"Kingdom Conflict" - Mark 3:20 - 3:30

Has anyone ever taken a conflict resolution class?

No, y'all just, just, you teach them.

God bless you. When we were in like, I don't know,

fifth, sixth grade, maybe the school decided they would take an initiative to

start a peer mediator group, which essentially was conflict resolution.

It's just, instead of the counselor doing it, you would have someone your age do it.

And like all good ideas, it sounds awesome, but it turns out fifth and sixth

graders are terrible, terrible conflict negotiators.

But of course I raised my hand because you got an English class to go do it.

And so we were like, were you in UIL? I was like, yeah, I was in UIL hearing.

You're like, why? So I said, I didn't have to go to AR reading.

What is UIL hearing? You asked. I really don't know. I don't remember,

but I know I didn't have to read.

So we went to these classes and they taught us how to conflict resolute each

other And then if like two kids got in a fight They would put these two kids

in a room And the counselor would sit in the corner and they would have you try to adjudicate,

This situation and again.

Terrible idea like the only thing we could adjudicate is just like did you hit him back?

You know, like like I mean he hit you did you hit him back and he's like no

and we're like why did you hit him back? That would have ended the conflict

right away I don't see what the issue is,

Ultimately, you're trying to get people to say they're sorry,

and you're trying to get people to all be friends again. And I get that.

And on some levels, I appreciate that. But I think to this point in Mark,

what we've seen is a lot of conflict, a lot of conflict.

Really, the first maybe 17, 18, 20 verses of Mark are pretty astounding.

And Mark gives us a lot of great truths.

But the second Jesus starts his ministry, it is met with conflict.

First and foremost, by the Pharisees

and the Sadducees and the religious leaders, of course, we see that.

And then later on, the crowds. The crowds are on top of him in such a way that

he's fearing for his life, that he has his disciples sitting there with a boat

in the water so he can jump in there and get away from this conflict that's coming at him.

And this morning, we're even going to see that his family has issues with him.

And so you may think, well, listen, this isn't a big deal, right?

Jesus is going to handle this. It's okay.

Surely he's got some people in his corner. And the truth is he really doesn't.

Even his disciples that are on his team are still pretty unsure of what's going on here.

Like, yeah, they're his disciples, but they're not exactly sure how this is going to work out.

I think more than anything this morning, one of the things I want to do is show

you the source of conflict, where it comes from.

I'll be honest with you, they didn't teach me this in fifth grade.

This is something I had to learn on my own with the Bible in my hand.

But I think understanding where conflict comes from, both outside of you and

externally, and maybe more importantly, internally,

your internal conflicts, where they come from, work problems,

marital problems, anxiety, stress, all of these things around us,

understanding where they come from helps to solve that issue.

Now, I'm not at all saying that when you walk out of here today,

you'll never have conflict again.

You'll probably have it if you get in the car and decide to go to lunch somewhere.

Immediately, there will be conflict. Immediately.

But I do think it'll help you understand kind of where that comes from and maybe

a better way to deal with that.

Now, oftentimes when we read this passage, people zero in on one thing and one

thing only, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. And we're going to talk about it.

But I will just, I just want to let you in on a little secret.

Just so if you want to check out, well, maybe I shouldn't, but if you want to

check out, I'm gonna let you do that.

I'm not going to spend a ton of time on that. If you're in this room,

there's a good chance you're not concerned with that situation.

And we'll talk about it, but I think there's something much bigger going on.

And there's another statement in this passage that I think should get a lot more attention.

So let me just read Mark three. We're going to start in verse 20.

We're going to go all the way down to 30.

So it says, then he went home. So he's just called all the disciples to himself.

Again, this is a terrible chapter break, in my opinion, neither here nor there.

The guys that made him are a lot smarter than me. Not a chapter break, but a title break.

It says, then he went home and the crowd gathered again.

So there's that picture. Everywhere Jesus goes, there's this crowd of people.

