The Great Confession - Mark: The Messy Gospel

Okay, if you have your Bibles, turning your Bibles to Luke chapter 8.

Luke 8 · chapter mention

We are looking at the messy gospel.

We've been in the do you know how many messages we've done in Mark so far?

Anyone got a guess?

Okay, we've done 30.

Which sounds like that's not very much now that you had to say that kind of stuff.

But all right, whatever.

So anyway, 30 messages.

We're not gonna take 30 more.

We'll start moving because I wanted to lay foundations that we have right now.

But right now we're up in the Sea of Galilee, and last week we looked at the fact that Jesus went all the way from the Sea of Galilee up to Tyre and Sedon.

And in the future, we're gonna go to Israel together.

And some of you guys are gonna go with me, and we will go, not to Tyre and Sedan, but we'll go to places like Decapolis, and we'll go to places like Caesarea Philippi.

And Sean remembers that, and the Perkins, the whole family went with us to Israel the last time we went, and we went to Caesarea Philippi, and that's where we're gonna be today.

But last week we looked at the fact that Jesus went 50 miles out of his way to touch a demonized young girl who is a Gentile, heals her, and then comes right back.

And our message was that Jesus knows the language of the heart, and he will go out of his way to reach anyone who wants to know him.

Listen, Jesus had no time for cold hearts.

And he had all the time in the world for those who were hot for him.

He didn't care about their political background, he didn't care about the color of their skin, he didn't care about their ethnicity, he didn't care about their values, he looked at the heart.

And at the very core of whatever we get, and there's a lot we're gonna get, but whatever we get from Mark is this Jesus is after your heart.

We tend in our religious circles to look at the exterior, and Jesus always looked past that into the interior of one's heart.

And we saw last week what he will do if you're hungry for him and you're thirsty for him.

He'll come after you.

So Luke 8, 22 is where we left off.

So then he came to Beth Seda, and they brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him.

The biggest, most pronounced miracle of the New Testament is blindness.

Jesus is always doing blind people.

And he's touching them and he's healing them.

And it's interesting that in all the studies they've done, the number one fear, guess what?

The number one fear of disabilities is blindness.

People will say, hey, you can take my legs, you can take my arms, but don't give me blindness because there's so much fear of blindness.

So they bring this man and they brought him.

So I don't know if they brought him dragging him, that he's blind.

Yes.

What did I say?

Mark.

Yes.

Mark 8.22.

Thank you, Paul.

That's why I need the body of Christ, because I wrote here Luke 8, 22, and I'm right here in Mark.

Okay, verse 23.

So he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town.

And we looked at that last week.

I love that.

Jesus was always taking the person that he's going to minister to away from the crowd, respecting and honoring whatever he's praying about.

But look what he does next.

It's really nasty.

Remember before, like last week, he spat on his hand and put it on the guy's tongue.

When he had spit on his eyes and put his hands on him, he asked if he saw anything.

Jesus can do whatever he wants to do because he's Jesus.

And there's been actually some faith healers in the past that thought they were almost like Jesus.

Anyone heard of Smith Wigglesworth?

This guy was intense.

He regularly threw people against walls.

How would you like that?

I mean, he would take people who were demonized and he would sling them up against the wall and they'd get set free.

I mean, he did that.

He would take guys' glasses who needed prayer for their eyes and he would smash them on the ground and then he'd pray for them and they'd get their eyesight.

I mean, this dude was anointed.

I'll never forget a guy that was on cable TV when I was living in Georgia named Ernest Ansley.

Anybody heard of Ernest Ansley?

I'm seeing some, okay.

This guy, Ernest Aingsley.

And I would, and it was always right before we went to the Lutheran church.

So I've got my coat and my tie on, and I'm like super uncomfortable, and I've got little little black soul shoes, and I'm sitting there, and he's and he's just all over people, man.

I mean, he's spitting on them and he's pushing them over.

This is before there was, I mean, it was before it was in vogue to push people over.

I mean, he was doing it.

This is in the 60s, you know.

