front, the first mission, that they were to depend completely and solely upon God. This would be true for all the missions they went on. Both to provide their physical needs as well as to perform the task that He was sending them out to perform. They were being sent out under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it would be only under His authority that the mission would be accomplished. He was using them, these men, to carry out His mission, which was a huge honor, as well as something they needed to carry out exactly as He commanded, leaving all the results up to Him. And so, we’re told, they headed out, they have their sandals, they have their one tunic, they go forth under the command and authority of Jesus Christ, they proclaim repentance, they cast out many demons, they anoint sick people with oil, and they heal them. Again, under the authority of Jesus Christ, according to His plan. So, in between the rest of that story, which is just a little follow-up when they return to tell Jesus all that had happened, we have these pretty lengthy verses here about, John the Baptist. As the disciples are out on this first mission, Jesus’ name is becoming known more and more, we’re told. And so, He’s becoming more and more well-known. Now, for Herod, there was some confusion, and there was also some great fear. Because whenever he heard about Jesus, and he heard all that Jesus was doing through these men, what he began to think was, and there were others thinking the same thing, this must be John the Baptist raised from the dead, and he’s come back and he’s using these men and he’s working these miracles through these disciples. Now the story is then recounted of how John the Baptist had his head cut off. Now this Herod here is Herod Antipas. This is the son of Herod the Great. Herod the Great being the king who was there ruling whenever Jesus Christ was born. So this is now his son. Herod, who was the unlawful wife, did not like this at all. And so she wanted Herod to put John the Baptist to death. But Herod feared John the Baptist because he was such a righteous and holy man. And he kept him safe. Now we don’t want to miss this. Herod, a man with great power, was afraid of John the Baptist who had no human authority, no human position or title or anything like that. And why was Herod, this powerful man, afraid of John the Baptist? It’s because we’re told he knew that John was a righteous and holy man. Let us take note of this. And this may be especially fitting for this city that is full of powerful and influential people. This may, to our modern ear in this culture, sound strange or even unlikely, but whenever you live a righteous and a holy life, other people will fear you. Just your presence in a room will have a powerful effect simply by living a righteous and holy life. For even then, even though they might not understand it, the power and the presence of God will be evident in your life. Darkness cannot stand in the presence of light. And so don’t miss the fact that just by living a righteous and holy life, you as individuals, you as families, you as a church, have a powerful effect in your community and your culture around you. But to be clear, living a righteous and holy life also led to John’s death. During a party full of powerful people, Herodias took the opportunity. Her daughter was dancing in front of the guests and this pleased the king. And what we read is that John’s head ended up on a platter. So even a man, John the Baptist, a man with such gravitas, really, I mean, this was a wild man. He’s eating locusts and wild honey. He’s just a rugged guy. This guy with gravitas who was so faithful and who simply lived a righteous and holy life day in and day out didn’t get to retire. He didn’t get to live a comfortable life for his faithful service as the forerunner to Jesus Christ. That didn’t happen. Instead, his short life, ended in jail, and then his head was cut off, and it was served on a platter at a feast. I mean, humanly speaking, that is very humbling to think about your head, your own head, being sort of passed around at the feast on a platter for everyone to laugh at and mock. So before giving the rest of the story with the disciples who were sent out on their first mission for Jesus, Mark includes this story. There is a cost to following Jesus. Scripture is very open and clear about that. It can, in fact, be dangerous to follow Jesus Christ. The growth and the spreading of the kingdom do not come without suffering. As Jesus’ name is made known, such that His power and authority are made manifest, this will bring about some difficulties for those who follow Jesus Christ. Now, with this in our minds, the disciples now return from their first mission and they report to Jesus everything that had happened on that mission. Now, it’s important for us to keep in mind that while their first mission went well, this was not their only mission for the God they followed. The disciples would continue to labor for years and as we read scripture and then if you read even tradition outside of that, things were very difficult. This was a very difficult time for the church. I mean, really the first 300 years or so was very difficult for these Christians. And other than John, the Apostle John, we’re told through tradition that all of the other apostles ended up as martyrs. And yet, they are the foundation of the church. We’re told in Ephesians that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. So though they had many missions and many struggles, and though most of these men, apostles, died as martyrs, they were successful because they followed Jesus and they did things the way that he taught them to do them. So one thing we have to remember is we have to be faithful to our master, no matter what’s going on around us. Another thing we need to keep in mind here as we think about the lives of the apostles, is that we have to think long term rather than short term. We have to make sure that we stay faithful and keep on track even when we meet setbacks, even when we come across struggles. We are playing the long game and we need to keep putting one foot in front of the other even when things get difficult. We’re told they wanted to take them away to get some rest. They had been busy. They needed some rest. But there were so many people coming and going who noticed them that they get out on a boat and they go across the Sea of Galilee to a desolate place where they can rest. But all these people who notice them, they see kind of where they’re heading and they begin to run around the edge of the Sea of Galilee on foot. And in fact, they get there ahead of the disciples who are in this boat. Now, once they get there on shore and here’s these people again that they’ve been ministering with and they’re tired and they need rest, instead of getting angry because their plan had been messed up to rest, we’re told that Jesus had compassion. And he went ashore and he began teaching them and he saw them, we’re told, as people who were sheep, like sheep without a shepherd. And he didn’t want the people to be like sheep without a shepherd. And so he had been laboring among them for many years and now he’s passing the baton on and he wants these people to be cared for. He wants these people to have a shepherd. And the Lord tells Moses that Joshua would be that man. Now as you probably know, Joshua in Hebrew is the same name as Jesus in the Greek. And so pointing forward many years later, here we are and we see that the people are in the wilderness once again and Jesus is the shepherd who gives them rest, who leads them, and who cares for them. And dear saints, just as a reminder for you, the Lord Jesus Christ is your good shepherd as well. He leads you. He cares for you. He gives you rest as you follow him. Now, it was getting late. The disciples were concerned that all these people out in this desolate place would not have anything to eat. So they tell Jesus, look, we’ve got to send these people away. They need to get out of here so they can go find some food. And Jesus looks at them and says, you get them something to eat. Now, I don’t know what exactly they were thinking, but they’re probably thinking, what are we going to do? We don’t have the food. There’s nowhere to buy it, even if we had money to buy it. We’re told that there were 5,000 men. This does not include, apparently, women and children. So this is a huge group of people. There was no way they were able to do this. And so Jesus says, okay, go find out how many loaves of bread there are here. And they come back and they say, Jesus, we found five loaves of bread and we also found these two fish. So really not much here. Jesus then commands the crowds to sit down in groups, so they sit in fifties and hundreds. And when you’re thinking of this, many passages might come to our mind. Psalm 23 is one of the ones that comes to our mind. He tells them to go. They’re sitting in the green grass, we’re told here. And Jesus took this little bit of food. He overlooks these thousands of people. He looks up to heaven. He says a blessing. He took the food. He broke it. He gave it to the disciples and told them to go set this food before the people. And the result is every single one of those people ate and every single one of those people were satisfied. So much so that there were leftovers. Much like God provided bread from heaven when the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, so Jesus, the good shepherd, provides miraculous bread for these sheep to eat. We don’t have enough money. We don’t have the right position. We don’t have the right influence. We don’t have the time. We have so much going on. We’re busy. We don’t have the energy. We don’t have the strength. Or maybe you look at your life and you think, I have failed so many times before. I mean, what am I going to do? And the reasons and the excuses can keep coming. But something we learn in this story is that while serving God, there are times purposefully that God will remind us of our weaknesses and our limitations. And that is good if our response is to obey Him anyways. Relying upon Him to work through us to accomplish what He wills to accomplish. It is good for us to know our weaknesses. But it is not good to get stuck focused on our weaknesses. You and I serve a God who is an expert at using weak people to get things done. Something else interesting about this story, feeding this multitude here, is that when Jesus involved his disciples in this work, they