Mark 3

Mark 3 Sermon

Why do you come to church?
I’m not suggesting you stop coming, I’m just wanting you to consider why you come.
Perhaps you are here because your parents have dragged you against your will. I pray that even if you don’t thank them for it today, you will thank them for it when you are older.
But, if you are here of your own choice, why did you make that choice? Only about 6% of the population attend church on any given Sunday in this country, so it must be a pretty deliberate decision if you are going to end up in a church of all places on a Sunday morning, rather than a shopping mall, a sports club, time with the family at home, time on the couch in front of the TV, or why not stay in bed? Why are you a part of that strange 6% today?
Why would you choose to come and sing old songs in an old building that let’s face it could do with some TLC places? Why would you choose to sit on uncomfortable seats with uncomfortably closed mouths for an uncomfortably long time whilst someone talks about uncomfortable things like sin and demons?
I hope I haven’t caused any offence, but let’s face it; if you wanted comfort or entertainment or style, you’d be a lot better off at the cinema.
It could just be a habit – but why don’t you try to kick the habit??
It could be that it’s where your friends are, and so it is a good place to meet up with them.
I guess, though, for most people who attend church regularly it has something to do with Jesus.
Perhaps you are intrigued by him.
Perhaps you hope he can give you something. Something you can’t find elsewhere.
What do you want from Jesus?
It is extraordinary that in the passage we are going to read we will see that people want different things from Jesus. But in the end, only Jesus gets what he wants.
We will see crowds who know that Jesus is a miracle worker, and pretty much mob him. But Jesus withdraws from them.
We will see demons who understand that Jesus to be the Son of God and hate him for it, But Jesus silences them.
We will see Jesus’ own mother and brothers assuming that Jesus has gone mad, and therefore trying to silence him, But Jesus evades them.
We will see religious leaders accusing Jesus of being demonic but Jesus reveals the evil in their own hearts.
Who do you think Jesus is? Would he agree with you?
What do you want from him?
Do you think Jesus is even interested in giving you what you want?
I pray that as we read God’s word this morning he will show us who Jesus is, and therefore reshape our expectations and hopes of what it would mean to encounter King Jesus, and what he wants from us.
And we will see 3 ways in which Jesus wants to change the way we think.

o Change our understanding of Fellowship (7-19)
o Change our understanding of Freedom (20-30)
o Change our understanding of Family. (31-34)



Turn with me to Mark’s gospel, chapter 3:7
7(J) Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and(K) a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea 8and Jerusalem and(L) Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around(M) Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. 9And he told his disciples to(N) have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they(O) crush him, 10for(P) he had healed many, so that all who had(Q) diseases pressed around him(R) to touch him. 11(S) And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they(T) fell down before him and cried out, "You are(U) the Son of God." 12And(V) he strictly ordered them not to make him known.

13(W) And he went up on the mountain and called to him those(X) whom he desired, and they came to him. 14(Y) And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach 15(Z) and have authority to cast out demons. 16He appointed the twelve:(AA) Simon (to whom(AB) he gave the name Peter); 17(AC) James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); 18Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and(AD) Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, 19and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