Now everybody pushes people over.

Like, boom! And if you don't push people over, you mean you're not even in the category of a faith healer.

But he was one of the only guys doing it.

And I don't know if he, I think he was from Alabama or something.

He had a southern accent, and he'd be he yelled.

I mean, he old had 15 syllables, you know, by the time he got done.

But anyway, he would do this thing, and I remember thinking, what a jerk.

I mean, what an idiot would do that.

And then I became a missionary to Japan, and I was raising financial support.

And as I was raising support, I was sitting down with this guy that dad, I think dad gave me the name.

I was challenging him to be a part of my prayer team for Japan.

And I said, What's your story?

Tell me your story of your relationship with the Lord.

And he says, You ever heard of Ernest Ansley?

And I said, Yeah.

And he said, That dude's anointed of God.

And I went, really?

And he said, Yeah.

He said, he walked into a meeting and he said, There's a spirit of nicotine on someone.

And if you got the spirit of nicotine, come forward.

And this guy, he was like five-pack a day nicotine-like demon.

That's what he had.

And he went there and he hammered him.

He just touched him, boom, Spirit of God hit him.

He goes down.

He never smoked another cigarette and he got saved that night.

What do you say?

So Jesus spits on people.

Smith Wigglesworth smashes glasses, and Ernest Angley knocks him over.

Guys, God can do whatever he wants to do in your life.

Okay?

So, but no spitting here.

That'd be if we could not do that, that'd be okay.

And he looked up and he said, I see men like trees walking.

This is the only passage in all the Bible where there's not an instantaneous healing.

Now, there is one where he's casting out a demon and he cast it out twice before it left.

But as far as the actual healing, he doesn't get the whole healing yet.

So he's seeing vertical, blurry images.

That seems to be what he's seeing.

Then he put his hands on his eyes again and made him look up, and he was restored, and he saw everyone clearly.

And in the in the Greek here it means glistening edge.

The idea of a glistening edge.

He's seeing perfectly.

Then he sent him away to his house saying, Neither go into the town nor tell anyone in the town.

So think about this.

You've never seen anything in your life before, complete darkness, and the first face you see with a glistening edge is Jesus.

Is that cool or what?

Unless you're his wife.

I thought about that later.

The first face he's seen is Jesus.

And then he goes and he sees his wife.

I don't know about you guys, but if you were blind, I don't know who you'd have married, but she's got a great personality.

Okay?

But you just saw Jesus.

So everything from that point is sort of downhill.

I can see, honey.

I mean, I don't know.

But isn't this really how God works in our lives, in that we see gradually?

Isn't that what sanctification is all about?

I was with a young man today and we were talking about this.

Because he's coming into all that Christ has for him.

Nobody gets it all.

We don't get completely healed of hardly anything in our lives.

We get a touch, we experience God in an area, and this guy I was telling you about, I mean, he was completely healed of this uh addiction to nicotine.

But let me tell you, as he told me his story, he wasn't completely healed of a lot of other stuff in his life.

And so, church, you're all in a process of sanctification.

And we all carry some shame and we all carry burdens of our heart, and we all have areas where we're still dealing with stuff, right?

And so it was with this man.

And so I look at this and I go, you know, look to the face of Jesus.

You can't heal you, but he can heal you.

And the more you gaze in worship, the more you gaze in your quiet time with the Lord, the more you gaze with having good, godly, cool friends that will support you and be allies with you, gradually you start seeing a little more clearly, a little more clearly in your lives.

So God's changing us gradually.

I mean, you look at Israel, Israel comes into the promised land, and Jesus, the Spirit of God, clears out the land city by city.

He didn't give them the whole land, he promised them the whole land, but he took it gradually.

That's what he does in our life.

He it's city by city in our life.

Don't give up.

Don't quit.

Fight for that ground.

And guess what?

You'll lose some of the ground that you have.

Fight back, get it back.

Get it back this year.

That's the way of the Lord.

Well, now our whole process changes.