were having to go back to Jesus again and again and again during this feeding of the multitude. The way this is written. So the New American Standard says it this way, which makes this kind of clear. It says, Instead of producing all this food at one time, he did it little by little, by design, so that his disciples would need to keep coming back to him every time. They’re having to come back to him. It is good for us. When in our weaknesses and limits, Jesus does not simply do everything all at once, but he does it slowly over time and little by little, so that you and I have to keep going back to him, remaining dependent upon him, learning to rest in him as we keep working. Now you and I, and God thankfully gave us a pattern of rest every week, right? But you and I, we like to rest whenever the work is done, right? You mow your yard or something and then you go inside and you rest or you do some chore and you go inside and rest. But as Christians, we have to learn to rest in him while the work is ongoing. Because until we die, the work is there. We have to learn that we can either wear out, right? We crash and burn because we’re doing it in our own strength. Being refreshed in Christ, we’re not going back to Christ again and again and again like we’re supposed to. But we’re trying to do it in our own strength and we burn out. Or we can learn to rest in him along the way. Learning that he makes us strong in our weaknesses. Again, God designed it to work this way. So take advantage of that and keep going back to Christ again and again. Now in the next verses, Jesus immediately made his disciples get into a boat. He tells them to go to the other side of the sea while he gets alone and goes up on the mountain to pray. Well, about the fourth watch of the night, which is roughly somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 a.m., they’ve been out there a while rowing in this boat. The wind is against them. They’re not making much progress. And so Jesus sees them out there and he begins to walk toward them, walking on the water. But whenever they saw him, they were terrified and they think, this is a ghost. Which, when you’re reading this, kind of sounds strange. Like, why wouldn’t they just know this is Jesus? Well, we’re told here that their hearts were hardened. But Jesus says to them, take heart, it is I, do not be afraid. He gets in the boat with them. Immediately the wind stops, which is another miracle. And they were utterly astounded. Because they did not understand about the loaves. Again, their hearts were hardened. They did not understand that just as only God could miraculously feed all of these people with so little, so only God could walk on water. An interesting part of this story is when Jesus meant to pass by them. Does this mean that he was going to keep walking and just kind of wave at them and leave them behind? Well, the answer is no. There’s something else going on here. In Exodus chapter 33, right after the golden calf incident, Moses asked to see God’s glory. You remember that passage where he’s pleading with God, let me see your glory. But God tells him, you can’t see my glory. You can’t see my face. And so he tells Moses, what I’m going to do is I’m going to pass by, but when I do, I’m going to hide you in a cleft of this rock so that you won’t be able to see my face. And so the Lord is passing by him in this way. But then in John 1.14, we read this, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. With these passages in mind, in this story, the reason that Jesus meant to pass by His discipleship was not to hide His glory from them, but so that His glory might actually be seen by them, so that they might see that He is God in human flesh. And instead, they’re terrified, and they didn’t get it. But again, Jesus, the good shepherd that He is, is very kind and patient with them and with us. He says to them, take heart, it is I, do not be afraid. When He says it is I, He is not simply saying, hey guys, it’s me. But rather He’s saying, I am. He is saying that He is the Lord God. But their hearts were hardened and they didn’t really understand this at that time. Now as we’re coming to a close here, we need to understand that we are no different than these disciples in many ways. Sometimes we struggle with this as well. So ask yourself a few questions. Do you see Jesus for who He truly is? Or is your heart hardened in some way? Is there something you’re missing about Him because your heart has become hardened? For whatever reason and in whatever way. As you follow Jesus, is your heart full of fear and frustration? Right? Fear of man, fear of everything going on. And you’re just frustrated and angry and even bitter. I heard earlier, some repentance and reminder not to be bitter. Or are you in constant awe of your God? As you follow Jesus, are you distracted by the endless difficulties to the point of discouragement and anxiety? Or do you find that even during the ongoing work and all of the struggles that your soul is still able to find rest in Him? Do you only see the trials and the things piling up in front of you, the big decisions at work, the endless tasks in the home, children who need constant care, the large amount of work within the church itself? Do you become so focused on all of that, with all of this piling up, or in the midst of all that, are you able to see Jesus Christ as He truly is? Be honest before God. Maybe you think, or you pretend, or you do have a tough exterior. Maybe you are the guy, or the lady, or the child who thinks that you have it all together on your own, but in reality you are near crashing because you have not yet learned to rest in Christ, or you are struggling to see Him as He is. Confess and repent where necessary. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you. He is given to us as our helper. Be encouraged and take heart. Be of good cheer. Christ is building His church. The gates of hell cannot prevail against it. You are part of His church. And even in all of your weaknesses, all of your failures, all of your fears, He continues to use you and work through you in the particular role that He has given you, which is a part of His great mission, a mission that will not fail. Let us pray. Our Father, Your Word has gone forth by the power of Your Holy Spirit. We ask now that it may perform in us the work that You have intended. Thank You for ministering to us in this way today, in each Lord’s Day. show less

Toby Sumpter, (Mark 5)

SUMMARY In this sermon based on Mark 5, the pastor discusses Jesus’ encounters with profound challenges, illustrating three core issues: the madness of sin, its uncleanness, and the death it brings. Jesus arrives in the Gadarenes, where he confronts a demon-possessed man identified as “Legion.” After casting out the demons into a herd of about 2,000 pigs—which then drown in the sea—local inhabitants request Jesus to leave. He then heals a woman suffering from a blood issue for 12 years and raises Jairus’ daughter, emphasizing faith amid fear of death. The sermon highlights that human attempts to address sin and its consequences are insufficient, and only through Christ, who grants forgiveness and peace, can true healing occur. Touching on contemporary issues, it criticizes humanism and identity politics as futile responses to guilt and despair. The central message is to embrace faith in Christ, who overcomes sin and death, and to remember the assurance that “there is no condemnation” for believers. The pastor encourages congregation members to share their testimonies of God’s faithfulness, reinforcing the importance of living boldly for Christ amidst societal madness. TRANSCRIPTION Choose show more to view the transcription. Transcriptions are AI generated and MAY be incorrect. Rely on the spoken word heard in the audio file. show more The sermon text is taken from the Gospel of Mark chapter 5. These are the words of the living God. And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs. And no one could bind him, no, not with chains. Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces, neither could any man tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying and cutting himself with stones. But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, and cried with a loud voice and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the Most High God? I adjure thee by God that thou torment me not. For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion, for we are many. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And so the unclean spirits went out and entered into the swine, and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea. There were about two thousand and were choked in the sea. And they that fed the swine fled and told it in the city and in the country, and they went out to see what was done. And they that saw it told them how it befell him that was possessed with the devil and also concerning the swine. And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts. And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him. And he began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him, and all men did marvel. And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him, and he was nigh unto the sea. And behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name. And when he saw him, he fell at his feet, and besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death. I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed, and she will live. And Jesus went with him, and much people followed him and thronged him. And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was nothing better, but grew worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And he looked around about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole. Go in peace, and be whole of thy plague. And while he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead. Why troublest thou the master any further? And as soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter and James and John, the brother of James. And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept, and wailed greatly. And when he was come in, he said unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entered in, and the damsel was lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha kumi, which is being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, rise. And straightway the damsel arose and walked, for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment. And