The Local Christendom Podcast with Aaron Ventura

Sermon: The Transfiguration (Mark 9:1-13)

The TransfigurationSunday, September 17th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 9:1-13
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
2 And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them. 3 And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them. 4 And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus. 5 And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. 6 For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid. 7 And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him. 8 And suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves.
9 And as they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. 10 And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean. 11 And they asked him, saying, Why say the scribes that Elias must first come? 12 And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought. 13 But I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for the transfiguration of Your Son, this foretaste of divine glory that has been recorded and written down for our encouragement. We ask that you would give us insight and understanding of these things, and that as we behold you in truth, we might be transformed into your image. We ask for your cloud to descend upon us, in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
Last week we were given some hard and challenging words from the Lord Jesus. We were told that the only way to attain to everlasting life is by denying ourselves, taking up the cross, and following Jesus to a painful crucifixion. The cross is a great symbol of shame, it is an announcement of our death and union with Christ, and of our death to the world and its lusts which are passing away. At the same time, the cross is also a great symbol of victory and conquest, because Christ died and rose from the dead victorious over Satan, sin, and death, for the Christian the cross is turned into a symbol of glory (we make jewelry out of it). It is the crown we wear upon our head at the same time we feel its heavy burden upon our back. The cross is the tree of life that we can only partake of if we are first crucified on it together with Jesus.
The cross is a window into the mystery of the gospel. The Apostle Paul calls it a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. It is an embarrassment to those who expect the messiah to take the kingdoms of this world unscathed, and it is an embarrassment to those who laud human wisdom and human strength.
As Jesus says to the Pharisees in Luke 16:15, “For that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.”
And likewise in Isaiah 55:8 God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.”
The way that God chose to save the world is through death and resurrection. By taking the thing that is most fearful to men, namely death and shame (being stripped naked before the world) and He turns it inside out. Death and resurrection is the very pattern and sequence that God has woven into the fabric of reality. And so the gospel is something we are immersed in and surrounded by, and yet too often blind to.
There is evening and then morning. Darkness before light.
There is sleep and then waking. Weariness before the renewing of our strength.
There is the coldness of winter before the warmth of spring.
There is the caterpillar in the cocoon, before it becomes a butterfly.
There is seedtime and harvest, sowing before reaping.
Obviously, you should know that if there is death, there is also a resurrection.
The Apostle Paul makes this point in 1 Corinthians 15:36. And he saysthat you are fool if you do not recognize that a seed must die before it can become fruitful. And from this he goes on to prove the nature of our resurrection bodies.
“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: 43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:42-44).
If you want glory, honor, and immortality, if you want to upgrade your very weak and frail and at times very sick body, for something that can never get sick, never suffers, and never dies, that does not need food or exercise to maintain it in perfect strength, well Jesus gives us in our text this morning, a preview of that future glory. A preview of what we will look if we follow him all the way.
What is the destination for those who follow Christ?
Jesus has made clear that there are some hard stops along the way. There are the trials of youth and puberty, there are the trials of finding your calling, your vocation, finding a spouse, there are mid-life crises, there are health crises, there are financial crises. There are many trials along the way. But where do all of these trials lead? They lead to death, but even that is only a rest stop. The ultimate destination for the Christian is resurrection unto glory. It is entrance into a New Heavens and New Earth in which righteousness dwells.
So why all this talk about resurrection here, in the middle of Mark’s gospel? Because it is the purpose of our text this morning to stir us up to a living hope.
What does the transfiguration of Jesus give us?
It gives us a certain hope of the glory that awaits us after the cross.
God knows our frame. And He knows that if He asks us to die, we should have something to look forward to beyond the grave. So God is not asking anyone to take a blind leap of faith into the dark. No.
Jesus comes as light into the world, and he tells us in plain speech, in the open light of day who He is, and where He is going. He is the Son of God, and He is going to die and rise again for our sins. And just in case you had some doubts about the resurrection, well the transfiguration is a preview of the other side.
The transfiguration is what happens when the soul that sees God pours forth into the body. Jesus shows us what is shining in His soul behind the veil. A glory and radiance that is whiter and brighter than the sun.
So that is the purpose of this text, to give us hope, so let us consider these verses together.
Verse 1
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
This is a continuation and conclusion of Jesus teaching the disciples and the crowds about the cost of discipleship. The verse right before this, Mark 8:38 says, “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
And then he says unto that group, that some of them standing there, listening to him, especially the disciples, some of them will not die, before the kingdom of God comes with power. To what does this refer?
When did the kingdom of God come with power?
Well according to Jesus, it is going to come during the disciples’ lifetime, but some of them are going to die before its arrival, while some will live to see it.
Some have suggested that the kingdom coming with power refers to Pentecost, and while that is possible, I think it’s unlikely because all of the apostles except for Judas was alive at that time. So although it could be that the some refers to everyone except Judas, I think there is a much better option that has a lot more biblical support.
A few chapters from now, in Mark 13, Jesus is going to prophesy about the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the old world. He says in Mark 13:24-26, “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, 25 And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. 26 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.”
We’ll get into this in greater depth when we get to Mark 13, but this is not a reference to the end of human history. This “coming in the clouds” is not a reference to the bodily return of Christ in final judgment. Rather, it is the coming of the saints in union with Christ to receive the kingdom from the Father. We know this because it is a direct quote from Daniel 7, and there we are told the Son of Man is the saints coming up to the Ancient of Days, not Christ coming down to earth.
