Mark's Gospel Part 16 - Glory, Suffering and Trust

Before I read from the Bible and pray, here is a real job advert.

Listen to this.

Children, I want you to listen in.

Would you like to do this job?

Okay, here we go.

Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months in complete darkness, constant danger, safe return, doubtful.

So that was Ernest Shackleton.

Early in the 20th century, he was looking for men to join him on his new polar expedition.

Would you be interested?

Now Jesus says something a little bit similar.

If you were with us last week, do you remember Mark chapter 8 and verse 34?

Mark 8 · chapter mention

If anyone would come after me, says Jesus, if anyone would come after me, if anyone would be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

We saw, didn't we, that following Jesus costs nothing.

You cannot buy your way to God.

Praise God for the gospel, it is entirely free.

And following Jesus, it costs everything.

He wants you to give over to him total control of your life, and that brings with it a cost.

So why would you lose your life for Jesus and the gospel?

We're working through Mark chapters 8, 9, and 10 at the moment.

Mark 8 · chapter mention

It's a manual on Christian discipleship.

Jesus is walking to the cross.

His disciples were walking to Jerusalem with him and learning from him what it means to be a follower.

And it is the best of all lives following Jesus.

It actually is life.

When you give over the steering wheel of your life entirely to Christ, you save your life.

But there is a cost.

So you are a Muslim background believer.

There is an obvious cost to following Jesus.

For most of us, following Jesus will mean some kind of opposition, and chiefly it will mean a constant war with our own desires.

That cost it will be worked out in the kind of lifestyle that we choose or reject, and in the relationships that we pursue or don't pursue.

So we're to imagine ourselves on the road to Jerusalem with the disciples, we're learning from the Lord Jesus.

What is life like if you follow Him?

And specifically, why would you lose your life for Him and for the Gospel?

Now, before we read from Mark 9, which is the passage we're preaching this morning, I'd like us to read from Exodus chapter 24.

Exodus 24 · chapter mention

So if you have a church Bible that's on page 65, Exodus chapter 24.

Exodus 24 · chapter mention

When we are all there in our Bibles, let's bow our heads and I will pray.

Father in heaven, uh, we thank you for your wonderful word, the Bible.

We thank you that you open up your lips and you speak to us.

We ask that you would show us Jesus and give us ears to hear Jesus, that we would walk with him.

And we ask that for Jesus' name's sake.

Amen.

So let's listen to uh the word of God.

Exodus chapter 24, verses 9 to 18.

Exodus 24:9–18

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up and they saw the God of Israel.

There was under his feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.

And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel.

They beheld God and ate and drank.

The Lord said to Moses, Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction.

So Moses rose with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God, and he said to the elders, Wait here for us until we return to you.

And behold, Aaron and her are with you.

Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them.

Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain.

The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days.

And on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.

Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.

Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain.

And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

Turn on in your Bibles, please, to Mark's Gospel.

So Mark chapter nine in the Black Church Bibles, that is page 844.

As I read, spot what is similar with what I just read from Exodus 24.

So let's listen to God's word, Mark chapter 9.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

And Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.

And after six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

And he was transfigured, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them.

And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus.

And Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good that we are here.

Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud.

Listen to him.

And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them, but Jesus only.

Thanks be to God for his word to us today.

The rest of the passage we'll read just a little bit later on.

If you follow Jesus, you will not lose.

If you follow Jesus, you are not on the losing side.

The Christian faith is not a permanent defeat, permanent loss, a kind of masochism.

That is the point of what the disciples saw on the Mount of Transfiguration.

You could sum it up in one word, glory.

And the point is this Jesus' followers will share in Jesus' glory.

So in the same breath that the Lord said to them, You must carry a cross, he also said to them, Some of you will see the kingdom of God come with power, not weakness, but with power.

And that is what Peter and James and John were blessed to see on the Mount of Transfiguration, the kingdom of God coming in power, or a glimpse of it.

They got this extraordinary sight, and we, through their words, we get a glimpse of what Peter later on would call majesty, majestic glory.

And what they saw was the Lord Jesus.

But he was transfigured.

Now, children, that word transfigured, it simply means he was changed, and boy, was he changed.

That he was still Jesus.

Those men with him, they knew the Lord.

But what they were blessed to see was Jesus as he truly is, the veil taken away.

He was shining, he was blazing, he was fiery in his whiteness.

We can't really imagine it.

There were some other people in Scripture who have been privileged to see something like this.

Think of Daniel chapter 7, the vision of one who was like a son of man.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

Sounds familiar.

The Lord Jesus blazing in holiness.

Or Revelation chapter 1, John's vision of Jesus in his glory.

Revelation 1 · chapter mention

So there, there on the on the mountain, there was the Lord Jesus, the beloved Son of the Father.