He can't even sit down to eat a sandwich without people hounding him.

So they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize

him. for they were saying he is out of his mind.

And the scribes who come down from Jerusalem were saying he is possessed by

Beelzebub and the prince of demons, he cast out demons.

And he called then to him 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, the house will not be able to stand.

And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end.

But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man.

Then indeed they may plunder his house. Truly I say to you, all sins will be

forgiven, the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter.

But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness,

but is guilty of an eternal sin. for they were saying he has an unclean spirit.

So you've probably heard the joke about being Jesus's brother,

right? There's probably nothing worse than being Jesus's brother because inevitably

when you're like, you know what, mom, you just think he's perfect. It's like.

Yeah, because he is. Now, I don't know that Mary understood all of those things

at the time, but it would be pretty hard to be Jesus's brother.

And you would certainly think that Jesus was the star son, that if you were

to go to their house and look at their proverbial first century refrigerator,

it would be full of Jesus's press clippings, right?

His Torah homework, A plus, A plus, A plus, just all over the place,

just trophy after trophy of Bible, Bible thons, Bible, whatever you want to

call that. he was probably a sword drill master, right?

He could get the scrolls out and find anything he wanted to at any time.

You would think that Jesus would be the all-star of the family,

but in fact, he was the black sheep of the family.

Sure, he was going and doing things that they may have thought he needed to do.

And I'm sure he had told his family, as he had told his parents,

I must be about doing my father's work, right?

And Mary would have even known somewhat of what was going on in Jesus' life.

The angel told her a lot about who Jesus would be.

And yet, Jesus is off causing a scene. And we read in John 7,

5, not even his brothers believed him.

Not even his own brothers believed him.

His own family is saying, listen, we've got to go get him because he is out of his mind.

Now they're saying that, I think, out of love, but they think that Jesus has gone crazy.

And they're going to go get Jesus because they're worried about his well-being. right so you,

Imagine being James, the brother of Jesus, and somebody coming up to you and

be like, hey, your brother's over here and he's doing some good stuff, right?

He's healing people. He's casting out demons. I think that's real.

But everybody wants to kill him. He's saying he's going to forgive sins.

He's teaching with authority.

And so his family decides, man, we need to go get this guy.

Because Jesus' ministry is constantly inviting conflict, constantly.

His message, repent and believe the gospel is unlike any other message that has ever been preached.

His methods, the way he taught with authority and the way he did miracles and

casted out demons, his means, right?

He's calling tax collectors and religious zealots and fishermen to be his disciples.

He's eating dinner at tax collectors' houses and having parties with them, right?

All of these things in Jesus' ministry are inviting conflict.

Now, again, Jesus isn't inviting it, right?

He's not necessarily going out and looking for a fight, but Jesus being faithful

to who God has called him to be in a world that's ruled by Satan naturally induces conflict.

I think a practical point here is we would do well to know that that will be

our lives as well, even in East Texas.

If you want to give Jesus lip service and you want to just kind of be a Christian

that says, I am a Christian and I like Jesus and he's cool, but who am I to

say that someone else doesn't go to heaven?

Who am I to say that what you're doing is wrong? You won't have any issues.

But the second you take Jesus' message and tell people to repent and believe

the gospel, that he alone has the power to say that there is truly no other

name under heaven by which mankind can be saved, you will be inviting conflict onto yourself.

The second that you proclaim his message like Jesus did with authority to say

to people, no, I'm telling you that that is wrong.

I'm telling you that living that way, believing those things will cause you

to be apart from God forever.

You will be inviting conflict. To say that Jesus' means were the right means,

to say, man, he did the right thing every single time.

That he did every miracle that it says he did and even more,

that he casted out demons. that everything he did was exactly how it says it

would be, that he rose again on the third day as we'll celebrate in two weeks.

You are inviting conflict into your life.

Jesus makes this clear over and over again. Don't be surprised if the world

hates you. It hated me first.

