Mark's Gospel Part 5 - New Israel, New Family

Please open up Bibles to Mark chapter 6.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

Mark chapter 6.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

Children, learning sheets making their way around the room for you.

You know what to do.

Listen really carefully when it comes to the reading of God's Word.

The things to listen out for, fill in, colour, and draw at the end of your time.

Bring your learning sheet and your bag down the front, and we'll share some good things together.

Mark chapter 3.

Mark 3 · chapter mention

Did I say Mark chapter 6?

Mark 6 · chapter mention

I didn't mean Mark chapter 6.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

Mark chapter 3.

Mark 3 · chapter mention

Getting ahead of myself a few weeks.

Just a brief introduction before I pray and read from God's Word.

We prayed for the persecuted church just now, and it is a feature of Christian life that Christian people are often rejected by others because they follow Jesus.

Acutely in some parts of the world, but even some of us here, I know that is your experience, experiencing rejection by others because you follow Christ.

And the most painful rejection, it's not that of what you might call a professional atheist, someone who writes books or records podcasts to try and undermine the faith.

Nor is it a kind of secular liberal, someone who will just sort of very openly say, Well, look, I live for myself, no one will tell me what to do.

Yeah, I'll do what I want, sleep with who I want, etc.

The rejection that's most painful is that which is most close to home, maybe even in the home.

You follow Jesus seriously, and a family member turns their back against you.

Or someone who you once shared some kind of Christian fellowship with, even, has turned their back on the Bible and on you.

Now that kind of rejection, uh, it ran through Jesus' own experience and it runs through our passage today.

Uh Jesus knew that opposition, and so too his people.

And God's word today, it's got this for us.

It shows us what Jesus did when he was rejected, and it also shows us how Jesus consoles us, how he comforts us when we experience rejection too.

So I'm going to pray and ask that the Lord would do that in us.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you for your wonderful word by which you speak to us.

Encourage our hearts, we pray, with truth from heaven.

Show us your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Help each one of us to listen carefully with our heads and with our hearts.

We ask that you would do this word in us for Jesus' name's sake.

Amen.

Amen.

So we're continuing through Mark's gospel.

Our passage today, it's verses, it's chapter three, verses seven to thirty-five.

I'm actually going to read from chapter three and verse six.

Chapter three and verse six.

Let's listen to the word of God.

The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Jesus, how to destroy him.

Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan, and from around Tyre and Sidon.

When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him, and he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him.

And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, You are the Son of God.

And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.

And he went up in the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him.

And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him, and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.

He appointed the twelve, Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter, James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James, to whom he gave the name Boaneges, that is, sons of thunder, Andrew and Philip, and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariots, who betrayed him.

Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that 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 came down from Jerusalem were saying, He is possessed by Beelzebel, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.

And Jesus called them to him, and he said to them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan?

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

And if a house is divided against itself, that house 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 he 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.

And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent to him and called.

And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, Your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.

And he answered them, Who are my mother and my brothers?

And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, Here are my brothers, my mother and my brothers.

For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.

The setting for our passage, uh, verses 7 to 12, it is an amazing and a chaotic scene.

I've summed it up like this: it is a picture of Jesus and all the world.

There is this great crowd, it's a vast crowd.

So big it's threatening to crush him.

There's a risk of a stampede.

So actually needed to actually get into a boat with his disciples.

Now, why were those crowds coming?

Uh, we're told in verse 10, for he had healed many.

So the Lord Jesus he met people with compassion and kindness.

But we're we're meant to wonder, was this all those crowds came to Jesus for?

Were they only after Jesus for what he could give them rather than for Jesus himself?

Well, time would tell.

And those crowds, the things they saw, wondrous things, they beheld Jesus as he confronted and destroyed demons.

They saw the very authority of Jesus over evil.

So those crowds that came to the Lord Jesus, they were compelled to come to him, impelled, vast crowds.

But not just vast.

Mark tells us they were they were increasingly multinational.

So in that sense, too, here is Jesus and all the world.

So when you look down in verse 7 and verse 8, we see a bunch of strange-sounding place names.

We could look them up in a Bible atlas, but these were significant names.

There were mainly Jewish places, Galilee, Jerusalem, Judea.

There were mixed Jew and Gentile places, Idumia, beyond the Jordan.

And then there were mainly Gentile places, Tyre and Sidon.

And it was a little glimpse of Jesus' worldwide reach.

The Bible promised that the nations would stream to the Messiah, Jesus to be like a light to the nations, and here he is.

It's a little glimpse of what would come as the church would grow.

So here we are.

Some people are plotting the death of Jesus, the Pharisees, the Herodians.

Others are streaming out to Jesus, yes, for healing, but maybe with unknown motives too.