Furthermore, this language in Mark 13 of the stars falling from heaven and the powers being shaken is not about our solar system collapsing, it is about the end of a spiritual-political administration. And more specifically, it is the end of the four kingdoms spoken of in the book of Daniel. This can be proved from many passages, but I’ll give you just two:
1. This is exact same language used in Isaiah (and elsewhere) to refer to the fall of Babylon to the Medo-Persians.
Isaiah 13 says, “For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not give their light; The sun will be darkened in its going forth, And the moon will not cause its light to shine…I will shake the heavens, And the earth shall remove out of her place…Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, The beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah” (Is. 13:10, 13, 17, 19).
So the falling of stars, and the darkening of sun and moon, the earth being removed, are a reference to the fall of a king and his kingdom, along with the spiritual or demonic powers behind them. You can this see even more explicitly if you read through Daniel and Revelation.
2. The second reason we know this is not about the end of human history is because Jesus says that all this great tribulation and cosmic upheaval is going to take place within one generation, that is within roughly 40 years of his prophecy.
So a few verses later in Mark 13:30, Jesus says,“Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.” And the all these things there includes, the spread of the gospel, the great tribulation, the coming of antichrists, the stars falling, and the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heavens.
All these events took place in the 1st century (within one generation), just like Jesus said they would, and just like church history attests to. By 70 AD, some of the apostles had died, but some (like John) were still alive. And that is when the kingdom came with power.
To deny this is to in effect call Jesus a false prophet. Jesus says, “Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.”
John records this moment in Revelation 11:15 where it says, “And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.”
There’s a whole lot more to say about this, and we’ll address it in greater detail when we get to chapter 13, but there’s your preview.
So having giving this promise, in verses 2-8 we then ascend the mountain for Christ’s transfiguration.
Verses 2-3
2 And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them. 3 And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them.
Here we have the fulfillment of multiple Old Testament prophecies that reveal who Jesus is.
First, we see that Jesus is clothed in light, “his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow.” In Matthew’s version of this same event it says, “his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.”
Who is Jesus if he is emanating light such that it extends even to his clothing?
Psalm 104 says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, You are very great: You are clothed with honor and majesty, Who cover Yourself with light as with a garment.”
God wears light as a garment. So who is Jesus that he wears the same?
We see also that Jesus is fulfilling the prophecies of Malachi 3 and 4. There we are told of two messengers. One is Elijah (John the Baptist), who prepares the way for the Lord, and the other messenger is the Lord Himself.
Malachi 3:2-3 says, But who may abide the day of his [the Lord’s] coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: And he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, That they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.
Notice that the Lord is said to come and purify his people like “fuller’s soap.” A fuller is like a professional dry cleaner or bleacher. And Malachi prophesies that the Lord will come with a kind of “divine bleach.” So Mark draws our attention to this by saying that Jesus’ clothes were so white “as no fuller on earth can white them.”
Who is Jesus? He is the one who comes to make His people divinely white, pure, and spotless. He comes to elevate human nature to what God had always intended for us.
This is the glory that radiates from who Jesus is, not only as the Divine Son of God, but as the heavenly Son of Man, who is perfect in his humanity.
And what this means for you and I who are united to Jesus Christ, is that this is what we are going to look like when we put on the resurrection.
Daniel 12:3 says, “And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”
When the kingdom of Christ comes with power, and the stars fall from the heavens (those old angelic powers). It is the saints who replace them. We are the stars. Paul says in Ephesians that we are presently seated with Christ in heavenly places.
He says in 1 Corinthians 6:3, that we are going to judge angels.
This is also why he says in Philippians 2:14-15, “Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as stars in the world.”
Jesus is revealing the majesty that awaits us, and the glory that we already have growing inside of us.
Romans 8 says that all creation is groaning for our glory to be revealed.
Romans 8:18-19 says, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19 For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.”
Creation is groaning for the transfiguration of your body. And so as we groan and suffer in this life, keep your hope firmly fixed on this glory Christ reveals and shall give us.
Verses 4-8
Now after Jesus is transfigured, Elijah and Moses appear (verse 4). Why these two men (of all the people Jesus could have appeared with)?
To start it might be because both Moses and Elijah were forerunners, Moses preceded Joshua, Elijah preceded Elisha.
Both men were prophets who faced down kings and were persecuted by them, Moses by Pharoah, Elijah by Ahab and Jezebel.
Both men also had visions of God on the top of a mountain.
There are a lot of similarities between these two men.
But I think the primary reason for their appearance with Jesus is to make them into witnesses that Jesus is the Son of God.
We saw earlier that some people thought Jesus was Elijah, and so this appearance clearly distinguishes the two. He’s not Elijah, he’s someone greater.
It also turns the Jews greatest authority, Moses, into a personal witness to Christ. So if you say you follow Moses but not Jesus, well then you are not actually following Moses. Moses and Elijah are both witnesses to Christ.
They are especially witnesses to the voice of God from the cloud that says, “This is my beloved Son: hear him.”
This moment in Jesus’ ministry is a sequel to his baptism, it is a kind of second anointing. At his baptism, the Father said, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And now here for a second time, with Moses and Elijah, and the three disciples present, the Father declares, “This is my beloved Son: hear him.”