The world didn't hate Jesus because he was nice. The world didn't hate Jesus

because he casted out demons or did miracles.

The world hated Jesus because he said the exact opposite of what the world really

wanted to hear, which is, you're fine. You're doing great.

Everything's going well. Just try a little harder, do a little more.

Jesus came and his message was repent and believe.

And because of that, there is conflict, not only from the religious leaders,

which we'll see, but even his own family.

If Jesus would have come and just been a better Pharisee, an honest Pharisee,

an honest Bible teacher, required a little more of people than they did,

been a little kinder than they were, his family would have thought,

man, this is exactly what we were expecting.

This is exactly what we want. And for many people, when they become Christians,

that's what other people in their lives, one of them, well, if being a Christian

makes you a little bit nicer of a person, makes you a little more giving,

makes you a little kinder, makes you a little bit better husband,

a little bit better father, better mom,

that's great, we love that. We're happy for you.

But the second you start saying, no, no, me being a Christian means is that

Jesus Christ is Lord over everything.

That he is the Lord of my life and over everything. So much so that he's the

Lord of every single person that I meet.

So I call them to repent and believe. Again, you will be inviting conflict on yourself.

That's the first area of conflict we see as we move on. Here coming the scribes from Jerusalem.

So Jesus' local ministry, he's been dealing with some Pharisees,

some Sadducees, and now it's gotten word back to Jerusalem, the main hub, the main religious hub.

And what do they do? Well, they send what would be considered a delegation of

scribes, again, religious leaders. These are guys that, again, knew the Bible.

They quoted it. They wrote it down. They translated it. They're kind of the upper echelon, right?

They would have been maybe even the Pharisees, quote unquote, bosses.

That's not really how that hierarchy worked. That is how you can think of them.

And the Pharisees are probably saying, listen, we're trying to handle this guy.

We're trying to squelch this, but we're not having any luck.

And so, again, they send back to Jerusalem and say, hey, can you send us a delegation

to help us out here? And what do they do?

Well, his family thinks he's mad and they just think that he's bad.

They say he cast out demons by the power of demons. He's possessed by Beelzebul,

but just a way to say Satan himself.

Now, Beelzebul, there's a huge study you can do on that word.

It was a false god that other people attribute it to, but it was the false god

that had Satan behind it.

And so essentially what they're saying for our purposes this morning is he's

possessed by Satan himself.

And that's why he's doing that. Now, it's interesting. They don't try and come

and make his message wrong.

They don't try and combat him on any sort of logical terms because they can't.

What are they going to show up and say, you know, this Jesus guy,

he's really not healing people.

When the guy that couldn't walk is walking by them and he's like,

yeah, he is. I couldn't walk yesterday.

The guy with the withered hand would reach over and slap them and be like,

you know why I could do that? Because he healed my hand. I couldn't do that the other day.

There's verifiable miracles. There's verifiable cases of him casting out demons.

People have already heard him teach and they're telling the Pharisees,

listen, this guy is teaching with authority like we've never heard before.

They can't deny his message. Again, his message, his methods,

or his means. They can't do that. So what do they do?

They attribute those things to the devil.

They attribute those things to Satan.

He has come, Jesus has come to save sinners, to eat with them and to walk with them.

And they have come to keep sinners away, to tell sinners that if you wanna come

be a part of the religious elite, if you wanna come closer to God,

you need to fix yourself.

And Jesus has come to say, I'll fix you. And they have a huge issue with that.

Number one, because it upsets the apple cart for them. Their whole lives are

built around being superior to everyone else.

But I think number two, even more so, they don't want to admit they need him.

They don't want to look at Jesus and say, he's right. We're sinners. We're wrong.

We're the problem. That's the real rub for people with Jesus.

The real rub for people with Jesus is, well, for me to come to Jesus means I

have to admit it that I'm the issue, that it's not my mom and my dad,

that it's not my grandma or grandpa. It's not my siblings.

It's not the friend that betrayed me. It's not the school I went to.