So we spoke of him in the creed, didn't we?

Of one substance with the Father.

God the Son, the second person of the Trinity in all of his glory on earth as a man, but now with Godness revealed, previously veiled, now revealed.

And it was no accident that the Lord revealed himself like this on a high mountain.

It was always so.

That's why we read from Exodus 24.

Do you see the similarities?

They went up, they saw God.

There were three men, then there was just Moses alone.

Six days, the glory of cloud, the glory of God descends in a cloud, and God speaks.

So that God, that God who came down on Sinai, the God whose fiery glory was revealed on that mountain of transfiguration, that's what we were made for.

To be with glory, to behold glory.

We were made for that.

That's what we were saved for.

If we're Christian people, we were saved for this, to behold the glory of God.

We are glory seekers.

And through the gospel, we are directed to true glory.

There is nothing better, nothing more beautiful.

Back in the Old Testament, it's why the Lord gave his Old Testament church a tabernacle.

It was actually like Mount Sinai, the mountain flipped over onto its side.

You would go further and further in through different zones, just like you'd go further and further up the mountain as you get closer to the glory of God.

Peter's response on the Mount of Transfiguration was a very normal one and a right one.

He was terrified.

Ordinarily, people do not see God and live.

Some Bible commentators they say that his suggestion, let's build three tents.

They say that his suggestion was a bit off beam.

I'm not so sure.

Literally, he says, why don't we build three tabernacles?

Why don't we build three tents of meeting?

God has already done one glorious tent of meeting back in the Old Testament.

Won't he give us another glorious tent of meeting now?

And Peter wants to be with him, to meet with him, even in the terror.

He knew that on Mount Sinai they saw God, they ate and drank with God.

Let us meet with you here.

Now, if you are a Christian, man or woman, boy or girl, it is your desire, it is my desire, most of all, to fellowship in the glory of God.

You know, to behold as much of the godness of God as we can bear through the gospel, through the Sun.

And wonderfully, that is our destiny.

Um, to see the Lord, to see Christ face to face, um, in as much of his glory as we will be able to behold.

You know, we will be transformed on that day, such that we can enjoy and revel in and dwell in his immediate presence.

And that will be our forever.

Yeah, we will never leave that mountain.

Now, this is this is an amazing passage that we have before us here in Mark 9.

We then read how Moses and Elijah appear, these long-dead prophets, the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, but resurrection power is somehow at work.

What did they talk about with Jesus?

We're not told.

Boy, I wish I knew.

But then there is another voice that we do hear.

Uh it's the voice of the Father, God the Father.

He speaks from the glory clouds.

Listen to him.

So here, the Lord Jesus, he is my beloved son, listen to him.

And as if to underline that point, Moses and Elijah, they are then gone.

There is just Jesus.

You know, the radiant, glorious Jesus, just him, listen to him.

And that's the punchline, really.

Listen to him.

In particular, when we struggle with those words of Jesus that make demands of us, when we struggle with Jesus' demands to follow him, to put our footsteps into his footsteps in costly ways, listen to him.

Those, after all, they're the words that Jesus has just been saying.

Take up your cross and follow me.

Listen to him.

But here is the one we follow, um, the beloved son, the glorious God.

So, however strong the pull of the world may be, I wonder how your following of the Lord Jesus has been this week.

We will all have felt the tug of the world.

We want to go Jesus' way, but also sin the world and the devil, they want to drag us another way.

But there is an infinite glory in Christ, and we will get to share in that one day.

But then, Peter, James, and John, they had to leave the mountain, didn't they?

They had to come down.

I bet they didn't want to.

For all of the fearfulness, glory, who would want to leave glory?

But they had to.

And it is helpful to remember this is not where we yet live.

So, on their way down, what happened?

Okay, Bibles open.

Children, got your Bibles?

So put your learning sheets down for a moment.

Look in your Bibles.

I'm going to read Mark chapter 9, verses 9 to 13.

Mark 9:9–13

And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean.

And they asked him, Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?

And he said to them, Elijah does come first to restore all things.

And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt?

But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.

They must have been buzzing as they came down the mountain, those three disciples.

But then verse 9 comes like a massive bump.

Don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone what you have seen until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.

And this conversation that ensues between Jesus and those three men, it really boils down to suffering.

It's a conversation about suffering.

That's our second key word.

We've had glory up on the mountain.

It is now a word about suffering.

And the point here, Jesus' followers cannot avoid it.

So the Lord Jesus, he wants them to keep secret what they have seen until after the resurrection.

The disciples are puzzled.

What do you mean, resurrection from the dead?

Now, Christian people, we take it for granted, don't we, that the Lord Jesus had to die and to rise.

