The First Gospel - Yeshua

Again, my name is Greg if I haven't mentioned that yet. I'm one of the pastors here at the house and we are in a series called

the first

Gospel the first gospel is the gospel according to mark

It's not the first as you open the the scriptures

But it is the first one that was written and so that is why we are going through this

And so we're just gonna jump right into the scriptures

Scott it's funny that you mentioned how the sermon should go today because I was telling someone before the service

I got a real

Heady heady sermon for you today with all the kids present so can't wait to see how it goes

So let's open up the scriptures to the book of Mark

It goes Matthew mark Luke John if you don't have one of your own Bibles

we have copies hard copies out on the bookshelf you can take one of those home with you and

otherwise just download it from a digital app store and

It goes Matthew mark Luke John X Romans. See any of those you're in the right neighborhood

We're gonna be in mark 3 and we have a tradition of giving these scriptures our full attention while we read them

We can do that any number of ways

But if you'd like you can stand with me as you are able as we read from the scriptures

This is mark chapter 3 starting in verse 13

Mark 3 · chapter mention

Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted and they came to him

He pointed 12 that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and have authority to drive out

Demons these are the 12 he appointed Simon to whom he gave the name Peter

James son of Zebedee and his brother John to them. He gave the name moon air

Jays went which means sons of thunder Andrew Philip Bartholomew Matthew Thomas James son of Alpheus Thaddeus

Simon the zealot and Judas Iscariot who?

Betrayed him then Jesus entered a house and again a crowd gathered so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat

When his family heard about this they went to take charge of him for they said he is out of his mind and the teachers

Of the law who came down from Jerusalem said he is possessed by Beelzebul by the prince of demons

He is driving out demons

So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables

How can Satan drive out Satan if a kingdom is divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand if a house is divided against itself

That house cannot stand and if Satan opposes himself and is divided

He cannot stand his end has come in fact

No one can enter a strong man's house without first tying him up then he can plunder the strong man's house

Truly I tell you people can be forgiven all their sins in every slander

They utter but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. They are guilty of an eternal sin

He said that he said this because they were saying he has an impure spirit

Then Jesus his mother and brothers arrived standing outside. They sent someone in to call him a crowd was sitting around and they told him

Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you. Who are my mother and my brothers?

He asked then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said here are my mother and my brothers

Whoever does God's will is my brother sister and mother. Let us pray

God of every tribe every tongue every color every nation

We thank you for the scriptures that we have them that they've been put together that they have persisted throughout the millennia

That we can read them that we can learn from them

And today I pray that whatever you have for us to learn and pray that it would stick

That it would become a part of the framework of our faith that our faith would become stronger as we become more like your son Jesus

Amen. Amen. Thanks. Y'all can have a seat if you were standing

All right, so in the space of 10 verses between verse 13 and verse 23 we have five

firsts

five firsts in 10 verses verse 13 the first mention of a mountain verse 14 first mention of the 12 disciples

Verse 19 first mention of betrayal verse 21 first mention of his family verse 23

first mention of teaching in parables and

Here's here's the deal. I'm only going to talk about two of those

So today might be one of those days where you might have more questions at the end than you did at the beginning

Because I'm not going to address most of what I read

But I wanted to make sure that I read so that you can see the context of what's happening

He there's so much happening and if I don't cover all of it, you can just blame Mark for that

Shove in too much into small sections when we look at how dense this section is how much mark is

Packing in again. We're reminded that he's an author

He's trying to communicate things with the way that he is writing and whether we mention that every week or not

I don't want us to lose track of that mark is an author

Mark is an author. He's thinking about how he's telling us

He's thinking about how he's telling this story

He's writing things next to each other and crafting this story intentionally. He's building motifs layers

themes

One way he does this is that sometimes he'll take similar events that may have actually happened days or weeks

Or months apart and he'll put all of those together

Okay

For instance last week when pastor Jen read five stories of conflict

It would be easy for us in our modern mind to think man

Like just every single thing that happened to Jesus on that day was just all about conflict man

That sounds like a really bad day

But if you read if you take your time if you slow down and you read

intentionally

intentionally

Mark makes it clear that these things did not all happen in the same day

He actually writes this he says he tells the first story and then he says a few days later

