The First Gospel - The Middle of Mark

Now Scott knows what pastors are doing next week because Scott will be preaching next

week.

So I hope you guys will be here for that.

Really looking forward to it.

Alright.

Alright, so as many of you know, we are going through the book of Mark.

Mark only has 16 chapters.

It's the shortest of all the gospels.

And since we're looking at the end of chapter 8, today we are officially at the middle point

of the book.

Now we're not going to spend as much time on the second half.

That'll become obvious why here in a little bit we'll actually be finishing up this book

on Easter, which is only five weeks and six Sundays away.

Yay!

That feels too short.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

Six weeks, five.

Well, five.

Yeah.

Five weeks, six Sundays.

Now I've mentioned a lot, but Mark, I want to make sure that we remember that Mark is

an author.

We need to think about how he's writing.

He's not just writing down random stories.

He's telling a story.

We often treat the Bible like we treat YouTube clips, you know?

Like maybe you have your favorite movie and you can find your favorite clip on YouTube.

I mean, I absolutely love the movie Tommy Boy, and Tommy Boy is just rife with perfect

clips that you can just binge a bunch of different clips and still have no idea what the movie

is actually about.

And we treat the Bible like this a lot.

We pull the stories that we like out of it without thinking about how the person writing

that book or that letter is telling a cohesive story.

When you're an author, when you're a good author, you're writing one long cohesive story,

you think about the end from the beginning.

And you think about how to transition from the set up to the payoff in the middle.

It reminds me of a show I watched a while back where the main character would talk directly

to the camera throughout the show, like literally all the time.

She would be in a scene.

And it wasn't the same as like sometimes there's a goofiness to it, like, oh, someone is admitting

that this is a show.

It wasn't like that.

It was like she was treating us like we were there.

Like she'd look at us like we were her imaginary friend and she would include us.

She'd say one thing to the person in the scene and then tell us the unvarnished version of

what she really wanted to say, or she'd give us the look that she really wanted to give

to the person.

And the people around her had no idea that any of this was going on.

It's kind of like what we do all the time, right?

I mean, we probably don't look at an imaginary camera.

That'd be funny.

If I was like talking to you and then I said, all the time.

But we're most honest with ourselves, I think.

Internally, even in prayer, we'll say one thing out loud then think the more revealing

thought to ourselves.

And I think that that's why this technique works so well in this particular show, because

we all do it.

And it was actually done so well in this show that you'd be watching and you'd actually

start waiting for it to happen.

Something would get said and you'd wonder, oh, is this when she's going to say something

to us or when she's going to give us a little look or when she'd give us a little insight

that maybe she hadn't shared with someone else.

But then something started to change in this show.

She started to fall in love.

And something beautiful and scary happens because she starts falling in love.

Because as she starts to feel seen by someone other than us, she finds out that she can't

talk to the camera anymore.

She wants to.

But what happens is she starts to mix up what she wants to say to us and what she's going

to say to him.

And so in a rash moment, she'll say out loud to him what she was going to say to us.

And then she has to play it off or make a joke like she didn't really mean what she

just said that was extremely revealing.

And then it wasn't that she just mixed things up.

It was that he started to notice when she'd even just glance away to look at us.

He could see that there was a change, that she was giving these quick little looks.

Then he'd ask, where'd you go just there?

And she'd go, what?

Nothing, nothing.

And then she'd do it again and he'd go, no, just right there.

What happened?

Right there.

What just happened?

He couldn't hear what she was saying.

She couldn't see who she was looking at.

She never admitted that she was talking to us, but he could tell that she was going somewhere

else, diverting her attention to something else in those moments.

And the more seen that she felt, the more she felt in love with him, the less she could

talk to us all the way through to the end of the season where she had to decide whether

she would talk to us at all.

I'm not bringing this up because I think you should watch the show.

I've left out the name of the show intentionally because it's not a show that's for everybody.

But I'm bringing it up because when the writer wrote this show, she did something that Mark

does in his gospel.