We cannot conceive of a universe in which Christ did not go to the cross.

Put yourself in the shoes of those disciples for a minute.

You have been with Jesus.

You have heard from him, you have seen the wonders that he has done.

You have just seen Jesus in all of his glory, this undying glory of God the Son, the glory of the Son of Man that the prophet Daniel glimpsed.

But he's now talking again of death and resurrection.

And it is very, very hard for them to understand.

It's very hard for them to see the cross.

Do you remember Peter back in chapter 8, verse 32?

As soon as Jesus talked to him about the cross, you know, the Son of Man must suffer and die and rise.

Peter rebukes him.

The kind of Christ they have in their minds, it is not a Christ who is dying and then rising.

Surely the Son of Man will not suffer and die.

And then Jesus speaks to them on the road to Jerusalem and he says, No Christ without a cross, no Christian without a cross, death first, then resurrection and glory.

And it was a very, very hard message to embrace.

And out of that they ask this question in verse 11.

It seems like an odd question, but it's actually not.

Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?

They've just seen Elijah.

Somehow or other, they have just seen the prophet Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration.

He's in their minds.

And they knew their Old Testament.

The scribes knew their Old Testaments.

They knew that Malachi promised that another Elijah would come before the great and awesome day of the Lord.

So it would go like this.

Elijah number two comes, and then this great and glorious day, the day of judgment, actually.

That's the promise, that's the chronology of the very last verse in the Old Testament, in the book of Malachi.

And it's actually on the same topic.

So Jesus, are you really right when you say death before glory?

That's what lies behind this conversation.

Are you really right, Jesus, when you say death before glory?

Elijah is here, isn't it therefore just time for glory?

And Jesus corrects their Bible knowledge.

He says, do you notice the phrase repeated, don't you know what is written?

There are things which actually are written, which are given in the Old Testament, and you seem to have missed them.

Yes, Elijah does come first, he has come.

And this new Elijah, it's John the Baptist.

He was plainly Elijah Mark II.

When you line them up against each other, preaching repentance, a man with strange garments.

But even the first Elijah, he was opposed and persecuted by a weak king and a wicked queen, just like the second Elijah.

Do you remember John?

Beheaded on account of Jesus and the gospel.

Look at the Old Testament.

Look at John, death before glory.

Suffering is the way for the Lord's servants.

And so too with the Son of Man, the glorious Son of Man, must suffer and be treated with contempt, as it is written, that's what the Old Testament says.

Maybe Jesus has in mind Psalm 22, the suffering of the Christ, or Isaiah 53, the suffering of the sinless servant.

Jesus had to suffer and die, and that is the gospel.

Just think for a moment.

If Jesus had only come in a particular glory, which meant he never walked the road to Calvary, just try and imagine that appalling universe.

Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?

No forgiveness, no life, no resurrection, no glory to come for us.

But so too, Jesus' servants, even the likes of Elijah or John, they too have to suffer and die.

It's unavoidable.

In other words, we are not yet on that mountain of glory.

So, how do we navigate life off the mountain?

We'd love to be on that mountain.

We are not yet on it.

How do we navigate life on it?

And then we come to our last part of our reading, verses 14 to 29.

This does follow right on.

And our key word here is trust.

So again, children, pop your learning sheets to one side.

I want your Bibles in front of you.

Have a look down.

Mark chapter 9 and verse 14.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

Let's listen again.

And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them and the scribes arguing with them.

And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him.

And he asked them, What are you arguing about with them?

And someone from the crowd answered him, Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute.

And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.

So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.

And he answered them, O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you?

How long am I to bear with you?

Bring him to me.

And they brought the boy to him.

And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.

And Jesus asked his father, How long has this been happening to him?

And he said, From childhood.

And it has often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him.

But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.

And Jesus said to him, If you can, all things are possible for one who believes.

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe, help my unbelief.

And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.

And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, He is dead.

But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.

And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could we not cast it out?

And he said to them, This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.

It's a very grim scene, this.

We are about as far from the Mount of Glory as you can imagine.

We've come down, we've actually come down a long way.

Here's a real boy and a real father and unimaginable evil.

It's not normal or everyday.

We don't normally see things like that, but Satan is real, and sometimes the powers of darkness they show themselves like this.

So we read about these awful seizures, foaming at the mouth, and then the boy comes before Jesus.

He's gripped by this demon, and he's been like this since childhood.

Uh, this uh evil creature seeking any way to destroy him.

And then Jesus, you know, Jesus, the one to whom all authority has been given, he commands the demon, gone, and it is.

The boy is is left dead or like dead, he's like a corpse.

And then what does the Savior do?

Um, he takes him, there's power in Jesus' touch, and he resurrects him.