What will Jesus do?

What will Jesus do?

Well, he goes up on a mountain and he calls a new people.

The Bible is full of uh what we nowadays call Easter eggs.

Some of us know what uh we mean by Easter eggs, not the chocolatey thing that has been appearing in our shops for several weeks, but a deliberately hidden message in a film or a TV show, that if you look closely and if you know the backstory, well, you spot them, and suddenly something makes sense.

It's an Easter egg, a little hidden clue.

We could say that the Bible is full of Easter eggs.

The New Testament, it's full of Easter eggs drawn from earlier on in the Bible story.

Not just so that you can spot them and have a kind of aha moment, but because we cannot understand Jesus and the gospel and the New Testament without grasping the old.

And those clues, they're not really that hit that hidden either.

And the verses before us here, uh verses 13 to 19, we're very familiar with them if we're Christian people.

Jesus calls his apostles his disciples.

And we might actually miss, though, the really big Easter eggs that the Lord shows us here.

For a start, he goes up in the mountain and he calls how many apostles?

Children.

How many apostles?

Twelve, thank you.

Yes.

We're actually told that twice.

Verse 14, and he appointed twelve, whom he named apostles.

Verse 16, he appointed the twelve.

And a light bulb ought to go off at that point.

The nation of Israel in the Old Testament, it was built from the twelve sons of Jacob, the twelve tribes.

Their kind of destiny began in Genesis 49.

That's why there were 12 apostles, not seven apostles, not ten apostles, but twelve, because Jesus is calling a new people.

And what he did with them, it was stronger than he appointed them.

That's the English word we see here.

Appoint sounds a bit like an HR kind of word, doesn't it?

Now we had 52 excellent applicants for the job, and we have appointed these ones.

No, what it says literally here is that Jesus made the twelve.

Jesus made them, he created them, he formed them, he is creating a new people.

And another big Easter egg.

Notice where he does it.

Verse 13.

And he went up on the mountain.

This was not a uh random choice by the Lord Jesus where he would perform this act.

Uh, the mountain.

It is meant to make us think of Mount Sinai, where in uh Exodus 19 the Lord called his rescued people to himself, he bound them to him in covenant, and then he called them to his worship.

It's where the Old Testament church was formed.

What's he doing?

He is calling a new people.

And you notice what he calls them, he designates them, verse 14, as apostles, not just disciples, but apostles.

And then he explains what that means.

You will be with me, you'll enjoy my companionship, you'll learn from me, and you will witness to me.

But he also gives them his authority, he sends them out, they are sent ones, apostles, to preach and with his authority to drive out evil.

Jesus was calling a new people, and it was an astonishingly radical thing that Jesus did.

A new Israel was created, it was born, it was formed on that mountain that day.

So if we got in a time machine and went back to that place and time and asked, where would we find God's people?

The answer would be given us look at the nation of Israel, look at the physical descendants of Abraham.

Even though in the Old Testament there were strong clues that that was not the whole story.

In our passage, we've seen how uh the leaders of the Jewish people, they well, they rejected Christ, and so Christ rejected them.

He withdraws, chapter 3, verse 7, he withdrew from them.

It was actually an act of judgment.

And on that mountain that day, the people of God, the identity of the people of God, it changed.

So forever Jesus says, Here are twelve new representatives of my people, here are twelve apostles on whom my people will be built.

So the true people of God, where do you find them?

Well, it's not ethnically defined, but defined by their relationship to Jesus and to his apostles.

Now, what does that mean for us?

What's the significance of this?

Well, first, well, we need to make sure that we are built on the foundation of Jesus' apostles.

The rest of the New Testament reflects on this in different ways.

Paul in Ephesians 2.20 uses a picture of a building site.

Uh, Jesus is the cornerstone.

He holds together his people, and he's chosen the foundation to be those apostles.

Now you dig a hole in the ground, you fill it with concrete, that's the foundation.

That is the ministry of the apostles.

And the point is this we must be built on them.

Yeah, we say it in the creed, one holy Catholic, and apostolic church.

The biblical church, wherever it's found, is built on the foundation of the apostles.

We need to be on them, in them.

Now, different ones of us here, uh, Jesus knows the states of our hearts.

Maybe we, some of us, come to Jesus like those crowds who just wanted Jesus to fix something in our lives.

Now he knows that.

He knows our needs and our weaknesses, he meets us with compassion, he will do what is right and best for us.

He doesn't always uh heal our suffering, though he does transform it.

But whatever our motive as we come to well, not just the church, but to Jesus, the encouragement and the command is if you want to be in Jesus' people, the people he is continuing to build, well, he's building it on that foundation, the apostles' foundation.