It's not the person that did me wrong. It's not the tragedy that took place in my life.

None of those things are the reason that I'm in the position I'm in.

The reason that I'm in the position I'm in is because I'm a sinner,

because I have sin, because the sin that's in me is the only thing that's going to condemn me to hell.

That's the issue. And the Pharisees hate that. The scribes hate that.

It's important, again, that this is not a small disagreement.

This is not a parsing of terms.

This isn't a study of two like-minded Christians who have a different take on

the end times, who have a different take on creation. That's not what this is.

This is two diametrically opposed views of how to come to God,

and one is the truth, and one is a lie.

And the irony is the Pharisees who claim that Jesus does what he does out of

Satan's power are sons of Satan themselves.

Again, maybe one of the quickest ways to root out evil teachers is do they want

you to be like them or do they want you to be like Christ? Because there is

a difference. There is a difference.

Evil teachers, sinful teachers, demonic teachers, what they will want you to

do is become more like them.

If you were more like me, God would bless you. You ever heard that before?

If you would do what I did, then God would give you this. If you would come

to this church and do these things and act this way and dress this way and sing

this way and worship this way, then God would bless you.

That's not what God has called us to do. The gospel is repent and believe in

Jesus and become more like him. And that's going to look different for everybody.

Now, what is the source of this conflict?

Mark has already used quite a bit of language from Genesis. Remember,

he starts Mark by saying the beginning of the gospel, the exact same phrase

that begins your Bible, in the beginning.

God's doing a new thing. But a verse that we've studied quite a bit in here, Genesis 3.15,

after Adam and Eve sin in the garden, talking to the serpent,

he says, I will put enmity, I will put strife.

You could say, I will put conflict between you, the serpent,

and the woman, Eve, and between your offspring, the Pharisees,

and her offspring, singular, her offspring, Jesus Christ.

He, Christ, shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heels.

The entire Bible, you could argue, is just making the case that this verse is true.

Every single conflict that you see in the Bible has its root right here. Every single one.

It's true of every conflict that you read about in history, every conflict you've

ever seen, and every conflict that you're in right now has its roots in that verse.

Both at the macro level, whether it's nation against nation,

right? Sometimes that's serpent against serpent.

Sometimes it's the seed of the woman versus the seed of the serpent,

but nation against nation, country against country, whether it's on the micro

level, person versus person, husband versus life, brother versus brother,

coworker versus coworker.

All of them at the core of who they are have at the root, listen,

there has been conflict since the moment sin entered the world.

If you ever want to take on a monumental task, Augustine wrote a book called

The City of man versus the city of God.

It's a book that everybody tells you they've read, and most of those people are lying.

And if you don't know why I'm saying that, go pick up a copy on Amazon. The thing is a tome.

And I'm not saying don't read it. I'm just saying, take your time.

But Augustine's argument is they're building the city of man,

which is the seat of the serpent.

God is building his own city, and those two cities will always be in conflict,

because one has God as its king and one has Satan as its prince.

On a practical level, this should really help us out when we watch the news.

This should really help us out when we live our lives and we come in contact

with conflict. We shouldn't be surprised.

We like to think that because of our technological advantages,

because of how smart we think we are, because of how far we've come in certain

ways, or because some Miss USA pageant lady got up there and was like,

I just want world peace. And we're all like, amen, I want world peace too.

No matter how far we think we've come, no matter how much we look back at history

and go, man, how dumb were those people?

It turns out we can't solve this problem on our own.

No matter how much ease of access to food and water we create,

no matter how much wealth we can distribute to people, no matter how much comfort

we can offer to people, we cannot solve the conflict on our own.

We are the source of that conflict, not the solver of it.

If you don't believe me, next time you're tempted to look across the nation

or across the world or at your own coworkers and say, man, why can't they figure it out?

Why can't they just get along? Why can't they get over it? Why can't they not

have this conflict in their lives?

Look at your own life. Look inside your own self.