It is difficult for us, 21st century churchgoers to understand quite what a radical reshaping of the people of God takes place with the ministry of Jesus.
o A Reshaped Fellowship (7-19)
o Who belongs? New boundaries
§ The crowd is from all parts of Israel (Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem) and beyond (Idumea, beyond the Jordan, Tyre and Sidon the boundaries of Israel).
§ At the moment Jesus is not going to these places, though, we shall see him doing so later in the gospel. But for now, we are beginning to see that Jesus’ conception of his Messaiahship is not merely about being the king of Israel who rules from Jerusalem. His kingdom would be an international kingdom.
§ This is one of the great encouragements of being a multi-ethnic church. Let’s just do an experiment. OK if you’re ethnic origin is originally from Britain, put your hands up; if you Europe sit down. From North America & Caribbean. From South America. From Asia. From Africa. From Australasia. Geographical and cultural boundaries are bridged by the Lord Jesus. The church is to be a display of Jesus boundary breaking ministry.
§ But the most striking of them at all was the breaking down of the boundaries between Jew and Gentile. With the coming of Jesus there is just a crowd of followers;
§ Do we reflect this? Have we recognized that the gospel must go out to all the earth? I’m delighted to have discovered that this is a church that has a heart for world mission. I pray that that heart would only grow.
o Who leads? New sons
§ A man walking around with twelve men following behind him was making a statement that we might not pick up on. There would be only one person that a Jew would think of: And that was Jacob, and his twelve sons, the 12 tribes of Israel. The Lord himself gave Jacob a new name, Israel. And so, Jesus is the new Israel, who in establishing the new founding members of those who are his kin, he too gives new names to the first three of them, Simon Peter, and james and John, no longer known as the Sons of Zebedee, but the Sons of thunder.
This is very significant. Jesus is saying that having fellowship with God no longer has anything to do with whether or not you are descended physically from one of the 12 sons of Jacob. It is about whether you have been brought into the community of the apostles: that is whether you have responded to the ministry of the apostles. Where do we find that ministry? In the NT.
You are part of the people of god if you live by this book.
We can come to Jesus and make our demands of him even as unrepentant sinners. We can bring our desires and priorities and pray that he will bless them. But he won’t: He is not just Santa Claus come true; he is the Sovereign God made man. He doesn’t want to adopt our desires. He wants to change them. We need Jesus sovereign love to call us to him to reshape our thinking, change our hearts and reorder our priorities to match his. How does he do this? By the preaching of his apostolic word.
o New priorities
I don’t know if you noticed how Jesus is continually on the move in this passage: In a few short verses we see him by the sea, on a boat, up a mountain, in a house. And much of the time seems to be spent avoiding people… the crowds who want healing, the vocal attention of the demons;
And it’s not because he has relational overload and needs to go lock himself in a room. But that isn’t what Jesus is doing. He is avoiding people who have their own agenda with him, and then he is defining the agenda with others.
o Not physical but spiritual: preaching & casting out demons… NOT healing.
As you read through the kinds of blessing promised to Israel, they are largely physical blessings. Deuteronomy says, “12 If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the LORD your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. 13 He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. 14 You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. 15 The LORD will keep you free from every disease.”
No such physical blessings are promised in the New Covenant. But those who follow Jesus are not promised endless physical blessings in this life. I don’t know if you’ve come across the prosperity gospel... “saying that Jesus Promises his followed wealth, health and prosperity in this life” it is a lie. Those who wanted a Messiah for their own physical health and prosperity were rebuked and avoided by Jesus. The New Testament is full of words like these. “Endure hardship” “take up your cross”
Just as he had said of his own ministry that it was about preaching and casting out demons, so he commissioned the apostles to do the same.
This is NOT because we are to stoically endure terrible things, and following Jesus is about gritting your teeth and practicing mind over matter. It is because the physical blessings in the Old Testament were a shadow: a mere picture of the bountiful spiritual blessings that you find in Christ.
Do you believe that? You open the glossy magazine that the estate agent puts through your door, and see on the front page a rather nice 8 bedroom home in one of the classier areas of Kensington for umpteen million pounds. Do you really believe that the homeless person who knows the Lord Jesus has far more than that person?
What is it that you would ask for if you found a lamp with a genie in it? Do you believe that you have far more in Christ? As you learn to trust him more, and let go of worldly dreams that are passing away, Jesus will become far sweeter. It’s the thing of hymns isn’t it?
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.
But we know, don’t we that unless we deliberately turn our eyes upon Jesus, the things of earth become shiny and bright in our eyes.
Even among the twelve who were given this radical new spiritual set of priorities, there would be one who would find the glory of this world too high a price to pay for eternal life, and in the end he would exchange this Messiah’s kingdom for thirty shiny pieces of silver.
Have you had your ideas of Jesus reshaped to be centred around the good news of the gospel, the promises of eternal life rather than the things of this world?
Jesus was reshaping the ideas of who belonged to God precisely along those spiritual lines.
o Change your ideas about Freedom (20-30)
20Then he went(AE) home, and the crowd gathered again,(AF) so that they could not even eat. 21(AG) And when(AH) his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, "He(AI) is out of his mind."
22And(AJ) the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying,(AK) "He is possessed by Beelzebul," and "by the prince of demons he casts out the demons." 23(AL) And he called them to him and said to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? 24If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 27But(AM) no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man.(AN) Then indeed he may plunder his house.
28(AO) "Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29but whoever(AP) blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"— 30for they were saying, "He has an unclean spirit."
It was certainly clear to at least two groups of people that Jesus’ words sounded strange and even unsettling. Firstly there was his own family: we will think about them more a little later.
But then, the religious leaders who came down from Jerusalem were so disturbed by what Jesus was teaching that they accused him of being demonically influenced.
There are many ironies in this scene.
The teachers of the law accuse Jesus of being like the terrible king Azariah. As we read earlier in the service in 2 kings 1, Azariah, the king of Israel had appealed to a foreign demonic god for authority;