So will you listen to Jesus? Will you hear him? That is the one sentence the Father gives, the one command he issues to the disciples. “This is my beloved Son: hear him.”
This is the climax of the entire first half of Mark’s gospel. We ascend the mountain and see Christ’s glory, and now we go back down.
Verses 9-10
9 And as they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. 10 And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean.
Despite this revelation, the disciples are even more confused. They appear to be wondering, if Jesus is so powerful, if he is the Son of God, then why would he rise from the dead? Why would he die in the first place? Is this a metaphorical rising from the dead, kind of like the metaphor of bread and leaven? They are genuinely confused by this.
So in verse 11 they ask Jesus…
Verses 11-13
Why say the scribes that Elias must first come? 12 And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought [treated with contempt]. 13 But I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they wanted, as it is written of him.
The disciples are aware (via the scribes) of some of these prophecies about Elijah and the resurrection from the dead. And there was debate, just like there is today, about how to interpret these different prophecies and whether they are figurative or literal and when they will happen. To give you just two examples of this:
Ezekiel 37 is a prophesy about the dry bones of Israel coming to life, and this is a reference to the nation being resurrected and placed back into the land. It is a figurative resurrection for the nation. Maybe this is what the disciples think Jesus is talking about.
In Luke 2:34, when Jesus is a newborn baby, brought to the temple, Simeon says to Mary, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel.” So there is some kind of death and resurrection that Jesus brings about by his earthly ministry. What kind of death and resurrection is it?
So what the disciples and the Jews in general expected from the Messiah was that he would bring about a national resurrection, he would restore the kingdom to Israel, and establish God’s justice on earth. What they did not expect, was a literal death and resurrection in the middle of history. In their minds, a literal-bodily resurrection was only for the very end of time. So they wonder, why do the scribes say Elijah must come first, if Jesus is talking about a resurrection now? How can there be a resurrection before Elijah comes?
And Jesus says, Elijah did come, and they missed it. It was John the Baptist. And when John baptized the nation and baptized Christ, he restored all things. Because in Jesus, the entire government of the kingdom, priestly, kingly, and prophetic offices, were finally restored.
Conclusion
It says in 1 John 3:2-3, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. 3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
The gospels give us the transfiguration of Jesus, to show us the glory that is to come. And although we do not see it now with our mortal eyes, we hope for it by faith, and in the meantime, John says, whoever has this hope in Him, purifies himself, just as He is pure.
So behold the purity of the Lord Jesus. And cast aside your filth, your sin, the dirt that clings so closely. Put on the garments of the Lord Jesus, that you might share in his righteousness.
This is what the death and resurrection of Christ accomplishes for us. So look to him in hope.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Sermon: The Price of Your Soul (Mark 8:34-38)

The Price of Your SoulSunday, September 10th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 8:34-38
34 And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. 35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. 36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? 37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
Prayer
Father, we are challenged by these words of the Lord Jesus, to pick up our cross and follow Him. Help us as we seek to be obedient to Your Divine Will, and kindle in us the gift of true and heavenly love, such that we can endure all suffering with joy. We ask for Your Spirit in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
Once upon a time there was man named Demas (Δημᾶς). Demas was a friend and companion of the Apostle Paul, and Paul mentions him by name at the end of his letter to the Colossians and his letter to Philemon.
He writes in Colossians 4:14, “Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.”
He says to Philemon in Philemon 23-24, “There salute thee Epaphras, my fellowprisoner in Christ Jesus; Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellowlabourers.”
So who was Demas? Demas was a fellowlabourer with Paul in the gospel. He was what we would call a professing Christian, a man who served the Lord and assisted the Apostle, and yet at the very end of Paul’s life, he writes a final letter to Timothy. And Paul says to Timothy, “Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me: For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica…Luke alone is with me” (2 Tim. 4:9-11).
There were roughly seven years that passed between what Paul wrote in Colossians/Philemon (AD 60), and what he wrote in 2 Timothy (AD 67). What happened in those seven years to Demas’ faith? What changed? How did he go from being called a “fellowlabourer” with Paul to forsaking him? How did he go from appearing to love God to actually loving this present world?
Paul says, “having loved this present world, he departed unto Thessalonica.”
We can only guess at the reasons for Demas’ apostasy. We are not told exactly what seduced him.
Perhaps there was a woman in Thessalonica.
Perhaps there was a lucrative job opportunity there that he just could not turn down.
Or perhaps he was just tired of the missionary life, of persecution, of troubles, and he thought, “I’ve put in my years of service, now I deserve a little Me-time.”
Whatever the specific reasons for Demas’ abandoning the faith, they are fittingly described under the heading, “having loved this present world.” Or in the words of Jesus, Demas having gained the world, lost his soul.
Demas like Judas is a cautionary tale. A warning sign for all believers to take heed to what is in your heart, to not be self-deceived. Take heed to what it is that you truly love and treasure.
For as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16:22, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran-atha.”
And the Apostle John in 1 John 2:15, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
So what do you love? What do you prize and delight in? What really makes you happy?
Is it God and the contemplation of His beauty? Is it Christ and the loveliness He bestows on creatures? Is it the new heavens and new earth, and the glories of the world that is to come? Or are your affections stuck down here (wanting the next weekend, wanting the next meal, wanting the next episode of your favorite show), are your affections fixed upon God or are they stuck in this present world that is fading away like vapor?