Have you been able to solve all of your inner conflict, all of your anger and

all of your lusts and all of your jealousy and all of your cruel thoughts and

all of your self-control issues?

Has anyone in this room, anyone in the history of mankind, not named Jesus Christ,

been able to solve even the conflict in their own hearts? The answer to that is no.

No. Why? Because you have a sin

problem and you can't fix a sin problem on your own. You can cover it up.

You can put a coat on it. You can do other good things, but your sin problems

are still your own sin problems.

And it turns out that there's sin problems everywhere. Now, what is Jesus going to do to this argument?

Well, he's first going to point out that their logic is really bad,

right? Their logic is really bad.

He says he called to them and said to them. So it's almost like they were off

telling everybody else that.

Jesus saw them as like, hey, you sound real cool talking to everybody else.

Why don't you come talk to me about it?

Right. He's confronting the conflict. There's a practical lesson in there,

right? He's confronting conflict and he says, how can Satan cast out Satan?

If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.

The house is divided against itself. That house will not be able to stand.

And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand,

but it's coming to an end, right? Pretty simple logic by Jesus.

Pretty simple. If a nation has a bunch of civil wars, they don't handle that.

It's not going to be a nation very long. If a family has a lot of internal conflict

and it's not eventually handled, it's not dealt with, they won't be acting like

a family for very long. That's just the logic.

He says, if Satan is against himself, well, Satan's kingdom is going to fall

and Satan's kingdom is not going to fall that way.

And what Jesus does is he says, Satan's kingdom is not divided against itself.

That's not why it's going to fall.

Now, Jesus uses his good logic. This is how it's going to fall. Verse 27 says,

no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man.

Then indeed he may plunder his house. So what's the idea Jesus says?

Listen, I'm not casting out demons by the power of Satan. That would be ridiculous.

What I am doing is I'm tying up the strong man, right?

If we all got together to decide we were to go rob a place, not saying we should,

we're not that strapped for cash yet. If we get there, we'll have a business

meeting. We'll talk about it.

We'll find out who's really ride or die in here is what I'm saying.

But if we all got together and decided to do that, we said, we're going to go into this guy's house.

He's got some security guards. He's a big, strong guy himself.

What's the first thing we're doing when we get inside?

What? That's not the first thing we're doing. Taking out the guards.

He's done this before, right? We're taking out the guards.

We're tying these guys up. Whatever we need to do, we're incapacitating the

person that can incapacitate us.

If we go in the house to plunder some goods, we want to make sure that the people

that can tie us up, that can plunder our goods are tied up. They're taken care of.

That's Jesus's logic. Now, what are the goods that Jesus is talking about? People.

People are the goods. So do you see the picture that Jesus is painting?

There's a strong man who is Satan and in his house, right? Paul calls the world.

This is the prince of the power of the air. This is Satan's world at this time.

Now, again, God rules over that sovereignly.

Satan can't do anything that God doesn't want him to do, but God has allowed

Satan some rule and some reign on this earth.

And what he's saying is Jesus has come to bind that strong man.

Well, who are the strong man's goods? It's you and me. It's the people in this story.

This again is so important to understand when you read your Bible.

You are not a free agent roaming about, able to do whatever you want.

If you are not in Christ, you are bound up in the strong man's house who is Satan.

You are a slave to him in his house, and he is stronger than you,

and he will not let you go of your own accord.

You do not get to go up to Satan and say, hey, Satan, I'd actually like to follow

Jesus now. And Satan goes, cool, cool, that's great, man.

Happy to know you, go on, love the Lord.

That's not the argument Jesus is making. Again, Jesus is saying these goods,

these people that Satan has caught up in sin.

They're owned by Satan. They're slaves to him. Paul makes this so clear that you are slaves to sin.

Jesus says this in John 8, 34. Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin, right?

Who habitually is in sin is a slave to sin.

You can look up the Greek on the word slave. It means slave.