So there is the Lord Jesus, he really has power to do this.

Power over evil, over death.

And what about us?

Yes, this is uniquely wicked evil, if I can put it like that.

All of us, though, face evil, all of us face death.

And to every Christian, the Lord Jesus, he says, trust me and take up your cross and follow me.

I do have this kind of power, I have resurrection power.

It is therefore not foolish to lose your life for me and for the gospel.

Remember what he's been saying all the way through these chapters.

But here's the thing: it is hard.

It is hard to trust Jesus.

And all through this passage we see people doubting him.

Wonder if you thought that Jesus seems a little bit harsher in response than we might expect.

Verse 19, he says, as he looks about him at the crowd, faithless generation, he seems exasperated.

Why are you so slow to trust me?

You've seen so much.

Similar in verse 23, as he talks to the Father.

What do you mean, if you can help us?

And then the Father cries out, and I think these are some of the most precious words in the whole Bible.

He says, I believe, help my unbelief.

Is that not so honest and realistic?

I believe, help my unbelief.

And this is what we are like, Christian people.

We encounter hard things, evil, affliction, death, and we want to trust the Lord in those things, and we struggle to trust Him.

Do you not feel like that?

I do.

And look at the disciples.

They are so instructive, also.

There is no clue, by the way, that their inability was because they'd come up against a particularly tough demon.

You could imagine it saying this.

You know, they could do sort of easy GCSE level demons, but not the hardest A-level ones.

You could read it like that, and that that is completely wrong.

That was not their problem.

What Jesus says in verse 29, that tells us what their problem was.

He says, This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.

And by that he means one thing and one thing only.

The disciples, they had not actually prayed.

So just imagine this this father had brought his son to Jesus' disciples.

They had sought to cast out this demon, they had done so before, but they never prayed.

That is, they never asked the all-glorious, all-powerful, all-kind God to work.

And again, is that not so realistic?

You know, Christian people, that we could face a terrible problem, something far beyond our own strength, and yet not pray and try to come up with some kind of fix on our own?

Do we not spend half our time doing things like that?

The encouragement here.

We believe, we struggle to believe, and the chiefest way we depend on Christ, it is as we pray.

Yeah, we are so slow.

I am so slow to pray.

Now, the Lord Jesus, he's not promising that if you pray, all your problems go away.

You could take verse 23 just on its own, rip it out of its context, and you could twist that verse.

It's what false teachers in in prosperity gospel churches do.

Remember the point of these chapters.

Jesus is saying, follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross, lose your life.

He's trying to encourage us to do that.

He's trying to encourage us to say it's okay, it's sensible, it's wise to do that because of what I am like.

And it will be okay in the end for the person who trusts this Jesus.

Um He does have all power over evil, he does have all power over death.

He will raise your body, he will raise mine from the grave.

And there will be glory, his glory shared with us.

And that's certain.

That's our hope, that's our future.

So we're not there yet.

We've seen a glimpse of the mountain, we know that there is a mountain of glory to come, this side of glory.

We're encouraged to pray and keep praying.

One of the hard things with life is that the longer you live, the harder the situations you encounter.

It just seems to be a fact of getting older.

Harder things come along, not easier.

You know, Lord, I've trusted you with this hard thing.

Maybe it's uh exams, maybe it's relationship problems, but now I'm facing something else that seems much harder.

Maybe it's a very serious diagnosis.

Well, we are encouraged to pray honestly, like this man, you know, the father.

Yeah, Lord, help me.

Um help me in my unbelief.

I believe you, I do trust you, I want to trust you.

I find it very hard.

Help me to keep on walking with you, depending on you, even when it hurts.

Help me keep on walking as a Christian, denying myself even when it hurts.

And the Lord who walks with us, the one to whom we speak in prayer.

Even prayers like that.

This is the Lord who does resurrections.

And so glory is assured.

And very, very wonderfully, remember, He first of all went to the cross so that we might be with him too.

Glory, suffering, and trust.

Let's bow our heads, I'll lead us in prayer.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that when we come to your Son, we join ourselves and you join us to all goodness and all glory.

You encourage us that you are good.

And so we do, for the first time or the umpteenth time, come to take refuge in you.

You tell us that those who seek you lack no good thing, and we thank you for giving us all good things in Christ.

Please sustain us in life today, this week.

You know those of us for whom life particularly is a veil of tears right now.

We pray for a filling of your Holy Spirit that we might trust you.

Give us a spirit of true and honest dependence upon you.

We don't want to be like the disciples in that faithless moment.

We confess that so often we are.

Thank you for your patience with us.

Thank you for your grace.

And we bless you that your son, on his road to glory, he stooped to go to the cross.

And in that we find all of our hope and praise you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.