What do you love? And what are you willing to sacrifice in order to get that thing you love?
This is the question Jesus impresses upon his disciples, and he cuts straight to the heart: “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” This is the challenge if you want to live forever. This is the way of the Lord, and it is the only way to salvation.
And so this morning I want to look at three things that Jesus says we must do if we would live forever (if we would avoid becoming Demas).
1. You Must Deny Yourself
2. You Must Lose Your Life for Christ
3. You Must Be Unashamed of His Word
Verse 34 – #1 – You Must Deny Yourself
34 And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me.
Notice first that Jesus is addressing the crowd and not only the disciples. This call to self-denial is not limited to apostles or missionaries or pastors but rather extends to every single person who professes the Lord Jesus. If you call yourself a Christian then this applies to you.
Christianity is a religion of ultimate ends, of death and resurrection. It is not merely a plan for moral or social reform, though it will demand that your morals and society change. Christianity is a religion that will not let you in unless you die first.
What is the initiation rite into the Christian church? It is baptism. It is the public renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The Christian life begins with a “so long farewell” to the self, and it is perfected as we continue in the Apostle’s words to “die daily” (1 Cor. 15:31).
So everything Jesus says here applies equally to all Christians.
Now what exactly is self-denial?
In the immediate context, Jesus is referring to a very literal death on a very literal cross (that’s where is he going). We must not forget that all metaphorical “dying daily” and “picking up our cross” (our trials), must be grounded in a very real commitment to literally die on a literal cross. This is the radical self-denial Jesus calls us to.
Torture and crucifixion was the fate for many Christians in the early church.History tells us that almost all of the apostles died painful and brutal deaths. Tradition holds that Peter was crucified upside down, James was beheaded, and John was dropped into boiling oil. Other Christians were fed to lions, had their tongues cut out, or were burned at the stake.
And so for those who were hearing this message in the 1st century, self-denial did not just mean waking up early and skipping your morning coffee. Self-denial was not just working out and taking a cold shower.
The kind of self-denial Jesus is calling people to is the kind of self-denial that might get you tortured and crucified by Caesar.
Jesus is saying, “If you follow me, you must deny in yourself that most basic and natural desire to live and avoid suffering.”
And to this we might respond, how is that even possible?
God created us with the natural desire to live forever. It is the essence of living things to desire to keep living. And therefore the only way you can soberly overcome the strongest natural desire there is (the desire to live), is for God to give you a supernatural desire for something greater, namely to attain unto the resurrection and a life of immortality.
We tend to think of living in strictly biological physical terms. If we are moving and breathing, then we are alive. And that is true insofar as it goes. But what God reveals to us in Holy Scripture is that there are actually two kinds of life and also two kinds of death.
There is a physical death which is the separated of the soul from the body. And there is physical life where the body and the soul are united and moving.
There is also a spiritual death, which is the soul’s separation from God. And there is also spiritual life, which is the soul’s union with God.
God told Adam and Eve, that on the day they ate from the forbidden tree, they would surely die. And yet on the day they ate, they did not die physically. Adam went on to live for 930 years (Gen. 5:5). And so what kind of death did they suffer? Adam and Eve suffered a spiritual death, their soul was separated from God, and it was this spiritual separation that caused their eventual physical death. Separation from God leads to the eventual separation of the soul from the body.
To give you a somewhat silly analogy, you can think of these two kinds of death in terms of the life of your smartphone. If you are your smartphone, spiritual death is when the phone gets disconnected/unplugged from the charger in the wall, and physical death is when your phone eventually dies because its charge runs out.
Spiritual death is what caused our physical death.
So when Jesus says, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself,”he is commanding us to subordinate our desire for physical life to the greater desire He gives us for spiritual life.
In other words, more than the desire for your soul to continue to be united to your body, you must want your soul to be reunited to God, and it is only be being reunited with God, that your soul will eventually be united with an immortal/resurrected body. This is the logic of self-denial.
Now what exactly is spiritual life? We said it is the soul’s union with God, but how does that union happen? Well Jesus tells us in John 17:3, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
The essence of spiritual life is knowing God, and the knowledge that Jesus speaks of here is the knowledge of intimacy and love that a husband and wife have in marriage. Adam knew his wife Eve, and the two became one flesh. This is an analogy for Christ and the Church, for the human soul and the life of God, and it is how we become in the words of 2 Peter 1:4, “partakers of the divine nature.” We remain distinct from God, like husband and wife are distinct persons, but we are joined to God in a spiritual union.
So it is by knowing and loving God, that we can be said to have eternal life abiding in us even now. If you know God and truly love him, you have eternal life. And when that is true of you, suddenly, self-denial and even painful martyrdom, becomes something you will gladly embrace for the sake of Christ. And in fact, death is changed from being something you are afraid of, to something you welcome, because death is now our doorway to glory and seeing God face to face.
Just as a man in love will do anything for his beloved, so we are compelled by the loveliness of Christ to do anything for Him. This is how long term, self-denial, even unto death becomes possible. Love makes us into people who will gladly lay down our lives for Christ and His people, if only we might get more of Him. So that’s the first thing, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.
The second thing we must do to persevere unto glory is really the same thing but with different words, You must lose your life for Christ. And in verses 35-37, Jesus gives us the divine logic for why everyone should do this. Here’s the basic argument for why everyone should become a Christian.