he charged them straightly, that no man should know it, and commanded that something should be given her to eat. Let’s pray together. You may be seated. Bring a greetings from the saints in Moscow. It’s good to be with you all again. We pray for you all all the time. And it gives a whole new meaning to worshiping in the presence of your enemies. To stand here with you and to hear them. And we love you and we’re cheering you on. The reason why you hear that is because you’re right over the target. And thank you. Thank you for being here week after week worshiping the Lord. Thank you. We’re cheering you on. We’re praying. We’re with you. And God gave us this chapter. Which is fantastic. I didn’t plan this. Joe Rigney planned this months ago. And we have three scenes in this chapter that present three fundamental problems face faces. We face the madness of sin. We face the uncleanness of sin. And we face the consequences of death because of sin. Those are the three scenes we have in this story. The madness of sin. The insanity of sin. The uncleanness of sin. And the consequences of sin. Which is death. Sin always brings a kind of insanity. We try to justify our angry outbursts. We try to justify drinking too much. Why you told, there was a reason. There was never a reason. But you say those crazy things in your head. You try to defend sin in your head, but if you’re honest, you know it never made sense. Sin is always, even the littlest sin, is a little insanity. It’s madness. And that madness grows up into great madness. That madness left unchecked goes into significant insanity. Sin is always uncleanness. Hardhearted unbelief can build up calluses. But guilt is real and sin always feels awful. It’s a stain that cannot come out. It’s a stain that we cannot remove on our own. And if you have the Holy Spirit, one of the signs that you have the Holy Spirit is it feels particularly filthy. It feels particularly awful when you have sinned and when you’ve not made it right. You feel that because the Holy Spirit is inside of you. And the Holy Spirit is at war with that sin. And the wages of sin is death. The fear of death is directly connected to knowing you deserve it. I distinctly remember trying to hide from my grandfather as a little boy before getting a spank for sassing my grandmother. There I was hiding behind the couch and then it all goes dark. I don’t know what happened after that. But you hide. Your instinct is to hide because you’re afraid of the consequences. You know you deserve the consequences. And just like Adam and Eve in the garden, trying to cover up nakedness with a few leaves, we all try to hide from their consequences. Ultimately, we’re hiding from death itself. So sin is insanity. Sin is uncleanness. Sin deserves death. And these problems do not have human solutions. These problems do not have human solutions. Sin cannot be solved by legislation or by economic progress. You cannot grow GDP to beat this. It cannot be solved by medication. Or therapy or some sexual relationship or identity. Identity politics are a desperate search for justification and cleansing. This time we’ve got it. We’ve found the pure people. We’ve found the stained people. Now we will get it. Now we will have justice. And more people lose their lives. The message of the entire Bible is that only God can deal with our insanity. And our uncleanness. And these scenes declare to us that God has come in his only son, Jesus Christ. Only Christ can save us from these problems. He heals our insanity. He clothes us with his righteousness. He restores our minds. And he takes away our uncleanness and promises to deal with death itself. So let’s walk through this text together. It’s a longer selection. Chapter 5, Jesus has just calmed the storm on the sea. That’s the previous scene in chapter 4. He’s just calmed the storm. He just spoke to the wind and the waves. And they obeyed him. And he comes ashore to the country of the Gadarenes. And he faces another storm. He faces a storm of demons. Right? He faces a storm of demons tormenting a man who cannot be tamed. Just like you can’t tame the storm. You can’t tame a hurricane. But Jesus does and can. So too he faces a storm of demons with this man who cannot be bound. He lives in the tombs. And he’s constantly cutting himself and breaking the chains. That’s verses 1 to 5. This is a perfect picture of the madness of sin. The insanity of sin. So Jesus commands the legion to leave the man. And he sends them into an enormous herd of pigs. It says about 2,000. And they immediately rush down a cliff and drown in the sea, just like Pharaoh’s armies. We’ve got legions, which are Roman armies. They fill a bunch of pigs. Those are Roman animals as well, pagan animals. And then they drowned in the sea. There’s a little mini exodus going on right here. Verses 6 to 13. Of course, news spreads quickly. They’re terrified, it says. And they send Jesus away. And Jesus sends the man to tell his friends what happened to him. That’s verses 14 to 20. Now Jesus crosses the sea again. And there, Jesus meets the ruler of the synagogue who falls down and begs him to come heal his sick daughter. That’s verses 21 to 23. That’s verses 24 to 27. Of course, this would have made her ceremonially unclean in the old covenant system. And Jesus senses this healing. And he, I think somewhat humorously says in the midst of a bustling crowd, wait, who touched me? Right? My son and I went to an Orioles game yesterday while visiting the area. And we were in a couple of very packed crowds. We’ll put it that way. And you just think to yourself, you’re crammed into a tiny elevator or you’re in a crowd. And Jesus says, wait, wait, I think somebody touched me. The disciples are a little bit like, that’s ridiculous. Everybody touched you, Jesus. And he says, no, but no, I’m talking about something different. He says, who touched my garment? And the woman comes and kneels down before him. And he assures her of her salvation and healing and of his peace. That’s verses 28 to 34. Right after that, right after that moment, as the woman has been healed and assured of that healing, the messengers bring word that the ruler of the synagogue’s daughter has died and to let Jesus go. There’s no sense in bringing him to your house. She’s died. But Jesus, undeterred, says, do not be afraid, only believe, I’m going. He goes, he arrives at the house. Of course, there’s many people there. They’re gathered. Mourning, great sorrow for the death of this little girl, but he urges them not to be afraid. He says, in fact, again, asks a question that’s a little bit ridiculous if you think about it. Why are you crying? It’s a little bit, Jesus is not in his most sensitive moment here, right? I mean, at least recognize they think she’s dead. I mean, you know, be gentle. It’s such a fuss. She’s only asleep. Of course, they quickly turn on him and mock him. Verses 35 to 39, Jesus takes the immediate disciples, mom and dad, up to the upper room where the young girl is lying. And there it says that he took her by the hand and he calls to her, to Letha, which means little girl, Kumi, rise up, rise. That there be something given to her to eat. That’s verses 40 to 43. Humanism is fundamentally the belief that the problems humans face can be solved by human solutions. Humanism is fundamentally the belief that the problems we face as human beings and as a human race can be solved by human solutions. But this is to radically misunderstand the nature of the problem. It’s to radically misunderstand the depth of the problem. The depth of the problem, the problem itself is sin. The problem is sin and sin has no human solution. Sin is a metaphysical stain on your soul. Sin is something that goes deeper than all human attempts to fix it. It’s guilt that always torments human souls. They’re ultimately worthless, like trying to chain this demon-possessed man. Good luck. He’s going to break the chain. He’s going to break it again. He’s going to cut himself again. He’s going to be free again in five minutes. Or like the physicians trying to help the woman, only making her case worse and worse and worse. Or like death itself. Whatever the next transhumanist solution is, we’re going to live forever. This has always been the lie of humanism. That we can somehow cheat death. That we can beat death. The problems that humans face, the insanity of sin, the uncleanness of sin, and the consequences of sin, death itself, cannot be solved by human solutions. We live in a culture that’s inundated with these humanistic solutions, only making things worse. We’ve medicated our kids, and they’re more confused and depressed than ever. We’ve given ourselves over to sexual depravity. We listened to Freud and all of his friends that said, the problem is that we are all being sexually repressed. We don’t feel free. Everybody feels really bad about these sexual desires, so you need to let them not feel bad about them. Celebrate them. Let them act on them. Then everybody will feel better, and they’ll ease up, and they’ll calm down, and we’ll have a normal society. No. You let it out, and it only got worse. We’re more lonely and childless than ever. We’ve asked the government to fix us, and we’re more enslaved than ever. We are a culture that is increasingly tormented by our sins, increasingly naked, and cutting ourselves in all kinds of ways. And we’re living among the tombs of our aborted babies, our abandoned grandparents, and those who have destroyed themselves with drugs and booze. But the real solution is terrifying. The reason why human beings do not turn to the solution. It’s terrifying. It’s disruptive. It even seems embarrassing. Even kind of ridiculous. When Jesus healed the demon-possessed man, a local economy crashed. 2,000 pigs. That’s a lot of money that just went down the drain. Not to mention the ecological environmental issues that they might have had in that part of the Sea of Galilee for a while. I mean, how bad did that smell? 