Because that moment when she looks at the camera and he notices, that happens at the

exact middle of the season.

Not the middle of an episode, the middle of the entire story.

She had spent all this time setting up this storytelling device, this tool for us to become

engaged in what this story was.

She had trained us that she was going to look at us, that she was going to talk to us.

And then right in the middle, she starts to take that away from us.

She starts to lose it.

She starts to spend the rest of the season figuring out exactly what she feels, whether

she wants him if she can't have us, whether she wants us, what it might mean for her to

have neither.

For us, the viewer, we've been trained to anticipate the moments when she'll turn and

tell us something special, something she's been saving just for us.

And now we have to decide if we're invested in her story without the little looks, without

the insights, without the special attention.

And it's brilliant, not just because it was done so effectively that it was nominated

for 11 Emmys and won five, but because unless you were looking for it, unless you got to

the end of the season and went back and counted the minutes because you wondered exactly where

that moment happened, you would never have realized how creative it was that her crisis

of conversation and storytelling happened at the exact middle of the season.

Now with that in mind, let's open up our Bibles and see what it says in Mark 8, starting in

verse 22.

If you don't have a Bible, we have Bibles out on the bookshelf that you can take home

with you.

They are free.

Otherwise, you can download a Bible from one of the digital app stores.

And we're going to be in Mark.

It was Matthew, Mark, Luke, John in the New Testament, starting in chapter 8, verse 22.

We have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention.

One of the ways we do that is by standing together.

If you'd like to join me as you are able, I'm going to start reading Mark 8, verse 22

Mark 8:22

says this.

They, being Jesus and his disciples, came to Bethsaida and some people brought a blind

man and begged Jesus to touch him.

He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village.

When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, do you see

anything?

He looked up and said, I see people.

They look like trees walking around.

Once more, Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes, then his eyes were opened.

His sight was restored and he saw everything clearly.

Jesus sent him home saying, don't even go into the village.

Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi.

On the way, he asked them, who do people say I am?

They replied, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others one of the prophets.

But what about you?

He asked, who do you say I am?

Peter answered, you are the Messiah.

Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

Let us pray.

Father God, we thank you for the scriptures.

We pray that whatever you have for us to learn today or to notice today, I pray that it would

stick, that it would become a part of the framework of our faith, that our faith would

become stronger, that we would become more like your son Jesus.

Amen.

Thanks, y'all.

You can have a seat.

All right, so by the time we get to this passage, the first half of Mark's gospel has felt

like a freight train of miracles.

If you read it straight through, it just feels like the pace and the motion is building and

building and building all around mostly miracles.

So let me show you what I mean.

Chapter one, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove upon Jesus after his baptism.

Jesus casts out a demon.

Jesus heals Simon's mother-in-law from a fever.

It says that he heals many sick and demon possessed, then he heals a man with leprosy.

That's all chapter one.

Chapter two, he forgives and he heals a paralyzed man.

Chapter three, Jesus heals a man, heals his hand on the Sabbath.

Then he goes out and it says again, he heals many.

Chapter four, he calms the storm.

He literally controls the weather.

Chapter five, he heals a tormented and demon possessed man.

He heals the woman with the issue of bleeding.

He raises someone from the dead.

Chapter six, he heals a few people in his hometown, but then he goes and he feeds 5,000

people from just two fish and two loaves.

And then he walks on water and he calls Peter out to walk with him.

Chapter seven, he frees a little girl from a demon.

Then he heals a man that was deaf and mute.

The beginning of chapter eight, he feeds a multitude again, this time 4,000, multiplying

just a small amount of food to provide for everyone.

And then at the end of chapter eight, where we're at today, there's a healing like no

other.

A two phase healing, the only time that I know of in the gospels where the first time

Jesus tried, it didn't work completely.

First the man sees blurry.

He touches him again and he sees clearly.

The first eight chapters are just packed with miracle after miracle after miracle.