Verses 35-37 – #2 – You Must Lose Your Life For Christ
35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. 36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? 37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
The words life and soul here are the same word in Greek (ψυχή), and it appears that Jesus is continuing to play with this idea that there are two kinds of life and death, natural and supernatural, temporal and eternal.
So we could read verse 35 as saying, “For whosoever will save his [natural] life shall lose it [because you can’t actually avoid natural death]; but whosoever shall lose his [natural] life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it [in that he will be resurrected unto supernatural life].”
And then in verse 36, the question is, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” And here soul could be either 1) remaining spiritually dead, or 2) physically dying. In either case, you end up with the same outcome: gaining something that you can only enjoy for a very limited time, death is eventually going take it all away.
This is then amplified by a further question in verse 37, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” In other words, from your perspective, the most valuable thing you have is yourself, your very being. And you need a you to be able to enjoy anything at all.
So to summarize Jesus’ argument in a syllogism:
Premise 1. Your soul is the most valuable thing you “own.”
Premise 2. In order to save your soul, you must die and give it to God.
Conclusion. Therefore, in order to save your soul, you must die and give it to God.
That is the airtight logic of salvation, and the only thing that will keep someone from coming to that conclusion is a denial of Premise 1 or Premise 2, or both.
You could deny that your soul is indeed precious and valuable, and many people are sadly taught and believe this today. You could deny that you have an immaterial soul. That is the logical conclusion of materialism and evolution, and it is what millions of students are taught every year in our tax funded secular indoctrination centers that we call public schools.
The spirit of the age is to exalt ourselves as god. To make ourselves the ultimate arbiters of reality who form our own essence and create our own meaning in the universe.
The spirit of the age teaches that there is no Loving Creator who made you to know and love him, but instead you are the creator and you can make yourselfinto whoever you want to be. You give meaning to your reality.
Our world places the existential burden of who we are and why we are here on the shoulders of the individual, and then we wonder why so many people are on antidepressants. “You have no soul, you create your own meaning, now go be happy.”
That is not a burden we were meant to carry, and the longer our culture denies the answer to Question 1 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “What is the chief end of man?” the longer our culture will continue on this suicidal path.
So you could deny what even the pagan Greek philosophers knew, that you have an immaterial and immortal soul. And if you deny that, well there’s no soul that needs to be saved, and no need for Jesus or his cross. That is one way of avoiding the inevitable conclusion of Jesus’ argument.
Now perhaps you affirm that you have a soul, and a precious one at that. You agree with Premise 1, Your soul is the most valuable thing you “own.”
But where you have trouble is with Premise 2, that in order to save your soul, you have to die and give it to God.
This is where many people falter and just outright reject Christianity.
Unlike Premise 1 which you can arrive at without any special revelation (Aristotle knew man had a rational soul), Premise 2 requires you to believe the words of Jesus. You have to take it on faith that Jesus is not lying to you when he says this. You have to believe Jesus is a credible source when he tells you this is the only way your soul can be saved.
Do you believe him? Everything hangs on that question. Either Jesus is lying, he is insane, or he is telling the truth. Do you believe him?
At the very least, everyone must reckon with the fact that they are going to die. And Jesus so poses the question, What will it profit you to gain everything you want, and then die, only to bring none of it with you?
Jesus is appealing to that most natural desire that is in you, (the desire to live), and he is declaring that if you want to keep living, this is the only way. You have to die in Jesus and for Jesus. You have to die to this world and its pleasures. You have to actually hate the world if you really love your soul.
So what are you willing to sacrifice in order to live with God forever?
The cry of the Christian heart is, “Take the world, you can have it, but give me Jesus. Take my body and destroy it but give me the knowledge of God. For He is eternal life and He is immortality.”
If you want to live forever, you must deny yourself, and you must lose your life for Christ.
Finally, in verse 38, Jesus warns us about one of the great temptations we will face.
Verse 38 – #3 – You Must Be Unashamed of His Word
38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
The third thing you must do if you want to live forever, is you must be unashamed of God’s Word.
How does the world silence Christians? What has been the most effective way of gagging believers?
In some times and places, it has been the overt persecution and murder of the saints. They cut out your tongue, they chop off limbs, they terrorize and intimidate the church into silence.
This has been at times a very effective way of silencing the church, and these kinds of tactics continue today in places like China and in Muslim dominate regions.
However, in the West, the primary tool for silencing Christians is simply shame. Our world shames Christians for believing such silly nonsense as the Bible, that archaic and outdated book.
There are many forms of public and private shaming.
Some of you have had your jobs and livelihoods threatened because of your Christian beliefs. There are all kinds of social, economic, and political pressures to be ashamed of what the Bible says.
Whether it is the laws in Leviticus against homosexuality, or the laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy that regulate slavery, or the principle of male headship in society and in marriage, or the radical statement of Jesus that there are only two genders, that from the beginning he made them male and female.
Whatever it is that the world is shaming you for believing, you must not be ashamed of a single word. You might not yet understand why God says what He says about slavery or homosexuality, or marriage, but you must never under any circumstance apologize for the Word of God. That is what being ashamed of God’s Word looks like, and if you do that, Jesus says, God will be ashamed of you.