They are saying – yes, sure you’ve got a following Jesus – but we’ve had people with great authority lead people astray before in this nation. And where did it end them up – like those soldiers who encountered Lord through the prophet Elijah and were struck down by lightning. Don’t you dare introduce such demonic power into Israel again, Jesus. You should be leading people to the temple worship that we from Jerusalem want to protect and promote.
Jesus’ reply exposes their stupidity and their wickedness.
Stupidity: what they are saying just doesn’t make sense. Everywhere demons are unable to stand in the face of Jesus.
23 How can Satan drive out Satan? 24If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. 26And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come.
Satan’s army is in full-scale retreat before him. To say that this is demonic power would be like suggesting that the d-Day landings were really a cleverly crafted plan of Hitler. No, it spelt his end.
But their argument isn’t just stupid: it is wicked.
27In fact, no one can enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house. 28I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. 29But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin."
30He said this because they were saying, "He has an evil spirit."
This is where the irony deepens. What is the ‘house’ that Jesus is talking about in verse 27? Is it just an individual person affected by a demon? ‘House’ would be a strange description of a person, especially when it was used in verse 25 to describe Satan’s kingdom. No, it seems to be talking about more than a person: it is talking about a whole kingdom: the kingdom of Israel.
And so the accusation that the scribes had made against Jesus is now flying back in their faces. They had so corrupted the worship of the Lord that Israel itself and Jerusalem from which they came, and the temple at the heart of Jerusalem had become a house of Satan. Isn’t that what Jesus said of their religion elsewhere: “15"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
But the hold that the devil had on the religion of Israel would not hold, for though the devil was the strong man, Jesus had shown by casting out demons that he was indeed the stronger, and Satan would not stand before him.
He had come to bring freedom; freedom from all the demonic powers in this world. Freedom from the burden of sin itself, that first demonic offering to this world that we have all so foolishly welcomed.
And what an incredible freedom it is:
28(AO) "Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter.
Wow! Think of all those things that the Lord brought to mind as ... was leading us to confess our sins this morning. They will all be forgiven if you have trusted in Jesus.
How can we know? Perhaps you are not a believer, and you are sitting there saying, “if you knew what I’d done, you wouldn’t be saying that.”
Yes, I would – not because I think that your sins and blasphemies are insignificant. No, the bible is very clear that all of our sins and blasphemies leave us with a debt of guilt before God that we could never pay, not even in an eternity of punishment.
Yet Jesus can speak with confidence that even such sins would be forgiven, because he knew his mission. Right beside him stood the one he knew would betray him. Before him stood his accusers whom he knew would condemn him. And he would go to the cross; he knew that all the sins and blasphemies of his
People would be forgiven because he did not intend to leave that cross until he
had personally borne that full punishment that he, the infinite, eternal God who had become man, alone could bear.
Rejoice in this incredible gift of Jesus. Do not ever think of your sin, without thinking of the mercy of Christ that has born it for you.
If you are not a Christian, recognise that such forgiveness is being held out to you. There is nobody else who can bear it. You, like the whole nation of Israel, are in the possession of the devil, whether you realise it or not. You may not like me saying it – and I wouldn’t say it unless I felt impelled to by what Jesus is saying here.
Satan is a terrible enemy: like the times in was most spiteful as a child, he is always tempting us to sin, making it look as attractive as possible: do you know why he does that: not because he wants you to enjoy sin, but because he wants to have some ground on the final day of judgement to accuse you of it, and have you condemned to hell.
Do you take pleasure in your pride, your cutting remarks, your lust, your clever lies, your self-sufficient feelings that you have no need for God. The fact you take any pleasure in anything the Lord commands you not to do shows that you are deeper in his slavery than you imagine.
And Jesus is the only one who can set you free. Cast yourself upon him, and beg him to set you free. He promises that he will if you would but turn and trust him.
In the definition of freedom at least, it seems that the devil has almost entirely fooled our world.
How did the Rolling Stones put it?
“I’m free to do what I want any old time.”
“I’m free any old time to get what I want”
I pretty much had this view of freedom as a teenager, and am so grateful for the Lord for putting whole hearted Christians around me as an 18 year old who showed me by their words and example that freedom comes only in submission to Christ. I’d grown up hearing it all the time in the Anglican services I attended. I think I had thought they were just poetic words that didn’t really make much sense.
O GOD, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life, to serve you is perfect freedom; to serve you is perfect freedom.
My Non-Christian friend – has it really been perfect freedom to serve yourself, or whatever other god you serve?
Jesus offers to release you and to bring you into the freedom you were designed for. The freedom to be forgiven for rejecting your maker, so that you might come to know him and love him and serve him.
Yet be warned, for there are some who will never come.
28(AO) "Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29but whoever(AP) blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"— 30for they were saying, "He has an unclean spirit."
We don’t want to fall into either of two traps when reading these words of Jesus.
1) There is the danger of people feeling wrongly condemned by the verse. There are those who are genuinely trying to follow Jesus, but are petrified that at some point in their lives there was a moment when they deliberately called the work of the Spirit evil, and they fear that they will never be forgiven. That is not who this verse is talking about. If you have repented of any sin, it will be forgiven. It is not the unforgiveable sin: that is an eternal sin – a sin that is never repented of. There is NO sin that is repented of that is not forgiven. So if you fear that you have committed the unforgiveable sin, repent of it, trust in Christ for your salvation, and you can be quite sure that you haven’t committed it.
2) The other danger is to miss the very real warning that Jesus is so kindly giving here. There really is such a thing as the unforgiveable sin. It is the lifelong, eternal refusal to recognize the Spirit’s work in drawing people to Jesus. It is the heart who will never bow the knee to Jesus’ Lordship. My friend, do not assume that you are safe without Jesus. Do not write him off as evil, or mad; don’t write him off as irrelevant, or safe to ignore. He is your only hope of freedom.
And what an incredible freedom he offers.
It is the freedom to belong to him within his family.
o A Reshaped Family. (31-34)
31 And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you." 33And he answered them, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" 34And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother."