So we need to make sure that we are built on it in them, in their teaching, because that's the only place to be part of the people of God.

So what Jesus did on the mountain that day when he called the twelve, they were, from one angle, completely unique.

There is never another foundation, there are no more apostles, they were unique, but there is also something very wonderful and something completely typical about the apostles who Jesus called, because they give us a glimpse of what the church will be like.

So, verse 13.

Uh, Jesus, he goes up on the mountain, and we read this he called to him those whom he desired.

So Jesus knew exactly what he was doing.

He has a perfect and full knowledge.

He he knew those men, he knew all men, and he said, I want you.

And then we get told the names of these people and just a few other little nuggets.

There's Peter the rock, you know, the rock, that's what Peter means, on whom Jesus would build the church.

The same Peter who would betray Jesus before then being restored.

Not to mention Judas Iscariot, the traitor.

No surprise to Jesus.

Jesus knew this was Jesus' plan, this was Jesus' will.

He calls two disciples who he calls the sons of thunder.

Now that sounds like a rather marvelous nickname until you stop and think about it.

Here were two men with an extremely short fuse.

That's what it means.

They were the ones who, uh, when Jesus was rejected, we read this in Luke 9, they want to call down fire from heaven.

That's the kind of men they were.

There are here men we know who were fishermen.

But that was their trade.

They were the most ordinary of men.

There are disciples here who in the Bible story we hear almost nothing about ever again.

They're basically anonymous.

You know, Andrew, Philip, James, Bartholomew, Thaddeus.

Uh Thaddeus in the other gospels is sometimes called Judas, a different Judas.

Here we read about Matthew.

Did you see Matthew?

Now, Matthew is Levi, same man, different name.

Uh, he had been a wicked collaborator with the Romans, called alongside Simon the Zealot.

The Zealots were terrorists who wanted to kill the Romans.

Now just stand back and look at this representative mass of humanity to whom Jesus said, I want you, and to he said, You are my apostles, you, i.e., I am going to found my church upon you.

They were ridiculously diverse and they were full of human weakness and sin.

You think, Jesus, what were you playing at?

Well, part of his glory, isn't it?

People like that, people like us, drawn into the new people of God, covenanted together with the Lord, and that should encourage us mightily.

It is a glimpse of what the church is like.

Ridiculously diverse and full of human weaknesses and sins.

But what Jesus did there, it drove his family wild.

Did you notice that?

Verse 20.

Jesus goes home, it's probably Capernaum.

The crowds mob him, and verse 21, his family think he has gone mad, and they try to seize him.

Maybe they actually understood what he meant when he called a new twelve, that he was founding a new Israel.

They found it offensive, they thought he was crazy.

And by the end of the passage, verse 35, we actually see Jesus calling a new family.

Not just a people, but a family.

And in the middle, he gives us this most serious of warnings that Jesus rejects those who reject him.

And we shouldn't miss who this warning is directed to.

Yeah, there were there were the churchy types who rejected Jesus, the religious, the scribes, the Pharisees.

But standing here right alongside them was Jesus' own family.

And when we look down verses 20 to 31, it's a bit like a split screen on TV.

We imagine three panels on our screen.

There is Jesus' own family.

They're saying he's mad.

They try to seize him.

Can you imagine, by the way, trying to seize, to take hold of God the Son?

At the end of the passage, Jesus calls a new family.

And the bit in the middle, the panel in the middle, these words of Jesus about the devil and about an unforgivable sin.

And they're not random words.

It's not an irrelevant digression.

We should listen very carefully.

So, verse 22, these scribes who come from Jerusalem, these religious leaders, they were saying of Jesus, he is bad.

Now his family said he's mad.

These they said he is bad.

They cannot deny his power and authority.

His miracles were just undeniable.

They'd seen him cast out demons.

But they said this of Jesus, verse 22, he is possessed by Beelzebulb, another name for Satan.

It literally means the Lord of the flies.

Verse 30, they were saying Jesus has an unclean spirit.

Jesus, what does he do?

Well, first he tells some simple parables just to show how stupid this was.

23 to 26.

To say Satan casts out Satan is as stupid as saying, well, Britain has declared war on Britain.

It makes absolutely no sense.

Then he presses a bit further.

If Satan is not behind these uh exorcisms, then who is?

And it must be a stronger man.

Verse 27.

Satan is like a strong man.

Satan is a strong man.

He enslaves people, he binds, he imprisons, but Jesus is a stronger man.

He enters the house of Satan and he robs him and he plunders him.

And that is why, Christian people, we do not need to be scared witless about Satan and his emissaries, because Jesus is the stronger man.

Do you remember last year when we when we talked through and preached through the book of Daniel, both in church and also children and Bible explorers and Bible discoverers?