Conclusion
Shame is a powerful force. Shame is also inescapable in a world of good and evil. The world is going to shame you for loving God and standing by His Word. And God will shame you if you love the world and apologize for His Word. You are gonna get shame either way. So who do you want it from? That’s your choice. Whose opinion of you do you care more about?
What will give you the courage to stand firm, to not budge an inch, when the world is shaming you, is the conviction that God’s opinion is all that matters. When you care exclusively about what God thinks of you, that is when you know you have died to the world. When God’s opinion is all that matters, that is when you know you have lost your life for Christ.
And so the invitation to deny yourself and follow Jesus, is an invitation to take up the most shameful sign there is, the sign of the cross. And the promise of the gospel is that if we are unashamed of the cross, unashamed of being identified with Christ and His Word, then we will win for ourselves, glory, honor, and immortality.
God will turn your shame into a more glorious resurrection than you can possibly imagine.
God says in Isaiah 61:3,
“I will give them beauty for ashes,The oil of joy for mourning,The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;That they may be called trees of righteousness,The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
The cross is the only tree of righteousness, and if you are planted with the Lord, united in His death, then you will be glorified with Him.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Men As Trees Walking (Mark 8:22-33)

Men As Trees WalkingSunday, September 3rd, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 8:22-33
22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. 24 And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. 25 After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. 26 And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.
27 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am? 28 And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets. 29 And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. 30 And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. 31 And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 33 But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.
Prayer
Father, you continue to impress upon us in this gospel, our absolute inability to save ourselves. We cannot open our own eyes. We cannot see clearly unless Christ touches us. And so we ask now that you would open to us again Your fountain of salvation, and that in your light, we might see light. We ask for your Holy Spirit in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
Before the disciples of Jesus were ever called Christians (Acts 11:26), they were called followers of “the way.” Before Christianity became the label for the one true religion, it was simply called “the way.”
Acts 9:2 describes Saul’s persecution of the church saying, “And [Saul] desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.”
Likewise in Acts 19:23 it says, “There arose no small stir about that way.”
And Paul says later in Acts 22:4, “I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.”
If the early disciples were called followers of “the way,” the next logical question to ask is: Where does this way lead to? Why is it called the way? What does it mean to follow the way? Where is this way going?
It is these kinds of questions that the Gospel of Mark wants to both provoke and answer for us.
We remember how the opening verses of Mark’s gospel began, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. 3 The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
And so according to Mark, the whole ministry of Jesus is a showing forth of the way of the Lord. And now for the very first time, Jesus begins to tell us where this way leads. It leads to Jerusalem, where the “Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
If you are going to follow Jesus. If you would become worthy of the name, “follower of the way,” then you must come to grips with the fact this path you are on is a path of suffering unto death. It is a path of being rejected by the world and dying to that world.
As Paul says in Galatians 6:14, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”
This is the way. You want to be a Christian? If you want to follow Jesus, then you must resolve in your heart that the way to destruction is very easy and very broad (Matt. 7:13-14), but the way to eternal life is hard and narrow.
This is the way of the Lord, and you can see why many people choose not to follow it. You can see why many people begin, but then turn back, or turn aside, and never make it all the way.
And so what I hope to do in this sermon is just give you some encouragement. Encouragement to keep walking in the way of the Lord, but especially to not be afraid of suffering and death, not necessarily as a martyr for the faith (though perhaps that may come), but to simply embrace and endure joyfully whatever cross God gives you to carry. Whatever pain, whatever pressure, whatever toilsome difficulty is presently afflicting you, God wants you to carry that cross joyfully. This is the way of the Lord. At times it is hard and painful and ugly, but if you know what is waiting for you at you at the end of the journey (resurrection and eternal life), then joy can be had along the way.
This is the moment in Mark’s gospel where everything takes a turn. This is the beginning of Christ’s revelation of where the way of the Lord leads. And if we are going to walk with Jesus all the way, we need to catch what the disciples miss. That is my hope for this sermon so let me begin by giving you the division of the text.
Division of the Test
There are two basic sections here.
In verses 22-26, Jesus heals a man in two stages.
In verses 27-33, Jesus reveals where the way of the Lord leads.
Together these two sections bring to a conclusion a discussion Jesus was having with the disciples about bread and leaven.By now Jesus has fed the 5,000, he has fed the 4,000, but the disciples are still confused about the meaning of these miraculous feedings.
We saw last week that the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod is their false doctrine and hypocrisy. And here now Jesus gives the disciples the true leaven of the kingdom of God.
In Matthew 13:33 Jesus gives them a parable saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”
Well hear Jesus gives us the contents of that leaven: That the Christ must suffer and die and rise again. That message is going to transform the whole loaf, it is going to remake and reform the whole world.
Verses 22-26
22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. 24 And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. 25 After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. 26 And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.
This is the second time Jesus has healed a man using his own saliva. In Mark 7 he healed a deaf/mute man by spitting and touching the man’s tongue. And here he heals a man by spitting on his eyes and touching him.
It is not obvious why Jesus spits on this man’s eyes, and anytime someone spits on someone else in the Old Testament, it is a sign of shame and uncleanness.
Leviticus 15:8 says, “If he who has the discharge spits on him who is clean, then he shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening.”
In Numbers 12:14, God says to Moses about Miriam after she rebelled, “And the Lord said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again.”
So spitting on someone in the Old Testament makes that person unclean, and yet here we see Jesus spitting on someone and making them clean, healthy.