Jesus really, in this in this work of the Spirit in the Gospel of Mark, verse 27, um, there's a there's a huge change now in Mark because he's preparing them now for his death.

He's only six months away from entering into Jerusalem and going to the cross.

Now, Jesus and his disciples went out of the town of Caesarea Philippi.

And this is not the Caesarea that's on the sea, this is up around the Sea of Galilee.

And on the road he asked his disciples, saying to them, Who do men say that I am?

So they answered, John the Baptist, but some say Elijah, and others one of the prophets.

So after three years of ministry, after countless miracles and signs and wonders and healings, and confounding the Pharisees and the scribes, people still haven't figured out who Jesus is, and they've literally seen him.

I mean, we study him from thousands of years in the past, but they were with him and they still don't know who he is.

Oh, is he in John the Baptist?

He's kind of like Elijah.

Is he a prophet, faith healer, the enlightened one, an avatar, ascended master?

And every Christmas and Easter, count on it, guys.

Watch Newsweek, Time, U.S.

News and World Report, Wall Street Journal, there'll be some big article about who is Jesus.

I've lived long enough to see enough of these.

They always say the same thing.

It's so uncool to say he's the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

It's so uncool to say, oh, the Bible actually is the greatest historical document of all time, more verification than any other document that we have, and it tells us who he is.

No, he's.

We want the historical Jesus.

How many of you heard of Albert Schweitzer?

Anybody heard of Albert Schweitzer?

Albert Schweitzer was a great missionary, turn of the century, into the early part of the 20th century, great man.

I mean, I think he loved God, I think he loved Jesus, but he he wrote a book called The Quest for the Historical Jesus.

And he was the second of three from the 19th century to the to really up to the latter part of the 20th century.

There were three quests for the historical Jesus times, but he actually entitled it the quest for the historical Jesus.

And his whole thing was, who is Jesus?

I mean, really, let's get down to what we can find out about Jesus because he was such a such a master.

He was such a he was such a healer.

But, you know, um he couldn't have been God.

So who was he?

And so then that dovetailed into all this stuff called the anybody heard of the Jesus Seminar?

So the Jesus Seminar became big in the 60s for the quest for the for the uh for the uh historical Jesus, the betrayal of Jesus.

And it's always, the conclusions that always come by these scholars and academians is that, well, I think it's best framed in the last two paragraphs, can be summed up in one sentence that I've put into put together of the last two paragraphs of Schweitzer's book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus.

Here's what he says: quote, Jesus of Nazareth will not suffer himself to be modernized as an historical figure.

He comes to us as one unknown.

Really?

We really can't know Jesus.

So who do people say that I am?

So he said to them, but who do you say that I am?

And Peter answered and said, You are the Christ.

Now, folks, it's just a miracle that that was Peter who said that.

I want you to know.

He finally said something that makes some sense in the Bible.

Church, this is the most important question of your life.

Who is Jesus in your life?

Is he Lord?

Is he Lord?

Let me ask you this.

Is he Lord of your alarm clock?

I don't know about you, but I I am exhausted almost every morning when I quote unquote try to wake up.

Is he Lord of your conversations?

Is he Lord of your recreation?

Is he Lord of your friendships?

Is he Lord of your relationships?

Is he Lord of your thought processes?

Is he Lord of your music?

Is he Lord of your diary?

Tonight, we're gonna take communion.

And if you're not a follower of Christ, we would ask you to refrain from taking communion because communion is for believers.

Those who've made a faith commitment to be a Jesus follower.

Some of you tonight don't know if you're a follower of Jesus.

And I would ask you at the end of this message that you would become a disciple of Christ.

I'm gonna give you that chance at the end of the sermon to say, yes, I want to follow Christ.

Not church, not the road.

The road didn't go to Calvary for you.

The church didn't go to Calvary for you, Jesus did.

To become a Jesus disciple, to join the revolutionary cause that has changed the world.

Communism has come and gone, and it is floundering right now.

The despotism of the 1930s and the 1940s of European fascism is history.