And Mark is making it obvious that miracles are the marker, the sign that God's kingdom

is breaking in, that something is happening, that this is moving somewhere.

Mark has been teaching us that where Jesus goes, that miracles follow every page of the

first half of Mark's gospels covered with the miraculous, countless miracles.

We don't know how many because so often it just says, and then he healed many.

If you were reading this book for the very first time, you're probably thinking, man,

if he did all these miracles in the first eight chapters, man, what's coming next?

You think, oh, he fed 5,000.

Oh, he walked on water.

Oh, he just fed another 4,000.

Oh, man, I can't wait for the story when he feeds 10.

It feels like there's no stopping it.

But then you read chapters nine through 16.

And what you find is that in the last eight chapters, miracles almost completely disappear.

There's only a few.

There's just as many chapters.

There's just as many verses.

There's just as many words, and there are just as many stories.

For some reason, there's only a handful of miracles.

We should ask why.

Why?

Why is there this transition here in this book?

And I think Mark is telling us with this passage, or at least beginning to tell us, he's telling

us with these two stories.

Guys, it's no coincidence that right here in the middle, that Jesus has to heal one

person twice, and then he asks his disciples two questions back to back.

It's no coincidence that the two questions and the two phases of the healing actually

mimic each other.

What do I mean?

In the first story, Jesus takes the blind man away from the crowds, away from their

eyes, away from their opinions.

In the second story, Jesus' first question is about the crowds.

Here we are, away from everyone.

What do you think?

What are those people saying about me?

In the first story, Jesus spits in the man's eyes, and in the first phase of that healing,

he only sees partially.

At first, he only receives a vision that is blurry.

In the second story, after the first question, they answer.

Some say you're a prophet, others say Elijah, John the Baptist, back from the bed.

All of these answers are blurry versions of the truth, blurry versions of who Jesus really

is.

In the first story, Jesus touches the blind man a second time, and then it says, and then

he saw everything clearly.

In the second story, Jesus asks, but who do you say I am?

Peter gives a clear answer.

You are the Messiah.

The stories are the same.

It's just that one is the healing of a physical sight, and the other is the revealing of spiritual

sight.

Jesus does this.

Mark does this by design.

Right here in the middle of the Gospel of Mark, there are almost 16,000 words in the

Gospel of Mark.

These stories are within 100, 200 to 300 words of the exact middle.

Now, if you're in first century Palestine writing a parchment story, to be within a

few hundred words of the middle is pretty impressive.

He tells these stories right here in the middle, because after eight chapters of the miraculous,

their blurry vision of who Jesus is should be clear.

If it is clear to them who he is, then maybe they'll be ready for whatever comes next.

Because in the way that Mark tells the story of Jesus, things are about to change a lot.

There are still great stories, but the way that he tells the stories, the things that

he starts to leave out are noticeable.

Miracles are about to all but go away, and Jesus is going to end up on a cross.

And if here, at the end of chapter eight, here in the middle of this story, if they

do not see Jesus clearly, then what comes next might lead them back to spiritual blindness.

And we, I don't think that we're any different.

Mark is showing us what happened to them because it's the exact thing that we can feel or maybe

has happened to us, some of us.

We watched the first eight chapters of our life.

We watched as maybe someone else believed in Jesus and their life started to change.

We watched as God moved and our blindness started to turn to blurriness.

And we saw God do miracles.

We saw enemies become friends.

We saw all of our sins forgiven.

We saw Jesus do things that only Jesus can do, and then Jesus asked us, who do you say?

I am.

And we told him.

We answered, I think that you're the son of God.

I think that you are the Messiah.

You are my Lord.

We boldly said, I believe, and you are.

Vision was clear.

The first eight chapters of Mark is where everybody wants to be in their lives.

Some of us, we feel like we're in the second half of Mark, in the second half of our lives.

It's been a while since we've seen a miracle.

Our car broke down.

Our pet died.

Maybe anxiety started getting the best of us.

We lost that job that we loved.