We’ve seen this theme already with him healing the leper and the woman with the flow of blood. Wherever Jesus goes he spreads holiness and cleanliness, and here the very thing that we would expect to defile a person (spit) is the thing God uses to heal and cleanse.
So Jesus spits on this man’s eyes, and he touches him, and then he asks the man what he sees. Why does Jesus do this?
Well, you should already know that Jesus’ miracles are living parables and Mark has chosen specific miracles and includes certain details to give us a hint in the right interpretive direction.
This entire middle section of Mark’s gospel that runs from here to the end of Mark 10 is bookended by two healings of a blind man. And in between these two healings of blindness, Jesus teaches his disciples that he must suffer and die and rise again. He does this three times, and each time the disciples see but don’t see. So our text is the first of these three cycles where Jesus plainly and openly tells them the future. He’s going to suffer and die and rise again. But they don’t understand what that means. So who does this blind man represent? He is an analogy for the disciples, and the disciples are an analogy for the twelve tribes of Israel.
So what does this man see? In verse 24 he says, “I see men as trees, walking.”
What is the significance of seeing men as trees walking?
At the very least it means things are blurry. He only has partial vision, and therefore he needs Jesus to touch him again.
That is exactly what Jesus does, verse 25 says, “After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.”
That is the miracle, that is the living parable, and now in verses 27-33 we see what that parable signifies.
Verses 27-29a
27 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am? 28 And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets. 29 And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
This is the million-dollar question. It is the question by which every man who hears the gospel will be judged. And it is a question to which Mark has already given us the answer in the opening line of this book, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).
Who is Jesus? Who do you say that he is? How you answer that by your confession and belief and manner of life will determine everything.
As C.S. Lewis famously put it in Mere Christianity, the gospels present us with a trilemma. If you read the gospels honestly, you are forced to one of three conclusions:
Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or He is Lord.
He is either lying when he says He is God, or insane for thinking He is God. Or He is God.
To quote Lewis directly, “You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
So who do you say Jesus is?
Jesus asks his disciples this question and Peter, speaking on behalf of the disciples confesses, “Thou art the Christ.”
Is this the right answer? Yes. The disciples can see that Jesus is the Christ. But although that is the correct answer (the right words), what they do not understand is what it means to be the Christ. What is prophesied in the Old Testament about the Christ. If Jesus is the Christ, there are certain things that He must do. And that is what Peter and the disciples do not yet see, their vision is still blurry.
This is demonstrated by what happens in the next few verses.
Verses 29b-33
And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. 30 And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. 31 And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 33 But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.
Notice how quickly this scene shifts. We go from Peter making this glorious confession that Jesus is the Christ, to rebuking Jesus for saying the Son of Man is going to die, to Jesus rebuking Peter for being inspired by Satan.
What is going on here?
Well, this is what that two-stage healing of the blind man is intended to illustrate.
The disciples recognize that Jesus is the Christ, and they see that Jesus is going to die. But their vision is blurry, they see men as trees walking. They see men like Jesus, they see men like themselves carrying a cross on their back (a tree), walking on the way to Jerusalem. And it is as if they cannot accept that that is where the way of the Lord leads. “How can we following the Christ be men as trees walking to Jerusalem to die?” That is their conundrum.
Perhaps they are confused because doesn’t Psalm 1 say that the blessed man is the one who is“like a tree planted by the rivers of water, That bringeth forth his fruit in his season; His leaf also shall not wither; And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so…” (Ps. 1:3-4).
So how then can the Christ, the most blessed one, how can the Son of Man be someone who suffers and dies? Isn’t suffering and death the destination of the ungodly?
You can see why this is a hard teaching for the disciples to accept based on their expectations. They had high hopes for what being called to follow Jesus meant. They left everything behind, they went all in on this venture, because they believed it would somehow be better than what they had before. No one voluntarily leaves a good job and situation behind unless he believes he can find something better. And so the disciples are confused.
If Jesus is the Christ (the anointed one, the promised Davidic king), then he should just ride to Jerusalem (or fly!), clean house, and use his omnipotent power to bring in the kingdom of God. We’ll see later the disciples jockey for position in this kingdom, to sit at Jesus right hand or his left. Their idea of the Messiah, the Christ, is one who simply conquers and takes what is rightfully his.
This is what the disciples expect and want, and it is also what Satan tempts Jesus to do. This is why Jesus rebukes Peter and says, “Get behind me Satan!”
How did Satan tempt Jesus in the wilderness? He offered him all the kingdoms of this world if he would only bow down and worship him. He thinks he knows what Jesus wants, and he offers him a shortcut to getting it. He offers Jesus a pain-free, death-free way to becoming king of the world.
As we said earlier in the exhortation, Satan always offers us a shortcut that is actually a long cut (or more accurately: a dead end). It does not belong to Satan to give Jesus anything. Jesus is the one, according to His Divine Nature, who gives Satan his very being and existence! For who can give to the Creator anything other than what God has first given him?
And so what the disciples are still blind to, what is still blurry to them, is that Jesus must die and rise again to make satisfaction for their sins.
How else can atonement be made for the sins of the world? If perfect justice is eye for eye, tooth for tooth, then how can the life of an animal, the blood of bulls and goats and Passover lambs, make satisfaction for a man’s sin?