It's on the stock pile, brittle sticks, burned up of historical times of 50, 60 years ago.

Great movements come and go, and yet Christianity and the cause of Christ continues to grow and is growing at the most rapid pace of any movement in the history of the world in Africa, in Asia, and South America.

Would you not want to be a revolutionary with Christ?

Who do you say that I am?

Well, turn in your Bibles, keep your finger in Mark, not Luke.

Thanks, Paul.

But go to Matthew chapter 16, and I want you to look at the same exact passage as Matthew depicts it, Matthew 16, 15, and I like the way Matthew unpacks it.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

I find it interesting that Mark was a disciple of Peter, and Mark would have been interviewing Peter to write the Gospel of Mark.

And I wonder if the humility of Peter caused him to delete the part we're going to read in Matthew.

Because remember, Matthew's an eye witness, Mark is not.

So this is the way Matthew picks up the same part of our story.

He said to them, But who do you say that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Jesus answered and said to Peter, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood is not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heavens.

Remember, he's leaving this out when he's dictating to Mark.

And I also say to you that you are Peter, you are Peter, Petra, Petros.

You are Peter, Petros, and I say to you, Peter, on this rock, Petra, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it, and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

So he's saying, Your name, which means small rock or pebble, will be built upon the solid rock, the foundation stone, me, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And I'm going to give you power and authority to bind and to loose.

Last week, there were a number of people who came forward who needed healing.

We prayed for healing, and my understanding this week is they got healed.

Now, God did that.

We didn't do that, but we have been given, listen, everybody, don't miss this.

You, as a Jesus follower, have been given this power and authority to bind and loose.

That means you can bind the enemy's influence when you pray over people.

It means you can lose people even from demonic powers when you release them through the command and the prayer of that saint.

So I'm preaching the gospel right now.

And some of you in here are going to stand at the end because you're gonna say, I want to be a Jesus follower.

Because what's happening is the power of God is coming, and there's authority and power that is binding the works of the enemy over your life, and it's loosening freedom.

You, every one of you in this room, have that.

That authority if you're a Jesus disciple.

Now that's pretty radical stuff.

That means we could be, I was at Shops at Barbrogata.

You could be at Shops at Barbrogate at Panera Bread.

And if you I'll tell you what happened.

We're Panera Bread.

I'm with this guy.

We're having kind of a Bible study together and we're talking.

And this guy I've never met before overhears our conversation, stands up, and he was really tall, and he says, I got a word for you.

And I said, Alright.

It wasn't for me, it was for this other guy.

And he gives this word and it's right on.

And then he sat down, he finished his coffee, he left.

Something was loosed in the heart of the recipient because this guy was willing to proclaim with authority and power from Christ.

Guys, you have that power.

You have the power and the authority from Christ to bind and to lose.

So turn back to Mark 8.

So Peter leaves this out when he's dictating to Mark, but I felt like Matthew's description was important.

Mark 8, 30.

Then he strictly warned them that they should tell no one about him.

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.

This is not good news.

This is not good news.

They can't believe it, I'm sure.

So he says, first of all, who do you say that I am?

His identity.

And then secondly, he says, look, I'm going to go and suffer.

I'm going to go to the cross at Calvary.

And they've got to be thinking, wait, you walk on water.

You command storms to be stopped.

You cast out demons.

And every one of the authorities that we've seen of the scribes and the Pharisees, you can outargue all of them.

And you're going to go and die and suffer?

He spoke this word openly.

And then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

Verse 33.

But when he had turned around and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get behind me, Satan, for you're not mindful of the things of God, but of the things of men.

It's interesting if you have a King Many of you use the New King James Version.

That's what I use.

So it doesn't say it this way.

But the King James Version, the authorized version, says, it says here, you are not savoring of the things of God, but you savoreth, you savoreth the things of men.

I like that.

It's like he's saying, look, if you have an appetite for the things of this world and the things of men, you're going to miss what my calling is.

This is why I've been sent.

I'm going to die for the sins of the world.

I'm going to suffer.