We didn't stop praying.

Maybe we had to move.

Maybe we had to leave a house we thought we would grow old in.

We lost friends that we thought that we would always have.

We never stopped praying.

We remember the first eight chapters, our vision of Jesus is clear.

We saw miracle after miracle.

We know that they happen, even if they're not happening right now.

We know that God can change everything.

And then we lost a parent.

Maybe our marriage fell apart or your kid got sick and didn't get better.

Or your own health started to dissipate and deteriorate.

And you start to wonder when these chapters are going to end.

When the author is going to get back to telling the story the way he used to tell it.

Then confusion starts to fill the space where confidence used to live.

Imagine you're a disciple and you have seen the miracles.

You have performed the miracles.

You have declared that Jesus is the Messiah.

And then for the next eight chapters, it seems like no matter what you do, there is no other

place for this story to end but with your rabbi dying on a cross.

What do you do when you see your king, your Messiah placed in a grave?

Do you still believe?

Even a stone has covered your view of the Almighty?

You continue to follow a faith that you just watched die?

Is your vision of Jesus still clear-eyed when it feels like life is doing everything that

it can to make your eyes blurry with tears?

I think the answer depends a bit on whether you finish the story.

See, we have an advantage to the disciples that they didn't have.

They had to live this story with Jesus, not knowing why the miracles were slowing down,

not knowing what was coming next.

We have the benefit of knowing that that story wasn't over.

It might be true.

The last half of Mark only has a few miracles.

And it might be true that maybe you feel like that's where you are in your life right now.

But the last miracle in the Gospel of Mark is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the

dead.

Mark's Gospel doesn't end with a crucifixion.

It doesn't end void of miracles.

It ends with the miracle.

I think so often that us in our lives, we become so obsessed with the chapters that

we're in because we remember how good the other ones were.

Once you get to chapter 9 and 10 and you're like, oh, life's a little different right

now, and you get to chapter 11 and you're 12 and you're like, oh, this has been a long

season of things being different right now.

And then you get to 13 and 14 and you're starting to feel like this is all that there is now.

And then you get to 15 and you see the best thing that you would just, the only thing

that you would still been holding on to die.

How do you hold on to the idea that chapter 16 might be a resurrection?

How do you hold on to the idea that your story is not yet over?

The only answer I have is chapter 16.

Isaiah 16 · chapter mention

Mark sets us up with the first eight chapters because he knew that chapter 16 would pay

off.

And I hope that today, no matter what it is that you're going through in your life, whether

anything that I have said sounds like you or whether you feel like, no, my life is kind

of chapter one through eight right now.

No matter where you are in your life, I hope that you'll remember the number 16, that you'll

remember that when everything seemed like it was starting to go downhill, when these

disciples that were betting absolutely everything that they had on this Messiah, when they saw

him die, that the author did not stop writing.

Whatever you're experiencing right now, I want you to hear, I want you to hear that

the author is not done writing.

Your story is not over.

It doesn't matter whether you're elderly in your older years, in your 60s, 70s, 80s.

It doesn't matter if you feel young and like you've already made huge decisions.

The pen is still in God's hands.

And this thing that he began, he will finish.

I just hope that the Spirit of God convicts our hearts today, that we are not the authors

of our own story, and that as much as we feel like if there's just one thing that I could

do to fix this, that Jesus loves you, and he's got more words to say about you.

Amen?

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father, I think that you, thank you that you are an author.

This is not something that we're making up.

It's not a metaphor.

It's not just a good example.

Your scriptures say that you are the author and perfecter of our faith.

And I pray that your spirit would just work its way through this room right now.

We would experience your presence, that we would see you writing more words, and that

we would believe that even though it looks like some of our stories are headed toward

a bad ending, you have a way of resurrecting the dead to life.

Just convict our hearts, Lord.

Convince us.

Let us not just live on the faith of the first eight chapters, but let us see clearly for

whatever pages we have left, that you are God, that you are good, that you are love.

Amen.