And we used that illustration.

I think you used that illustration of the bears.

We are like, and we very much feel like a small bear.

And we live in a world of big bears, some of whom are exceedingly frightening, many of whom are on Satan's team.

But the Lord Jesus, he is the great bear.

You know, he is the strongest of all men.

But why is Jesus saying this?

He's saying it to give a warning.

He is speaking to in our passage people who have seen him, heard him, and have deeply and implacably rejected him.

And he says, If you oppose Jesus, if you oppose me, there is no possibility of forgiveness.

Now the scribes and the Pharisees to whom Jesus is speaking, you can actually trace their spiritual journey through the last couple of chapters.

To start off with, they murmured against Jesus in their hearts.

Do you remember when the paralytic was lowered down through the roof?

And they grumbled internally, and then they questioned Jesus, and then they accused Jesus, and then they plotted to destroy him, and then they would actually say of Jesus, He is evil.

He is on the side of Satan.

You can see this growing hostility and hardness, which left them with this stubborn and settled rejection.

They'd had so many opportunities to hear and repent and believe.

So if you reject Jesus, of course, there is no possibility of forgiveness.

And that, of course, by the way, is the unforgivable sin.

Sometimes verse 29 causes Christians much distress.

They get anxious.

Have I committed an unforgivable sin?

But when you read that verse in context, you see what is the unforgivable sin?

Well, it is to resist and to reject Jesus, like these people did.

And that isn't a warning that we should dismiss too quickly.

Come to verse 31.

And Jesus' mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.

So here is Jesus, he's teaching, and he over the over his voice you hear another voice.

It's the voice of his family outside calling for Jesus.

Now try and imagine this scene, sort of map it in your mind, or imagine the geography where everyone is.

Here is Jesus, and we are told his family, verse 31, they are outside.

It's that his family, they were literally familiar with Jesus.

They knew him.

And yet they are on the outside saying no to Jesus, trying to seize him, not wanting to accept his words and his claims and his demands.

And Jesus, he gave this warning, yes, against the scribes and the Pharisees, but also with his own family in mind.

You can be very familiar with Jesus, yet resist him.

Be familiar with Jesus, but be on the outside.

Put yourself on the outside.

And that is a lethal place for any one of us to be in.

But where our passage finishes, it is with a beautiful encouragement.

Yeah, his biological family actually are out there.

They are outside.

But Jesus looks around him and he looks at those people who are seated there, seated at his feet, and he says these really wonderful words.

He says, you know, here is my mother, uh, here is my brother, here is my sister, here is my family.

He says, you know, I want you in my family.

Now I wonder how you hear those words of Jesus.

When he says, Who are my mother and my brothers?

I wonder if you find that shocking.

Maybe you think to yourself, well, did Jesus not love his own family?

Well, of course, Jesus loves families.

His law says, honour your father and your mother.

He actually wants to breathe new life into families to make them truly Christian families.

At the end of the gospel story, Jesus' family came near.

They came in, if you like.

Do you remember how, as Jesus died on the cross, he gave Mary his mother to the care of John his disciple?

And yet, and yet, Jesus is building a new family.

A family that comes first.

This is the first family for the Christian.

A family that comes before biological family, a family that lasts forever.

A family that quite literally at its center has the Lord Jesus.

A family whose members are Jesus' own mothers and brothers and sisters.

And just think about the geography.

We are meant to imagine and look who is in, who is out.

This family is defined by being with Jesus, sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to his word and keeping on listening and obeying him.

And in our next chapter, God willing, next week, we'll hear how Jesus says much more about listening.

So those crowds, maybe they came for healing, maybe they came for what Jesus could do for them.

But the invitation for them, the invitation for us, is come and sit at my feet.

Listen to me.

Keep listening.

I will show you what you need most and how I can meet that need through my death and my resurrection.

Will you keep sitting there?

Trust me and obey me.

And for some of us, you know just how precious this is.

A few of you have known the loss of your biological families because you have followed Christ.

And the invitation here will be in my family.

It's made to all, obviously, but it will be especially precious to you.

So see what Jesus is doing.

He has formed and is continuing to form that people founded on the words of the apostles.

And that people is also his family.

He looks around, you know, here is my mother, here is my brother, here is my sister.

He says to us, you know, I want you.

Heavenly Father.

Help each one of us to hear the warning and receive the encouragement of this word to us.

We don't want any of us to distance ourselves from the Lord Jesus or from his word.

If we are in some way, would you please kindly pull us back?

Where we need encouragement and refreshment, help us to know and feel what it means to be truly members of your family.

We bless you for your gospel, whereby you take people like us and draw us together and bring us to yourself.

And we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.