2,000 dead pigs. Remember, pigs are unclean animals for Jews. What are those pigs doing there? There’s likely some kind of bustling pagan shrine somewhere in the region. And so the men of the region say, no thanks. You need to go. No thanks. They’d rather have the ravings of a naked madman in the cemetery and a bustling economy that Jesus brings. We got money, we got a bustling economy, we got tourism, we got all this stuff going. No, no, we can deal with one crazy guy. Maybe a couple. Jesus disrupts idolatrous economies. Of course, the peace and the freedom of Christ creates truly thriving economies as well, but the idols will have to come down and that will bring disruption. Jesus healed the woman with the flow of blood. He created a fairly awkward public scene. Just think about it. He’s asked a woman to confess in public. She’s been bleeding for 12 years. It’s awkward. It’s embarrassing. And so it is that Jesus requires all his disciples to publicly own him. There are no anonymous Christians. Only public Christians. This is why having a Christian testimony has always been important. You’ve heard no doubt many times from us and from preachers in the CREC that we love a boring testimony. Especially as we’re talking to covenant kids, we love boring testimonies. What do we mean by boring testimonies? We mean we love covenant kids growing up in the faith, never remembering a day they didn’t know Jesus. That’s what we mean. We don’t remember when they first were converted. They don’t remember when they first believed in Jesus. It was sometime back there early on when mom and dad were teaching them, bringing them to church, and they believed. That’s my testimony. I grew up in a Christian home. My dad’s a pastor. I don’t remember when I first believed in Jesus. All my early memories are loving to sing and worship the Lord. Those are my early memories. So we love boring testimonies like that. But there’s always a danger in saying that, because I don’t want anyone ever to think that your testimony is actually boring. Because you know what? Even if you don’t remember the moment you first believed, even if you don’t remember the moment that God came and gave you a new heart, maybe it happened when you were six months old. Maybe it happened like John the Baptist in his mother’s womb. Maybe it happened when you were five or seven. But you know what? When that happened, you came from death to life. The man of Satan to the dominion of Jesus Christ. That’s not boring. You may say, well, I didn’t join any biker gangs and I didn’t do drugs and I don’t even have any tattoos to show for it. Well, great. Glorious. But you know what? You were brought from death to life. You were raised from the dead of sin to life and that’s not boring. It’s not boring at all. I said a little while ago that one of the ways a Christian knows they have a Holy Spirit is because when you sin, you feel awful. And the Holy Spirit doesn’t let you get away with that. That’s a central part of my testimony because I don’t remember the first time that I first believed in Jesus, but you know what I remember? Feeling disgusting for my sins and trying to get away with it. I remember as a little boy, no, I’m not going to confess. No, I’m not going to confess. And I just get sicker and sicker and sicker and then eventually it’s like, you know, trying to not puke, you know. And that’s how I know. The Holy Spirit lives in me. Because that’s my testimony. And every single one of you must have a testimony. Maybe you remember when you were in the dark. Maybe it’s like a saw on the way to Damascus. Maybe you hated Jesus. Maybe you hated the gospel. Maybe you mocked the Christians and maybe Jesus knocked you down and said, why are you persecuting me? Maybe you were at the end of your rope and you cried out. Maybe you remember. Glory be to God. Glory to God for that. Maybe you don’t remember. But you ought to remember times in which God has demonstrated his presence in your life. That’s the kind of testimony everyone in this room needs to have. Everyone in this room must know that Jesus is alive because of the way that he has dealt with you. You need to know that. You must know the glory of being forgotten. Of not forgotten, of being forgiven. Your sin being forgotten. Forgiveness means you know and you remember. The burning hot shame of sin. It means you remember the uncleanness of your guilt. Even if it was for moments and God in his mercy, you did something, you said something and all of a sudden you think, ah, I got to get rid of that. I got to confess that. I got to make that right. That’s the Holy Spirit. And you need to know the glory of his peace. That’s a glorious word that Jesus speaks to that woman. Go in peace. You have that? You must have that. It’s that peace that guards and protects your hearts and minds when you’re being accused of all kinds of evil. It’s that peace of the forgiveness of sins that can smile in the face of insane accusations. You’re an evil dad or you’re an evil mom or a horrible kid or your parents are horrible people. Jesus says go in peace. Notice that. That’s not you saying somehow I’m sinless, I’m pure. No, it’s the peace of knowing you’ve been forgiven. It’s the peace of knowing the declaration there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You know the glory of his peace. The young girl who had died, he insisted that even death is not too strong for him. And the people who were there weeping laughed at him. Thought it was ridiculous. But Jesus requires his disciples to live like that. Jesus requires his disciples to live like that in the face of death. We believe in the resurrection of the body. We just stood a few minutes ago. We recited the Apostles’ Creed. We believe that just as Jesus rose from the dead, he will call everyone who trusts in him to rise, just like that little girl. He will say to every one of us, I say to you, arise. This means that we do not live according to the mantra of you only live once. No. No, we’re just getting started. We get, you know, 50, 70, 100 years maybe if we’re God’s kind, but that’s just the beginning. That’s just the preface. You think about eternity. I mean, how’s that gonna measure? That’s gonna be the blink and eternity is forever. We live in the light of eternity. We live in the light of the reality of the resurrection. That means we have plenty of time. We have plenty of time, which incidentally is why Sabbath is so important to Christians, right? We have a lot of work to do and make sure once a week you rest. You say, well, you know, if we worked one more day, Lord, that would be, you know, do the math. God says, yeah, I did. And you’ll be dead a lot faster. This is one of the places, and you’re doing it right now, right? What do we do on the Lord’s day? What do we do? Well, we come and we sit down and we sing psalms and we hear the word and we sit at his table and we eat bread and we share wine, right? But fundamentally, what you’re doing in that, what you’re confessing in that is that Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth, of life and death, history, time, all of it, and he has it in hand. And we’re willing and happy to return with grateful hearts everything we can. All that we are, life, death, all of it, we’ll give it back to him, lay it out to him out of gratitude. But fundamentally, he doesn’t need us. Fundamentally, it’s not like Jesus is desperate. We’re a few more converts this year. No, Jesus is not. Jesus is not at all. Now, he is determined to win. He’s determined to fill this earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That’s what he’s doing, right? When he rose from the dead, he said, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, go, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them everything I’ve commanded you. We do that because, therefore, why? Because he has all authority in heaven and earth. He already has the keys of death and Hades. He already has struck the fatal blow to Satan. He already has confirmed our forgiveness of sins and our eternal life. But he wants to do it this way. He’s determined to do it this way. He says, it’s more fun this way? I don’t know. It’s more glorious this way? He’s like, Lord, you could just be done with this. It could all be over. Jesus says, no. I like the thousands of years plan. With all of you. With all of you. That’s what Jesus is determined to do. But we have to remember that. We have to remember that. We live in the light of eternity. We live with the one who says to death, no, all done. Every cemetery you drive by, another D.C. story for you. We drove by the Arlington for a moment on Friday night. Every one of those stones. It’s like a post-it note. Right? Jesus, God created the world and it was full of life. And death was not the way it was supposed to be. Death is not the way it was supposed to be. But everyone, reason why we mark them, reason why we mark them as Christians is we’re saying, God’s not done. The story’s not over. Every one of those tombs, every one of those grave sites is our declaration that we live and know that Jesus has risen from the dead. God’s not done here. He has promised to come. We have plenty of time because Jesus is Lord. We want to work hard for the king every day, but we’ve got to work hard in a way that is constantly acknowledging that the king has everything in hand. The king has everything in hand. So sin is insanity, but it is an insane response to a real problem. Sin is insanity, but it’s an insane response to a real problem. The stain of guilt and looming death. And in the grip of that reality, in the grip of that madness, moderns seek justification. I said earlier that’s what identity politics is all about. It’s the latest version of this. It’s the search for victims and their perpetrators. It’s the search for victims and their perpetrators. This is why people are screaming obscenities. Why are they screaming obscenities? Well, because they’re guilty. Penance and indulgences. How do you get justification according to modern identity politics? Well, you identify with the victim groups and you scream obscenities at the perpetrators, so-called. They’re just doing penance. They’re doing indulgences. Scream five obscenities and you’re more righteous. Why? Well, because the guilty party are whites and males and heterosexuals, et cetera, and Christians. Those are the guilty parties. They’re the perpetrators. They’re the colonizers. They’re the abusers. And so they scream obscenities to get clean, to get justification. Of course, it doesn’t work, and so they have to keep screaming. It doesn’t work, and so they have to keep screaming. They’re trying to get clean by political activism. They’re trying to get clean by protests. They’re trying to get clean by condemning so-called perpetrators. But you can’t chain this rage with human action. Cleanse this stain with meds or booze or more screaming. Only the blood of the truly innocent victim can cleanse. Only the blood of the truly innocent victim can cleanse. Only Christ crucified can