o The family of God isn’t defined by blood relationship, but by faith in Jesus.
What an extraordinary thing that we can be called the family of God. Could there have been any more intimate connection to Jesus than to have born him in the womb, nursed him, raised him, almost certainly mourned with him at the death of his father – her husband!? Yes! For at this time it seems that Mary doesn’t understand. Perhaps even out of a misguided protection of him she wants to take him home out of the limelight. Yet he does not go with her, for there are those who are willing to sit at his feet and learn from him. To know him as a son was a privilege only one human being has ever known.
To know him as a Loving Lord is a far greater privilege, which Mary herself will forever enjoy along with all who have put their faith in him. Any idea of revering Mary makes no sense here: the lesson that Mary had to learn, and we too must learn, is to trust and revere the Lord Jesus; in doing so we will be his family.
If you have Christian parents, like me, perhaps this is a particularly important lesson to learn. Your parents can leave you a great legacy of teaching, but you cannot inherit their faith. But if even being Jesus’ biological mother was not enough, then surely being the child of a believer is not. You need to have Jesus as your Lord too.
You, like Mary, have inherited something else through your parents too: a sinful nature: your parents may have done a good job of protecting you from various dangers in this world. They have not been able to protect you from the sin in your own heart, though you may feel that you have learned to hide it sufficiently from them. But you cannot hide it from Jesus. He calls you to turn from your sin and put your trust in him each day. That might require some difficult conversations with your parents confessing sin. But the Lord wants to release you so that you might have the freedom of being his child.
He calls you, like all of us to sit at his feet, doing his father’s will.
o Those inside the house are those sitting around Jesus, doing God’s will.
Is Jesus after all this a legalist? If he is saying that his brother and sister and mother is the one doing his Father’s will, does that mean that the way we come to belong to him is to work very hard?
NO, that would be to get the cart before the horse. The cart doesn’t get to be pulled by a horse by moving down the street. The cart moves down the street because it is being pulled by the horse.
Doing God’s will doesn’t qualify you to enter Jesus family. It is that if Jesus has entered you by his Spirit, he will not leave you unchanged – you will begin to do God’s will more and more.
The American preacher, Jonathan Edwards, put it like this:
If God dwells in the heart, and be vitally united to it, he will show that he is a God, by the efficacy of his operation. Christ is not in the heart of a saint, as in a sepulcher, or as a dead savior, that does nothing; but as in his temple, and as one that is alive from the dead. For in the heart where Christ savingly is, there he lives, and exerts himself after the power of that endless life that he received at his resurrection. Thus every saint that is a subject of the benefit of Christ's sufferings, is made to know and experience the power of his resurrection. The Spirit of Christ, which is the immediate spring of grace in the heart, is all life, all power, all act.
Do you really want to belong to Jesus?
That is what it comes down to in the end. Why do you come to Jesus: each week in church: each day in prayer: is it merely because you want something from him; we certainly need more than we imagined from him – we need forgiveness. But do we also come to him because we long to belong to him. Because we are his, and we want him to use us for his purposes, and therefore we want the strength and the courage, and the perspective and the endurance to do the will of the Father, in the power of the Spirit, for the sake of the Joy of the Son. For we are his brother and sister and mother and delight in belonging to him.
Let’s pray.