And then he says once again

Then he says one Sabbath

And then he says another time

There's space between these stories and he's grouping them together to do something that authors do

to build themes

tension

momentum a sense of movement in this story

And today's section is no different

He stacks all these firsts on top of each other so that we feel like this ball that just started rolling

Isn't slowing down

Wants us to feel like everything is happening all at once

Like it's building speed

And going deeper with every single verse and so he stacks events another way that he does this is with

Stacking of meaning with the layering of stories. Okay, it's a common bible writing technique

It's kind of what I was talking about the first week of this series

It's common when you read the scriptures especially scriptures that were written in the first week

Especially scriptures that were written with a jewish background

For the story that you're reading to be intentionally calling back to other stories that you've already read

Or that they expect for you to know one of the ways he does this in today's passage

Is when he mentions a mountainside

And the 12 disciples for the first time

I'll read that part again. It says this

Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted and they came to him

And he appointed

12

All right, so we're thinking about mark like an author

We're thinking about how authors have editors. Yeah, like we think okay

I want to I want to make the best decisions with every word that I use when mark wrote this

He doesn't have to say it this way

Mark doesn't have to mention a mountainside if he doesn't want to he could have just said and then on tuesday jesus selected his team

He could have said that but he doesn't he points out where they are

For a reason and he does mention the 12 and he does mention a mountainside. And so we should ask

Why why is he saying jesus went up?

Mountainside now, let's think like we are a first

century

israelite, okay

2000 years ago

Let's jump into our way back machine

If we lived back then and we were reading this for the first time and we see

A spiritual leader going up a mountain mountainside who might we think of maybe david?

Hiding in the mountainside from king saul jesus. We know this from the line of david. Maybe we could think of elijah

Meeting god on the mountainside after he ran for his life from jezebel

We know that john the baptist is like in elijah that was coming before as a forerunner

Maybe we think of abraham taking isaac up the mountainside

Wondering how god was going to provide a replacement

To save his son from being sacrificed, but the strongest connection

Would be moses

Why?

Because moses is the one that led the israelites

out of egypt and before they built the tent of meeting which is where moses would meet or the

Tabernacle which is where all the priests would meet moses would do what he would go up the mountainside

to meet with god

and the mountain

Is where he would get the law from god

Bring it back down and teach

his people

And so when we see this idea that jesus goes up the side of the mountainside he chooses 12. He says I give you

Authority to go down the mountainside

We're getting this motif from the old testament of moses receiving the law and then giving it to the people the same law

These people had been following for the 1300 years leading up to that moment

So if you're a first century jew and you read that a spiritual leader went up a mountainside moses is probably on your mind now

It doesn't mean

That mark is making this up just so that we'll think of moses. That's not what we're saying. Okay

Jesus went up the mountainside. He's not pretending like he did

But if all this is about is information if all the bible is about is giving us information

About jesus having disciples then mark doesn't have to tell us how and where he chose them

He just has to say that he chose them

He adds the detail

A because it happened and because it leads the reader deeper

into

The story does that make sense?

Yeah

Okay

So then when mark says that he chose 12 disciples, what might that remind us of?

He had 12 tribes of israel, right?

If any point mark wrote down and then jesus bought a dozen donuts

He wants us to think of 12 tribes of israel

If if any gospel writer refers to something as 12

The point is that this is somehow a reference to the 12

tribes because israel having 12 tribes is a

Core element of who they are and who they were and so now

Mark shows these two things

together the mountain

and the 12

I think

Because moses was the first person to lead

the 12 tribes

Moses is the one that led the 12 tribes out of egypt

Out of slavery and he lived with them for the next 40 years on their way to the promised land

And mark is showing how jesus is leading these people

into a new

promised land

But wait, there's more

Because if you read the bible if you're familiar with it or if you're thinking like a first century

Israelite, maybe you remember that while moses led them out of egypt

That moses didn't get to lead them through the jordan river and into the promised land. Do you guys remember that?