It means that you are owned by it. It owns you. Do you see how important this

is when you read your Bible?

You see how different this is than the way some people talk about Christianity?

That you're just out willy-nilly walking around and it's just like,

man, you've got two choices to make. Which way are you gonna go?

Slaves don't make choices. They do not make choices.

Slaves are told where to go, what to do and how to do it.

Now, you may have some illusion of choice in terms of Satan may allow you to

have whatever job you want.

Satan may allow you to go to whatever church you wanna go to.

You. Satan may allow you to marry whoever you want, date whoever you want,

spend your money however you want, right?

There is freedom in that, but ultimately you are still on Satan's plantation

for lack of a better word. He owns you.

And Jesus' logic is for me to come and to plunder Satan's goods and to save

sinners, which is what he says he came to do, to save sinners.

The first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to walk onto Satan's house

or walk onto his land and I'm going to tie him up.

I'm going to bind him up. Why? Because I'm going to bind up the strong man so

that I can save my people from his grasp.

So that I can come and I can purchase them. Isn't that interesting?

Jesus doesn't say, I'm going to go tie him up and then steal people.

That would be unrighteous.

That would mean God is sinning. What Jesus says is, I'm going to tie him up

and then you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to purchase him. I'm going to purchase him.

I'm going to save him. Matthew 20, 28, a verse, again, you probably know,

the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to what?

Give his life as a ransom, ransom as a payment for many.

Again, you have to have this in your brain. It is so important that you understand that.

Because if you don't, when you worship the Lord in your heart of hearts,

you know what you'll be saying?

I'm so glad that I made the ultimate decision to do what I wanted to do.

That I give Jesus 99% of the glory, but I'm holding back my 1% because I did it.

The Bible's logic, Jesus' logic himself is, you had no power to save yourself. None. Zero.

Same way that a slave has no power to free themselves. None. Zero.

And Jesus has come to bind the strong man that owns you and me in sin and to make a payment,

a ransom payment of his blood on our behalf to buy us, to purchase us by his

blood to be in his family,

to be in his family.

Paul says it pretty clearly, right? He's no longer a slave to sin.

He's a slave to righteousness.

In other words, even when you're in Christ, it's not freedom to do whatever you want.

It's freedom to do what you couldn't do before, which is serve God,

love God, be in relationship with the God of the universe.

That's what you're free to do. He makes this point.

Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven, the children of man and whatever

blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never

has forgiveness of sins, but is guilty of an eternal sin.

Now, truth is, this is really directed at one group of people, the scribes.

That's who he's getting at here. When we talk about the unforgivable sin,

we need to remind ourselves that he's looking directly at people who have come

to claim that he's possessed by Satan.

Now, I think there is some people that are very sensitive to their understands

what you should be, right?

If you Google this question, there's a million Google responses of people answering

this question because it is a question people wanna know.

Have I committed the sin that I cannot be forgiven of?

Have I blasphemed against God in such a way that there is no forgiveness for me anymore?

But again, Jesus isn't talking to everyone there. He's talking to the scribes

directly to tell them, listen, if you ascribe to God.

Sorry, if you ascribed what God has done to Satan, that is an unforgivable sin.

And the main reason that that's an unforgivable sin is because what you are

doing is denying your only source of salvation.

You are denying the only way in which you can be saved. Not only are you denying

it, you're ascribing it to Satan.

He said, if you do that, it's unforgivable. It's unforgivable.

We know it's not just blaspheming because he saves Paul.

Paul is a blasphemer. Paul goes around persecuting the church.

And does God look at Paul and go, actually, you've just done too much. Can't use you.

Again, what I said at the beginning, where we miss most of this,

and the reason I think it's such a tragedy that every time you Google this verse

or read this passage, what everyone wants to talk about is, what can I not be forgiven of?

Is that Jesus' leading statement is, all sins will be forgiven the children of man.

All sins will be forgiven. every kind of sin.