I am going to give up my life for the people of this earth.

That's why I came.

Everything that I've done up to this point is to point to that fact.

So that's why it's a revolutionary Christmas coming up.

Because a revolutionary was born at Christmas.

Because he came to bring a revolution that could not have happened without Calvary.

And Peter is saying you're savoring the things of men.

You have an appetite for the things of men.

Some of you have an appetite for dark chocolate.

This Christmas, I don't know what it is, but there must be a lot of popularity toward dark chocolate.

Because it seemed like everywhere I turned, there's dark chocolate.

And we all know that the antioxidants that they've discovered in that make it very good for you.

What are you laughing about?

Everybody knows that.

So it's now dark chocolate with peppermint on top.

I was chowing down on that at the Perkins house last night with a cup of coffee.

It was awesome.

But he's saying here, look, you when you savor the things of men, Satan might be behind it.

Get behind me, Satan.

And I actually don't think he was just rebuking, because if you read the passage well, it says he turned.

So he turns from Peter and he rebuked Satan.

So he's rebuking Peter, but he's rebuking all of them, and he's really rebuking Satan.

And here's what's amazing about this: it's actually encouraging, but discouraging.

The encouraging thing is that if Peter can be this much of an idiot, and he still got used by God to be the petros that God built his church as a part of the coming of Christ, he can use you and me.

You're idiots.

I'm an idiot.

But in Christ, you've been given the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

So when you listen to the accuser of the brethren when he comes your way, you need to remind him hey, he used Peter.

He can use me.

He's given me the keys of the kingdom of God.

I command you to leave right now in the name and the blood of Jesus.

Verse 34.

And when he had called the people to himself with his disciples also, he said to them, whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

Wait.

If the waves obey you, if Satan obeys you, if demons obey you, what is this about self-denial?

And he never said self-denial, by the way.

He said denial of self.

In the martial arts, you have self-denial.

In the Marines, you have self-denial.

As a Navy SEAL, you have self-denial.

But he's saying deny yourself.

Because, church, there's only one throne in your heart, and either God's on it or you are.

And he's saying, I want the throne of your heart.

I want to be Lord over your life.

Come and follow me.

Moving self out of the way.

Savoring the things of Jesus.

We're going to go into worship in a few minutes.

And I want you to savor Jesus and worship.

That means we're going to close our eyes.

If you know the song, you're going to close your eyes.

I'm going to encourage you to open your arms up like this.

And savor the beauty of Jesus.

Take your eyes off who?

Yourself.

Not self-denial, denial of self.

Take you off the throne of your life, put Christ on the throne and worship him.

What you're saying is I'm surrendering to Christ.

And Lord, there's a ton of stuff in my life that are the savorings of men.

But I can't change me, but you can change me.

And right now I'm going to commit myself to savoring you in worship.

And you're going to come to communion where the where symbolically and even spiritually is the blood of Christ and the body of Christ broken for you.

And he's changing you.

Guys, don't miss this.

Don't miss this.

You're being changed every time you're in corporate worship.

You're being changed every time you have a quiet time.

You're being changed every time you pray about something.

You're being changed, you're seeing, as it were, men looking like trees, but there's a visual transformation happening in your heart.

Don't quit.

Keep pressing in.

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it.

How many times have I heard people say, I'm losing it?

I'm losing it.

Yes, you are.

Please give up and lose it.

I wish you would.

I'm losing it.

Good.

Lose it.

Quit trying to find it.

Quit trying to fight for it.

Surrender it.

Lose it, please.

The church is made of losers who found Jesus and became winners.

I love losers.

I dig losers.

Losers are my kind of people.

I don't like winners.

You guys have heard me say this before, and I'll just say it this way.

I don't like people who've got it all together.

Because they're fakers, they're posers.

Because none of us have it all together.

I remember one time I was out to lunch with this guy and he was talking about how Jesus, he just loves Jesus, and he just kept loving Jesus.

And all he could talk about is how he loved Jesus and he loves this about Jesus.