Moses gets to the end of his life. He dies. He hands over authority and leadership to joshua

And joshua is the one that gets to lead them

into

The land moses was the first one to lead the 12 but joshua was their leader

When they stepped into the land and received their inheritance

When for the first time listen think about this when for the first time in the history of this people that all 12 tribes had a hundred

people that all 12 tribes had a home

And a land to call their own

Because the 12 tribes started as what?

It started started as brothers

They just started as the children of jacob, right?

They were the brothers of joseph

And they went to egypt as one large family because of a famine

And 400 years later they lead as tribes of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people

So when joshua

Takes them into the land

It is the first time that they get to step into the fullness of who they are

It's the first time that as tribes they get to realize their freedom

It's the first time as tribes they get to step into their identity

It's the first time that happens in history

Of their family and if you are a first century jew you're thinking of moses

You're thinking about the exodus you're thinking about the 12 tribes you're thinking about joshua you're thinking about the

joshua you're thinking about the promised land

And if you're reading this back then

You're thinking

That you would not be calling jesus

jesus

Stay with me

If you are a jew in the first century and you're reading this

You're thinking that if you're jewish you would have said his name a little differently

And when you said his name and when you read this story it would have connected the dots differently than it does for us english

Speakers, what do I mean?

See we call jesus jesus

right

Everyone's familiar with that

Because during translations

His hebru name had a shh

In the middle of it

Had a shh sound but greek didn't have a shh in their alphabet

And so in the greek when it's translated the shh became a ss

Okay

And then his name in hebru ends with an uh sound

But in greek it was considered feminine to put the uh sound at the end of a word

And so they put in ss sound at the end of the word because that was the masculine way of saying it and they didn't want to confuse people about who he was

and then

In hebru his name starts with a yuh sound but later in german their j also made a yuh sound

And so it often got transliterated as a j but we english speakers the j's

Sounds make so what sound a juh sound and when you put all that together we end up in english saying jesus

But in the first century they called him yeshua

And everywhere

Everywhere else in the bible

That we find the name yeshua

That name is called jesus

yeshua

That name is translated

joshua

In this one moment that mark has written down

Mark shows us a spiritual leader go up a mountainside like moses

And then like joshua yeshua

Point them into the promised land that is the new kingdom of god

Do we need to get the mop for anybody's brains like guys it's two verses

It's two verses

So what do we do with this

How do we participate with this?

I'm gonna keep it short and simple because we got the kids with us and it's already been pretty heady

guys be curious

Just be curious

Like I would not recommend everybody to do this

Like I would not recommend everybody watch this show. It's called ted lasso has a lot of swearing in it

But there's this scene

where

Ted's in a pub and he's with the owner of the soccer club

And she's intimidated by her ex that that had owned the club previously

And he's trying to manipulate the situation and so ted says hey if I beat you in darts

Then you have to I think he says you can't show up to any of the games the rest of the season if I remember it correctly

and so

Ted doesn't look like he plays darts very much and this guy is

pompous

And he just starts hitting everything that he wants to hit

And it gets down to this point where ted needs an exact number of points on the dartboard in order to win

And he goes into this monologue and he said, you know

When I was a kid, I was bullied a lot

And one day I remember driving and I saw this quote by walt woodman. It said be curious

He said and I realized that all those people that gave me such a hard time they just weren't curious

Because if they were curious if people like you were curious and he hits a bull's eye

He says you might ask me a couple questions like hey ted

Do you play darts much?

And then he hits another one

And then he says and I would have told you yes every sunday

Until I was 16

He hits the winning shot

We need to be curious when we look at the scriptures

We need to ask

Something as simple as why did he mention the mountainside?

Why does he say that there's a boat?

Why does he say that his family came to get him and thought that he was out of his mind?

Why does it say that the religious leaders came down? Why does it say?

be curious

Because when this was written

There was so much more packed into it than we would see with our english-speaking american eyes today

But it's there

If you will look

And the holy spirit of god will help you see

Amen

Let's pray

God again, I thank you for your scriptures

That they are so full of who you are

They are constantly pointing us to who you are but not just who you were in that year and in that day

But to who you've always been throughout the whole story

That we call existence

Would you soften our hearts in such a way that our minds would want to know more?

And I pray that you would move in our hearts that we would always look for the work that you are doing

We would always want to participate with it

That your yes would always be our yes

Amen