Hebrews says it this way, he is able, that is Christ is able to save to the uttermost.

The Greek word there is the entire person.

It's holistic, it's physical, it's spiritual, it's heart, it's everything.

To the uttermost, those who draw near to God through him since he always lives

to make intercession for them.

In other words, he is able to forgive every single sin that you have ever committed,

every sin you will committed, and the most heinous sin that you could possibly

ever commit, Jesus says, I can forgive that. I can forgive that.

What will not be forgiven is if you deny the son.

If you deny Christ, if you deny who he is, that is the unforgivable sin.

And Jesus says this to the scribes in the presence of the people.

And again, we often read our Bibles like we're standing on a balcony and we're watching it.

Like, oh, let's see what Jesus has to say. Oh, the scribe said this.

Oh, look what the crowd's doing.

Like we're watching it. We rewind it. We fast forward. We rewind it fast.

That's kind of how we think.

We're not on the balcony. We're not in a proverbial TV show where we get to

pause and rewind and judge everyone else in there.

Jesus has set this before you this morning. He said it before me all week.

Jesus has set this in front of us. We have to deal with it.

You've probably heard of C.S. Lewis's liar, lunatic, Lord idea,

that Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or a Lord.

Let me just read you the actual quote. I don't know that many people have actually

read your Christianity. This is the actual quote, and then we'll go into it and we'll close.

C.S. Lewis says, I'm trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish

thing that people often say about Jesus.

They say, I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher,

but I don't accept his claim to be God.

That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the

sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

You need to be a lunatic on the level of a man who says he is a poached egg,

or else he would be the devil of hell.

Lewis commenting on this passage is basically saying this, either Jesus' family

is right and he's crazy, or the Pharisees are right and he is the devil himself,

or Jesus is right and he is the Lord.

And he puts that, again, he puts that not just in front of the people in this

story, not just in front of the scribes, he puts that in front of you and in front of me.

And I think where we live, that functionally speaking, many people will have

no problem saying out loud that Jesus is God.

Yeah, I think he's God. Yeah, I've heard that before. I'm okay with saying that.

I think he's a good guy. What I would argue is functionally and practically

in our lives, we often don't treat Jesus that way.

We practically teach him often as a good teacher.

Think of how you treat a good teacher. You go to class, you go somewhere, right?

Maybe you go to a conference, you go to learn something from someone.

And when you do that, what do you do? Well, you take the information that you

want from them, you learn what you wanna learn, and you go back and live your

life however you want, applying that knowledge to your life however you feel like you need to.

Does that sound like the way a lot of people follow Jesus? Yeah, it does, it does.

They'll come to the word. They'll read a few things. They'll learn a few things.

They'll go, man, that's really good. I really like what Jesus has to say about marriage.

I really like what Jesus has to say about money.

I really like how he tells me to deal with anger and lust. I really think that's good and healthy.

Almost like he's the creator of me. Man, that's crazy.

But then they go, or I should say we often go and we live our lives really however we want.

It's just whenever we get to a situation that we can apply some of that teaching,

we go, man, I'm really glad I knew that. I'm really glad I knew that.

That's very different than treating him like Lord and giving ourselves over

to everything that he says and giving ourselves over to be obedient unto death to him.

The saying, I'm not just going to take bits and pieces I like.

I'm not going to go and live my life however I want and try to apply Jesus's

moral teachings to my life.

I am going to submit my life over to him and wherever he says go, I go.

And if that invites conflict, so be it.

If that invites conflict with my own family, so be it.

If that invites conflict with other religious leaders, so be it.

I shouldn't be surprised by that. That's exactly what happened to Jesus.

This is what Christ has come to do. Again, he has not come to give you an option.

He has not come to simply make you an offer.

He has come to say, will you be my subject or will you be Satan's?

Those are the options.

That's maybe the most provocative thing that the Bible says that I think we

don't often think about very much.

But I think most people, honestly, if they're honest for themselves don't believe

because we live in America.