And finally said, could you please be quiet for just a second?

And he said, Why?

I said, nobody loves Jesus that much.

Be real, please.

Right?

I mean, we don't love Jesus all the time.

So let's quit acting like we do.

But you know what we can do?

We can realize that we're losing our life for Christ.

We've got these dark places of our heart.

And I want you to come to communion tonight, and I want you to give those to the Lord.

Give the dark places of your heart.

Give your shame to the Lord.

And he'll cover it.

And you won't be massively healed and fall down and foam at the mouth and hear this southern accent about be healed.

But you know what?

You'll get a little bit of healing.

You'll see a slight work, and you keep coming, and you keep coming, and Christ will do his healing this year.

He'll do a fresh work.

Don't quit.

Don't give up.

Fight for your healing.

Fight for the kingdom.

And watch what he'll do.

So lose it.

Just lose it.

Just be a loser this year.

And in Christ, put on his righteousness.

In Christ, put on the cross.

In Christ, let his love and grace be formed in you.

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?

Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him, the Son of Man, also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels.

And so we look at the lives of gained the whole those who've gained the whole world.

The Hollywood movie stars, the jocks, the billionaires.

And I mean, there's exceptions.

There's some you're like, wow, they've like, it's always a big, big presentation in People magazine that there's actually a Hollywood couple that's been married for more than five years.

It's like, whoa! I mean, this is like, you almost want to worship at their feet because they're they're really doing things right.

They're all divorced, they're all addicted.

And they've got everything that the bait of Satan says we want, and it all is crap.

Sorry for the use of that word, but I think it's a good word.

I think it describes what the enemy does.

It's chocolate-covered crap.

It tastes really good when you bite into it.

Or, here's what's interesting.

With Christ, it's the other way around.

He says, You follow me, you gotta lose your life.

So he makes it hard on the front end, and it gets greater as you move along.

Satan makes it easy on the front end, then he gives you a carrot and he eats you alive, and you end up suicidal, addicted, and trashed.

So we're gonna take communion tonight.

Come to Jesus.

Come to Jesus all the way.

I want you to come up here, and we are really 21st century.

We've got gluten-free bread.

And then we've got my favorite gluten full.

And so the gluten full is right here, the gluten-free is there.

I'm gonna just we go into worship.

I'm gonna give you the freedom just to come up anytime you want and take the elements.

It's a free offering while we're doing worship for you to come up.

But let's just close our eyes right now.

Would all of you just bow your heads and close your eyes?

And some of you know that now is the time for you to truly become a Jesus disciple.

I'm not talking about churchianity, I'm not even talking about classic Christianity.

I'm talking about being a disciple of Jesus.

And you may even be saved tonight, but you know that there is a call in your life to a lordship with Christ, that it's time to actually make a profession by standing, which takes courage to say, I want to be a disciple of Jesus.

Would you stand right now if that's you?

Not just salvation, but discipleship.

You're gonna say, I want to be a revolutionary with Jesus.

Would you stand?

It's time to follow Christ.

It's time to quit playing games.

It's time to quit posing and pretending and follow Jesus.

Doesn't mean you're perfect, doesn't mean you even have your act together.

It actually means that probably you're smart enough to know you don't have it and you need Christ fully in your heart.

Come all the way.

Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it.

It's the greatest discovery and the greatest adventure you could ever have.

Is that you?

So Father, right now, to these that are standing, we bless in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

You see their hearts, you see their countenance, you see the longings, and God, would you meet them in a mighty way tonight?

Father, may they experience your love and your grace.

May they experience being a disciple, wholehearted disciple in a new and fresh and powerful and life-giving way.

Let's all stand right now and we're gonna worship.

And as we do so, I just uh invite you to come up if you're a Jesus follower and take communion.

Um listen, if you're not a Jesus follower or you don't know where you stand with the Lord tonight, we just ask you to refrain because the communion elements are for Jesus followers.

But come up, you can do it as a family or individually, whatever you desire.

We encourage you to take the blood and the body of Christ and let's worship together.