make you right with the Father. Only Christ crucified gives you peace that no one can take away. Only his resurrection can deliver you from the grave. And only his justice can establish justice and make any room at all for mercy. So that’s the message we preach here week after week. Christ crucified for sinners. Christ crucified for sinners. Which is still folly to the PhDs and the policy wonks. And it’s still a stumbling block to do-gooders and social justice warriors. It’s not good enough. Sick of your prayers, why don’t you do something? But we are doing something. We’re doing the most effective thing. We’re crying out to the one who can do something about it. We’re going to the one who has done something about it. And who is entrusting us with that ministry. There’s no other way out of this mess except by the authoritative voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s no other way out of the mess except for Jesus Christ saying, peace. That’s it. There’s no other way. But for the last 2,000 years, he has been doing that. That’s the thing. Don’t miss this. Jesus has been speaking peace and they calm. He’s been cleansing the unclean. He’s been taking away the fear of death. And so, do not be afraid. Only believe. Listen. Do not be afraid. Only believe. You are with the one who calmed the storms. You are with the one who casts out demons. You are with the one who is not afraid. He is not afraid of death. He’s not afraid of crazies. He’s not afraid of sin. He’s not afraid of any of it. And he speaks to you just as he spoke to these people 2,000 years ago. Do not be afraid. Only believe. We have met the Lord. I know we’re Presbyterians, but you can say amen. We’ve met the Lord. He’s with us in the boat. He’s with us on this shore. He’s with us, and he has risen from the dead. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to him, and he’s called you to disciple here. Disciple your family. Disciple your business. Disciple whatever he’s called there. You are an ambassador for Jesus Christ there, and the Lord is with you. And the Lord does all things well. So let’s pray. Father, I ask that your authoritative peace would guard our hearts and our minds right this minute. I pray that the peace of Jesus Christ would remind us of your great mercy in our lives, that we would remember distinct moments in our lives where you have granted us that peace, and I pray that you renew it in our hearts now. I pray, Father, that this peace would allow us to think clearly about the challenges we face, I pray that we would walk boldly before you clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ without any fear, knowing that there is no condemnation because we are in Jesus Christ. And I ask that you would send forth ministers of this gospel with great boldness so that there would be a great reformation and revival in our land. We pray that you would drive back the darkness. We pray that you would awaken the light of your gospel and that it would shine bright on this land. And we ask for this in the strong name of Jesus who taught us to pray. Sing him. Our Father who art in heaven. Sing. show less

Dave Hatcher, The parable of the sower (Mark 4)

SUMMARY In this sermon based on Mark chapter 4, the speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding God’s Word, as depicted in the parable of the sower. The text illustrates different responses to the Gospel—some people receive it eagerly, while others are distracted by worldly concerns or fail to understand it completely. The preacher urges the congregation to be like the good soil, receptive and ready to nurture their faith, thus producing a bountiful harvest. The message highlights the power of God’s teachings and the vital role of individual hearts in responding to His Word, encouraging believers to cultivate their spiritual lives for greater fruitfulness. TRANSCRIPTION Choose show more to view the transcription. Transcriptions are AI generated and MAY be incorrect. Rely on the spoken word heard in the audio file. show more Amen. Brothers and sisters, the text this morning is from Mark chapter 4. These are the words of God. Verse 1. Verse 1. Verse 1. Verse 1. Verse 1. verse 1. Verse 1. verse 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 2. 1. 2. 2. 1. 2. 3. 1. 1. 1. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 6. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 4. 5. 6. 5. 6. 6. 5. 6. 5. 5. 6. 6. 5. 6. 6. 5. 5. 6. 6. 5. 6. 6. 5. 5. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 7. 6. 7. 7. 6. 7. 7. 6. 7. 7. 6. 7. 7. 3. 7. 7. 7. 7. 6. 7. 7. 7. 3. 7. 7. 3. 7. 3. 3. 7. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 3. 4. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 3. 4. 5. 3. 3. 4. 3. 4. 5. 3. 4. 5. 3. 4. 5. 3. 5. 5. 3. 5. 5. 5. 5. 6. 5. 6. 6. 6. 5. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. 7. 7. 7. 7. 7. 7. 3. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 3. 4. 5. 5. 5. 5. 5. 5. 5. Amen. show less

Ben Merkle, The Fellowship of Grievance (Mark 3)

SUMMARY In this sermon, the preacher explores themes of mercy and legalism through Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees, particularly regarding the Sabbath healing of a man with a withered hand in Mark 3. Jesus emphasizes that God desires mercy over ritual sacrifice, highlighting the danger of replacing heartfelt compassion with rigid legalism. The Pharisees, watching Jesus’ actions closely, embody this legalism as they seek to accuse him instead of celebrating a miraculous healing. Jesus, despite their hardness of heart, demonstrates righteous anger that drives him to do good. The sermon also contrasts the “fellowship of the grievance,” evident in the alliance between the Pharisees and Herodians against Jesus, with the “fellowship of the Son,” representing the diverse followers united in faith and love for Christ. The preacher underscores that true unity among believers stems from their shared commitment to God’s love rather than mutual hatred, explaining that while love is critical, the object of that love—God—is paramount. Ultimately, the sermon calls for believers to reflect on their hearts and align their lives with God’s desires for mercy and love. TRANSCRIPTION Choose show more to view the transcription. Transcriptions are AI generated and MAY be incorrect. Rely on the spoken word heard in the audio file. show more Jesus teaches in several other places on mercy as well. When the Pharisees asked him why he sat with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus pointed them to a quotation from Hosea. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. And again, when he rebukes the Pharisees at the end of Matthew, he says, In both of these situations, Jesus describes a religious formalism that is pitted against a heart of mercy that actually delights God. You can bring your sacrifices to worship God in the temple with all the Levitical regulations perfectly fulfilled, but God would have rather seen you come with empty hands and a heart full of mercy. Or you can pay your tithes with CPA, like scrupulousness, but in doing so you have majored on the insignificant things. It might be surprising to realize that our temptation is to replace mercy with legalism. After all, doesn’t it seem like legalism takes a lot of effort? Wouldn’t we be more inclined to the easier option? But we need to see that mercy is actually a weightier thing of the law. Legalism is giving things. Mercy is giving yourself. Legalism is giving a tenth of your legalism is giving Sunday morning to church. Mercy is giving the whole week to God. Legalism carefully carves out what it thinks is owed to religion and then carefully guards what is left over. But mercy sees the sacrifice that God made for us and realizes that our lives are not our own. Our text this morning is from Mark chapter 3. And he entered the synagogue again and a man was there who had a withered hand. So they watched him closely whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so they might accuse him. Then he said to them is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil to save life or to kill? But they kept silent. And when he looked around at them with anger being grieved by the hardness of their hearts he said to the man stretch out your hand. And he stretched out and his hand was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him how they might destroy him. But Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea and a great multitude from Galilee followed him and from Judea. And those from Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they heard how many things he was doing, came to him. So he told his disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for him because of the multitude lest they should crush him. For he healed many so that as many as had afflictions pressed about him to touch him. And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw him, fell down before him and cried out, saying, You are the Son of God. But he sternly warned them that they should not make him known. And then he appointed twelve, that they might be with him, that he might send them out to preach and have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons. Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter. James, the son of Zebedee. And John, the brother of James, to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, sons of thunder. Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, the son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him. And the multitude came together again so that they could not so much as eat bread. But when his own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of him, for they said, He’s out of his mind. Then the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, He has Beelzebub, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons. So he called them to himself and said to them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if a kingdom is divided against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end. No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house. Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter. But he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation, because they said he has an unclean spirit. Let’s pray. And Father, we know that our chief joy is all wrapped up in this, that when we truly glorify you, we will find our greatest joy. We pray that we will learn to seek that supreme joy right here in seeking your face and understanding your word. We praise things in the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and amen. Please be seated. It’s a pleasure to be back here and to join you in the middle of this series. And so here we are with Mark 3. And in the text here, Jesus says he enters the synagogue again. Again, I believe he’s referring to back in chapter 1, he was in the synagogue at Capernaum. And so he’s back in that same synagogue again in Capernaum. Now remember that chapter 2, we ended with him defending his disciples, who had been harvesting on the Sabbath. That is just grabbing grain and eating a little bit as they walked. And that was technically called harvesting by the Pharisees. And so he had been defending them, and that’s why I think his enemies now know to confront him on the subject of the Sabbath. They’re coming to hunt him on the Sabbath to see him break that law so they can catch him in something. Look at verse 2. It’s really interesting. They’re watching healing so that they might accuse him. They’re watching closely because they knew it’s a place where he was likely to err. Now, when I say err, obviously I mean according to their first century customs and not according to the actual law of God. But that’s it. They’re there to try to catch him out. Now, you have to think about that for a moment. If you had the chance, imagine yourself in a situation where you have the chance to witness an actual healing. If you had the chance to actually see a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit where a withered hand becomes before your eyes whole again, where you’re going to witness something that is supernatural, you’re about to see that. If I told you you were about to see with your very own eyes this miraculous, undeniably supernatural healing, what kinds of thoughts would be going through your head in anticipation of that moment? Think of the privilege you have of witnessing something like that, the awe that you would be struck by. And yet, here they come with the goal of witnessing a miracle with the main purpose being to find prosecutable evidence against Jesus. Now, we like to think that we’re all highly objective people, that our determinations, that our conclusions we come to are simply the result of our independent logical minds processing facts and coming to natural logical conclusions. We like to think that that’s the way we all operate. The state of our hearts is profoundly influential to the processes of our minds. Where your heart is determines what you’re able to see, comprehend, understand. Where your heart is determines whether you’re able to come to logical conclusions and see what’s right in front of you. Your heart determines what conclusions your mind is allowed to come to. Spurgeon, the great preacher, once said, hardens clay. You can have the same sun shining on something, and the recipient of that sunlight, some will grow hard, brittle, some will grow soft and liquid in front of it. It’s the same one, but in one instance the result is a rock, and in another instance the result is a puddle. And when Jesus performs this miracle, it’s like that sun shining down, and the result of that sunlight is determined by what kind of substance that light is shining on. Is it shining on wax, or is it shining on clay? He performs this miracle. Some hearts see that miracle and are hardened even further, while other hearts saw that miracle and melted before the Savior. What kind of heart you bring to this determines your ability to see what’s actually going on. And the ministry of Jesus, as you read through the Gospels, does this again and again. It gives a clear and consistent testimony. And then that testimony creates repentance and worship in some. And in some others, it creates bitterness and envy. And it’s interesting, I think, this particular scene because it’s profoundly revealing where the wickedness of the human heart is put on such a clear display. The kinds of things that we’re capable of. Because here you have a man who has been impaired with this wither hand for his entire life. So imagine somebody. He’s got a withered hand his whole life. Imagine all the hardship and difficulties that he’s faced as a result of this handicap. And here he is about to have all that taken away, miraculously cured. And a group of men have gathered around simply so that in this moment they can find something prosecutable against Jesus. Because of the hatred that they have in their heart. These scribes are uncommonly evil. This is an uncommon level of wickedness that we’re seeing here. But I think you ought to realize and think about for a moment how utterly common and mundane this is. This is something that all of us do frequently. Where you become a little grievance farmer. What I mean by that is we like to think that hatred is a bad thing. That it’s something that is abhorrent to our heart. If you dive into your own heart very much, you’ll notice how much you’re actually very attracted to hatred. You’re attracted to anger. And there’s something kind of almost a little bit sickeningly delightful about getting angry. Your flesh wants you to be like these Pharisees. It wants to go and find places to be upset. It finds like a twisted delight in this kind of thing. We will make an effort to hunt for things, hunt for offenses that we can be angry about. Think about this in your own marriage. Do you not ever, as a wife, do you ever secretly kind of want him to forget your anniversary so that you can be mad at him? I want to be mad at him, but I need an offense in order. Men, is there something that you’re hoping she forgot the laundry? You’re hoping whatever. It’s not like a conscious thing you’re doing, but if you looked at yourself for a moment, you would find yourself secretly desiring someone to misstep so that you can be mad at them. It’s funny because a lot of times we want to think that our anger is the result of this logical, well, they’ve committed all these wrongs, and that is why all these things have added up, and that’s why I bother with them, or that’s why I’m angry with them. But frequently, we have people in our lives that we just don’t like, and so then we hunt for offenses to explain why we don’t like them, and give us more occasion to dislike them. The flesh hunts for offenses. The flesh is this little offense anger farmer, constantly trying to manufacture occasions for us to be mad, because there’s something sickeningly sweet about that kind of thing. We hunt for offenses. Why else do you doom scroll on X? You’re just scrolling through looking for things that offend you, because there’s this sickening pleasure that we take, and being offended like that. The sin of the Pharisees and the scribes here is not that far off from all of our hearts. We do the same thing. But we know this is a particularly powerful display of wickedness, because look at verse 5. And when he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other. There’s something really unique about this verse, something that only happens in this verse and nowhere else in the Bible. And that is, this is the only text that we have in all of Scripture where Jesus becomes angry. Or at least where it explicitly says Jesus was angry. You might be able to infer when he goes and flips the tables to cleanse the temple that there was anger there or something, but it doesn’t ever say that. It doesn’t ever call him angry. Jesus is angry is right here when he sees this desire for the Pharisees to find some offense, find him healing on the Sabbath so that they can prosecute him, this evilness in their heart. Now, just as an aside, we can see from this then, we should note then that anger is not in and of itself a sin. The fact that if Jesus can get angry, then there is such a thing as a righteous anger. Paul tells us that in Ephesians 4, he says, be angry and do not sin. There is a kind of anger that is a righteous anger. It’s occasional, it’s not frequent, but we don’t see Jesus do it often, but we do clearly see him do it here. He is angry and he is sinlessly angry. So it’s not wrong for us to be angry with a righteous anger when we see a great evil. So how do you know what’s the difference between a righteous and an unrighteous anger? Well, first of all, look at what happens when Jesus gets angry. What does he do about it? What’s the result of his anger? Well, it says here, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. He stretched it out and his hand was restored as whole as the other. What’s the result of Jesus’ anger? It’s that he heals a man who’s had a withered hand for life. It’s this remarkably constructive expression of anger. When Jesus gets angry, it moves him to do good. It moves him, to heal, to restore. Righteous anger, when you’re overcome by a righteous anger, it moves you to do righteous things. It moves you to do something beautiful, something godly. When Jesus gets angry, it moves him to do good, to heal, to restore. And that’s what righteous anger does. Second, the other thing we should notice about righteous anger, Paul said, he said, be angry, do not sin. And then he says, do not let the sun go down on your wrath. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath. Paul is teaching us that anger is like manna. You can’t hold on to it overnight. Remember manna that you hold on, held on to it through the night. In the next morning, it was stinking and filled with worms. Anger is, godly anger is something that you have for a moment, and then it’s something that you’re capable of setting down. Ungodly anger, you can’t set down because it’s not you holding it, it’s it holding you. Anger gets a hold of you, and you are a puppet on its strings. It controls you. Godly anger is something that you’re actually the Lord of. You’re the master of it, and you can set it down. Righteous anger moves you to swift righteous action, and then you move on. Unrighteous anger becomes a little hookworm in your heart that sits there fueling bitterness and resentment. That’s what unrighteous anger is like. More things to be upset about, more things to be grieved by, more things to be offended by. So when you discover anger in your heart, you can ask yourself, first, what am I going to do with this? I’m angry, so what are you going to do? If you’ve got nothing to do, then drop the anger. It’s not fruitful. If you’re angry, you have to ask yourself, what godly thing am I being prompted to do? And then second of all, you have to ask yourself, can I put this to bed when I go to bed? Am I capable of setting this down and moving on? Or does it have a hold on me? Is it controlling me and steering me? Can you set it down? So with Jesus, this anger drives him to heal a man. What does anger do to those that are opposed to Jesus? Look at verse 6. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him. You have to remember, to understand this for a moment, remember who the Pharisees are. They were strict and scrupulous Jews. But who were the Herodians? Well, just as a Christian was a follower of Christ, a Herodian is a follower of the line of Herod, beginning with Herod the Great. You actually have a line there of descendants, and there’s a group that believes this line ought to be installed as the new king, restored to the throne of Israel. At the moment, at this current moment, the Herod that would probably be the contender would be Herod Antipas, who we’re going to see Jesus’ encounters later on. Herod Antipas. So they want to see this line of Herodians restored to the throne, and that this will be the new Israelite nation. It’s a political movement that, in any other scenario, would have been the arch nemesis of the Pharisees. And that’s the thing that’s really interesting, is the Herodians and the Pharisees would have been antagonistic and opposed to one another. In any other situation. But according to the logic of that ancient proverb, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, their mutual detestation of Jesus drives them together in this unlikely alliance. They have a mutual detestation that becomes the foundation for this camaraderie, this friendship. This is what we call the fellowship of the grievance. It’s a fellowship that is a friendship built on a mutual grievance. The fellowship of the grievance. A friendship built on a mutual hatred, a mutual grievance. And you’ve seen this happen before. It’s what happens when a mutually shared hatred becomes the bond of commonality between completely unlikely parties. And they’re driven together. The Pharisees and the Herodians, in any other scenario, would have been deathly opposed to one another. But their mutual desire to see Jesus go down becomes the foundation of a very temporary, a very mercenary friendship. A friendship that’s built on a mutual hatred rather than a mutual love. And I think if you just look around you, you can see many instances of that kind of all around us. Where unlikely parties that you would hate each other in any other situation, but because they have a shared enemy, they come and they join together. Think of later when Jesus goes on trial before Pontius Pilate. And then he goes from Pontius Pilate, he’s sent from Pontius Pilate to Herod, Herod Antipas. And he’s tried by both of them. And Herod and Pilate are sending him back and forth to each other with messages to one another. And it says, it’s just a very interesting line in Luke 23, that very day Pilate and Herod became friends with each other. For previously they had been at enmity with each other. These two guys that had hated each other in every situation. Suddenly when Jesus comes along and they have this mutual hatred of him and it drives them together. Mutual hatred becomes a bond of friendship grievance. I was at a conference yesterday when someone was lamenting how unified the left seems to be in their attacks on the right. While they were lamenting the conservative right is very disjointed but the left seems to be completely unified. But this is just the reality that when they all hate the same thing it forms a temporary unity. A fellowship of the grievance. We see this all around. Two people who are ideologically totally opposed to one another yet they’re drawn together by a common hatred. Now in the next several verses we see that Jesus also unites a broad body of people. Look at verse 7. But Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea and a great multitude from Galilee followed him and from Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and beyond the Jordan those from Tyre and Sidon. It goes on. He’s listing all these different places that they’re coming from. It’s a great multitude that’s following him and it’s interesting that just as the Pharisees and the Herodians and all these people are coming together on one side, Jesus is also bringing together a disparate group of people. They come from Galilee and from Judea. That would be from the northern and the southern regions of Israel, meaning from all over Israel. But not just that, we find out that they’re coming from Jerusalem but also from Edom. So these are non-Israelites, Edomites. They come from Edom, from beyond the Jordan, from Tyre and Sidon. So many are coming that in verse 9 he has to ready a boat to be ready for him to escape because they press in on him so intensely. So we have the fellowship of the grievance and then we have this fellowship of the sun. This gathering that’s coming together to the sun. And as this group gathers together there’s a moment where he pulls a select few aside and they go up a mountain. It’s always interesting these moments when they go up the mountain. He chooses out his 12 disciples. Sometimes if you ever notice sometimes we refer to them as disciples and sometimes we refer to them as apostles. Disciple essentially just is a word that refers to someone who’s the student of someone else’s learning. Someone who’s learning from somebody else. So we tend to think of them as disciples during the gospels while the disciples are sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning from him. And then the word apostle specifically refers to someone who has been sent out on some sort of mission. And so we tend to think of them more as apostles when we hit like the book of Acts when after the great commission and they’ve been sent out. So we tend to think of them as disciples now and apostles in the book of Acts. But those words are interchangeable. We’ll see them used in scriptures not super tidy about that and uses both words in either place. Remember that if we’re to think of the church as a building, Jesus will be that cornerstone of the building and the disciples will eventually become the rest of the foundation of that building. These men, these twelve, these men will be charged first with watching and learning from Jesus who he is and what he is saying. And then after his ascension into heaven, they’re going to be charged with communicating that truth to the world. As they convey his message, it’s in that sense that they become the foundation of the church. We are all built on their testimony. What they have shared with us, we are building on that. We’re given a list of twelve men, and I’m just going to go through each of them briefly. We’re given a list of twelve men. Simon, who will be renamed by Jesus to be Peter, which means rock. James and John, who are two brothers. Three, Peter, James, and John make up Jesus’ tightest circle of friends. And though Peter will become the most prominent, John will become the closest to Jesus. Now, there are two James in the New Testament. We said it’s Peter and then John and James, so these two are brothers. There’s two different James in the New Testament, and you want to get them straight. The James that’s named here, that is the brother of John and is in this circle of three, his closest friends. That James is known as James the Greater, I think primarily because he was in such close proximity with Jesus. He’s James the Greater. He’s the brother of John. He’s also the first disciple to be martyred, which is interesting because you have these two brothers, James and John, and James is the first to be martyred, and John is the only disciple that dies of old age, that isn’t martyred. So you have those two brothers. Philip, Bartholomew, and Matthew. This is the Matthew that’s going to write the book of Matthew. He was a tax collector, and sometimes goes by Levi. In some of the Gospels, you’ll hear him named Levi, but he goes by Matthew when he writes the Gospels, so that’s how we think of him. Then you have Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus. So this is the second James. I mentioned there’s two James. James the greater, who was John’s brother. This is James the son of Alphaeus. He’s James the lesser. This James is also the younger brother of Jesus, and he’s the author of the book of James. He’s the younger brother of Jesus and the author of the book of James. Then we have Thaddeus. Thaddeus is sometimes called Jude. He is another little brother of Jesus, just like James the lesser, and he’s the author of the epistle of Jude. So this James and this Jude, that’s the author of James and the author of Jude. Then we have Simon the Canaanite, also sometimes called Simon the zealot. And last, we have Judas Iscariot, the one who will eventually betray Jesus. And these are the 12 disciples. After choosing the disciples, the crowd gathers once more, and everyone is overwhelmed by what a sensation Jesus is causing. His own family and friends are beginning to worry for Jesus. In verse 21, they start getting worried for him. But the scribes of Jerusalem attempt to start a rumor that the reason Jesus is gaining so much attention is that he’s been actually possessed by Beelzebub, the prince of, it’s a Philistine pagan god, but known as the prince of all the demons. And that they say that he’s using demonic powers to cast out demons. I think the scribes of Jerusalem are basically the Candace Owens of the first century. He’s possessed by Beelzebub, and that’s how he’s doing all this. Jesus uses this accusation to explain something about the way that the spiritual world works. Verse 24 and 25. Opposition forces can be fractured. The fellowship of the grievance, it works when you are uniting to topple some ruling power. But a ruling power can’t be divided. A ruling power has to be unified. If Satan is working against Satan, then Satan cannot stand. The one true king, when he rules, will do so from a unified position. When Christ rules, he will not do so from a throne that he shares with competing powers. Listen to verse 27. That’s why Revelation 20 promises that Satan will be bound at the beginning of Christ’s kingdom. Satan will be bound at the beginning of Christ’s kingdom. It’s not a kingdom that Christ will establish in cooperation with competing forces. And I think this is really interesting because in this passage we learn something important about the spiritual battle that we’re in. Our enemy’s army can be large. And it can be made up of a wide variety of factions. They