We have come and take it flags and we're free.

The Bible's statement that you are not free is an incredibly hard thing to understand.

And it takes a lot of conversations. And I realized that me saying it this morning

doesn't settle that in your mind and you're not going to walk away and be like,

oh yeah, it makes whole sense. I'm just not free.

I'm not trying to do that. Honestly, what I'm trying to do is make a case that's

going to make you go, I need to think about that more.

I need to consider what Jesus is saying here.

To consider that I'm a slave to sin or I'm a slave to righteousness and what that means.

I'm simply saying that on the surface, on the surface level,

chapter one of understanding this is you are a slave to sin or you are a slave to righteousness.

That is the Bible's message.

And Jesus has come not to simply give you a choice,

but to bind the strong man that has enslaved you and to purchase you and to

pay for your sins that you owe him and to pay the death that you owe him to

pay the penalty for your,

sorry, to pay the penalty for your sins that you rightly owe the devil.

Jesus has come to pay for them and purchase you out of his slave hold on you

and bring you into new life. That is what Jesus has come to do.

You say, well, how does that work? How do I do that? you repent and believe the gospel.

You turn from that and you believe that Jesus has come to do those things.

You say, Jesus, I cannot set myself free from slavery. I cannot do it.

And you have promised that you will forgive every sin that I have ever committed,

both in the past, currently, and in the future.

You have promised you do that. And Jesus, I trust you to do that.

I trust that you're strong enough. I trust that you're true.

I trust that you're right.

I would encourage you, if you've never done that, find someone to talk to about that.

Again, we've been asked about altar calls. I'm not a huge fan,

and this is why. It deserves a conversation. It deserves a conversation.

I want you to understand it. I want you to think about it.

If you have done that, if you would say, man, I believe that.

I believe that Jesus is buying the strongman, that he bought me out of slavery.

Let me just challenge you.

Live like he's your Lord. Live like he's your Lord. Don't pick and choose what

you obey. Don't pick and choose what you do.

Don't take the things that you like and let go of the things you don't.

Say, well, Jesus loves me, so it's fine. No.

Treat him like he's your Lord who loved you and gave himself up for you and

paid your ransom. Let's pray.

Father, again, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the chance to open the word.

God, it's a privilege and an honor every week for me to do that.

I pray that you never allow me to get tired of it, view it as a burden.

God, thank you for the people in this room. I pray that as we've read through

this passage in Mark, that we would be struck once again, first and foremost,

of the conflict that Christ endured on our behalf.

That even his own family thought he was crazy. His own brothers didn't believe him.

The Pharisees wanted to murder him, and the scribes wanted to call him the devil incarnate.

Did not shrink from that. He did not play the victim.

God, that He met them head on, that ultimately He allowed them to murder Him,

that He put up with slander, that He put up with gossip, that He put up with betrayal.

He endured all that on a cross so that He could ransom us from being slaves

to sin, that He could buy us from our slave master and invite us into His family.

God, I just thank you for that.

Pray that we would be people that are okay with conflict in our life because

that's what being a Christian invites.

Not that we would look for it, but that we would be resolved to handle it when it comes our way.

We would remind ourselves that all conflict is a result of sin entering the world.

The only solve for that conflict is Christ Jesus on his throne.

God, first and foremost, would we invite you to be the ruler of our hearts,

to sit on the throne of our hearts to, first and foremost, again,

get rid of the conflict in our own lives,

the own sins that live deep inside our hearts and souls, that you would sit

on the throne of our hearts and rule and reign in such a way that those conflicts

are handled on behalf of your strength and power and not our own.

And God, maybe more than anything, if there's someone in this room that's heard

this and has thought, man, I really think that I'm still a slave to sin,

God, that they would seek out the answers to that question this week.

That even now they could repent and believe the gospel, that their sins would

be forgiven, that you have bonded up the strong man who owns them and will have

received them and paid for them into your family.

We thank you for that. And I pray. Amen.