can appear very united. But it’s a unity that is created by a shared hatred. The fellowship of the grievance, right? That’s what the enemy’s forces look like. They’re brought together by this fellowship of the grievance. However, this unity can only hold when they are attacking their mutual enemy. But as Jesus says, this is a force that is divided against itself. Ultimately, it’s divided against itself and it cannot stand. It will always crumble. It rises up to the top for a time, but it will always be a temporary ascendancy because it is actually fractured at the foundation. So it cannot stand. But as Jesus says, this is a force that is divided against itself. It cannot stand. Whenever they come into power, they will always devour their own because their union is always temporary and conditional. But the kingdom of Christ is made up of incredibly diverse groups. We had men from Jerusalem mixed with men from Edom, Tyre, and Sidon. So this is a coalition that is brought together as well. They’re incredibly diverse. It unites things like tax collectors like Matthew teaming up with zealots like Simon. Just in the 12 disciples, we see this variety of people that would normally be at odds with one another. They’re diverse. And yet they’re united not by a mutual hatred, but by a mutual love. The love of the Lord Jesus Christ and a faith in his life, death, and resurrection. That brings about a completely united foundation. That is something that actually holds together. So the enemy’s unity is temporary and illusory. It is a unity of convenience made possible by a shared hatred. But the unity of God’s people is deep and abiding because in Christ we have found a cause that transcends all of our petty grievances. That’s the thing that you need to see, that in Christ we see something, we’ve found something, all of our petty grievances. Because when you’re an enemy of Christ, when you’re outside of faith, when you’re outside of the gospel, when you’re outside of God, when you’re outside of all of that, the only thing that you are really for is ultimately yourself. In the end, the only thing you’re ultimately for is yourself. So every ally that you can find is a temporary ally of convenience, but not an ultimate actual ally in the end is a competition for that thing that you love most yourself. So every ally is a temporary ally of convenience, a useful stepping stone to help you to get where you want to go. But in the end, they’re all still competition. They’re all still adversaries. But when you were in Christ, united to his death, burial, and resurrection by a living faith, well, then your ultimate end is Christ himself. That is the thing that everything is about. Your ultimate end is Christ himself. It’s an ultimate end that is capable of being shared by all of your brothers and sisters, and in the glory of God, it’s a thing that we can share, and it’s not diminished by the sharing. The fact that you have Christ, and then a neighbor comes and has Christ, doesn’t mean now you only get half of Christ. You don’t continue to chop him up. Because of his infinite nature, he is capable of being all of that for each of us. And so we have this thing that draws us all together, nothing that we need to compete with one another over. We have this unity that we have in Christ, and it’s far more profound or real than any other alliance that the world has to offer. That’s why these worlds are so completely different. This unity that we have in Christ is real, and it transcends all other divisions. It’s why in the next few verses, when Mary and his brothers try to call him outside, verse 32, They try to call him outside, but Jesus says, No, no, I’m not going, because if you’re here with me, you are my closest family member. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother. You can’t get closer to Jesus than what you are with him in the gospel. Of course, we know that two of those brothers, James and Jude, were in with Jesus at this time. But it would appear that the rest of the family, including Mary, was concerned that Jesus was going too far. Yet Jesus makes this radical assertion that true Christians form a family, true Christians form a family that is more real and more profoundly unified than their blood connections. 28 through 30, which covered Jesus’ comments about a sin that is unforgivable. Let me just backtrack and hit that really quick. Verses 28 and 29. Jesus says that all sins are forgivable, including blasphemy. Blasphemy is a forgivable sin. But when someone sees the immediate miraculous work of the Holy Spirit and attributes that work to Satan, rather than acknowledges what is obvious, that this is the work of the Holy Spirit, then they betray a hardness of heart that is terminal. To sit and see that kind of revelation and to say, I believe that is Satan, that betrays a hardness of heart that is terminal. Miraculous signs carried with them a great authority. That was the purpose of a miraculous sign. Miraculous signs were used to confirm the testimony of the apostles and authorize, basically give us, confidence that the New Testament was divinely inspired. Miracles and miraculous acts carried this special weight to them. They were used to confirm the identity and authority both of Jesus and the apostles. Our New Testament exists because the testimony of the apostles was profoundly demonstrated by the miracles that accompanied and confirmed their teaching. But those miraculous signs also carried a greater weight for those that rejected them. They were incredibly powerful in that they gave this special authority. And to reject that came at a great cost. To stand there while Jesus himself healed the sick and raised the dead, and to say, nah, that’s Satan’s power. To do that, that kind of hard-heartedness carried with it a greater consequence. And with that said, I don’t think, and this is now I’m going to do what I said every pastor does, where I’m going to tell you, I don’t think you’ve committed this. And you have to do that because there is a certain kind of conscience, and not all Christians have it. Some Christians have, like the super, you just have to hit them on the head with a hammer again and again to get them to feel guilty for anything. And then some people kind of run around and feel guilty for sins committed by somebody hundreds of miles away, but they think somehow maybe it got on them. Their conscience is just like super, super sensitive. And so you have to say something about this because there are some people who read that text, and then they go away constantly asking themselves, have I committed the unpardonable sin? Let me just say, I don’t think this is a circumstance that most of us find ourselves in. People who get worried that they are possibly guilty of the unforgivable sin are suffering from spiritual hypochondria, and they just need to be told to knock it off. If you’re worried that you’re guilty of committing the unforgivable sin, just please stop. There’s a host of reasons that I don’t think it’s possible, but the biggest reason is this. People who have committed the unforgivable sin are not worried about it. They’ve committed the sin because they don’t care. They really don’t care. It’s a hardened conscience that is in that situation. And so if your conscience is tender and you’re constantly worried, did I do this? That’s testimony to you that no, you didn’t. You’re not that kind of person. If you worry that you committed the unforgivable sin, then stop. Say that you’re sorry to God for momentarily doubting Him and His grace and just go back to being a believing Christian. I’ll conclude by going back to that division between the fellowship of the grievance and the fellowship of the Son. And I just want to clarify one point a little bit more. I’ve described the fellowship of the grievance as those that are brought together by a mutual hatred of a mutual enemy. And then I’ve contrasted them with those that are brought together by the love of the Son. Fellowship of the grievance, fellowship of the Son. Fellowship brought together by mutual shared hatred. Fellowship brought together by a mutual shared love. And once you start to do that, it starts to become simply love versus hatred that is contrasted. And while I think that it’s partly true, there’s something to that. I don’t like saying it that way because in our current age, we’ve come up with this bad habit of maximizing the verb. And minimizing the object of the verb. What I mean is we make a big deal out of love. Love is good. Love is everything. God is love. So love is love. And we make a big deal of the verb. And then we act as if the object, the direct object of that verb, is something that can swap in and out. It doesn’t matter what you love. It just matters that you love. As if love by itself is this spectacular virtue. You need is love. Love wins. Love is love. But when we tend to minimize the object of the love, then it no longer matters who or what you love as long as you just love. And that’s a game that our culture is playing right now. And that’s not how scripture speaks of love. When we think biblically, we discover that actually it does matter the object of your love. The direct object of the verb determines whether love is a virtue. Do you love life or do you love death? Do you love wisdom or do you love foolishness? Do you love evil? Do you love your wife or do you love someone else’s wife? It turns out it’s not enough just to love. You have to love the right thing. Most of all, what is the greatest commandment? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. The direct object matters. Love is good when it’s godly love, when it’s informed love. When it’s loving like God loves, when it loves the things that God loves. It’s also not true that those who love God are only united by our loves. We’re also united by the things that we hate. We share a hatred of evil. We saw in our text today our Lord Jesus Christ consumed by anger. We saw that there are things that God hates and it’s right for us to share that hatred. So we’re not just pitting love versus hatred. It’s a biblically informed love and a biblically informed hatred and it’s those that pervert those categories that become our enemies. All those that were united by a love of the one true God should have gotten angry with Jesus when they saw what he saw. We love and we also hate. We are not defined simply by love. We’re defined by the object of our love, the Lord Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. show less