God himself says in Genesis 9:6, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”
Everyone knows (even if they deny it) that an animal is no substitute for a human being. If someone kills your child, and then offers you a dog in their place as restitution, that would be highly offensive, to say the least.
And the situation that the human race has been in, ever since our fall from grace, is that of committing sins worthy of death. As Paul says in Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death.”
So death is what we all deserve for sin. And what the Christ, the Son of Man came to do, is conquer sin, death, and the devil. He came to triumph over the evil that reigns and dwells in our hearts. And if what Jesus says is true about the source of evil in the world, that it is inside of us, from the heart of man evil proceeds, then what we need and what Christ gives us, is a way to die and come back different.
This is why, “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
At present the disciples are shortsighted. They don’t see the divine purpose in Jesus’ death. And it will only be after the resurrection, and more fully after Pentecost, that they are able to see clearly.
So what is the way of the Lord? It is the way of the cross. And it is only by dying on the cross that a man can be crowned with eternal life.
Closing Application
When Jesus rebukes Peter he says, “Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.”
What makes Peter’s thinking satanic is that it only thinks about himself and this life here and now, he only savors “the things that be of men.”
And so despite his true confession that Jesus is the Christ, Peter’s meaning and understanding of that confession is rather false.
If by Christ, Peter means, “a king who does not die for his people, but only treads upon his enemies,” well that is a half-truth at best. That is not the kind of Christ Jesus is.
And so I ask you, what kind of Christ do you take Jesus to be? Do you, like the disciples, have false assumptions (false expectations) about where the way of the Lord leads? Has Satan tricked you into thinking that being a Christian is actually the broad and easy way (it’s popular and everyone’s going to like you), and not the hard and narrow path fraught with difficulty?
Have you forgotten that when Jesus called you to follow him, he called you to pick up a tree that you will eventually be crucified on?
In what ways have you been deceived by the serpent? In what ways do you only see men as trees walking?
Sin is always shortsighted. The devil always tries to make obedience to God seem impossible and unsavory, and the reward of obedience hardly worth it. But what Jesus comes to reveal in the gospel is that there is no other way to salvation, no other way to happiness, no other way to the Father’s House, except through Him. Jesus is the way of the Lord, and the pain and suffering and cross of this life, is in the Apostle’s words, “not worth comparing to the glory that is to come…the glory that is to be revealed in us” (2 Cor. 4:17, Romans 8:18). That is the eternal glory we must fix our eyes upon.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Sermon: A Sign From Heaven (Mark 8:1-21)

A Sign From HeavenSunday, August 27th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 8:1-21
In those days the multitude being very great, and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples unto him, and saith unto them, 2 I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat: 3 And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far. 4 And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness? 5 And he asked them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven. 6 And he commanded the people to sit down on the ground: and he took the seven loaves, and gave thanks, and brake, and gave to his disciples to set before them; and they did set them before the people. 7 And they had a few small fishes: and he blessed, and commanded to set them also before them. 8 So they did eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets. 9 And they that had eaten were about four thousand: and he sent them away.
10 And straightway he entered into a ship with his disciples, and came into the parts of Dalmanutha. 11 And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him. 12 And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation. 13 And he left them, and entering into the ship again departed to the other side.
14 Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the ship with them more than one loaf. 15 And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod. 16 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread. 17 And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened? 18 Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember? 19 When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. 20 And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven. 21 And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?
Prayer
Father, you know how weak our minds are, you know how difficult it is for us to understand anything spiritual. We confess that we are often just as confused by Your Word as these disciples were, and so we ask for mercy, we ask for your compassion, and most of all for the gift of understanding and the love that comes from understanding. Give us these supreme gifts of the Holy Spirit, for we ask in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
Well if you have been with us for most of these sermons in Mark’s gospel, everything I just read should sound very familiar to you. And that is because, from Mark 6:31 to the end of Mark 7 mirrors and parallels everything in Mark 8. In both of these sections there is a very clear six-step sequence of events that gets repeated. Now why does Mark do this?
The purpose of this repetition is twofold:
1) First, it draws out for us certain points of similarity and dissimilarity that we might have overlooked on our first read, and by doing the work of comparing and contrasting these two cycles we are given further insight into the mystery of the kingdom.
2) Second, this repetition drives home the fact that we are often just as clueless and forgetful as the disciples. The disciples are firsthand witnesses to Jesus’ miracles and teaching, and yet at this stage, they cannot see or understand the spiritual meaning of his miracles and teaching. They do not recognize that this is God dwelling amongst them, nor can they fathom that God is going to die and rise again for their sins.
This is the blindness, the deafness, the muteness that the disciples are suffering, and they need Jesus to heal them.
So Mark is giving us a second chance now as readers to try and catch what the disciples missed the first time. And so let me summarize that six-step sequence of events so we have it fresh in our minds.
1. Jesus feeds a multitude (He feeds 5,000 in Mark 6:31-44; and 4,000 in Mark 8:1-9).
2. Jesus gets into a ship and crosses the sea (Mark 6:45-56, Mark 8:10).
3. Jesus has a conflict with the Pharisees (In Mark 7:1-23 over handwashing, in Mark 8:11-13 over his credentials).
4. Jesus has a conversation about bread (In Mark 7:24-30 with the Syrophoenician woman, in Mark 8:14-21 with his disciples,).
5. Jesus heals somebody as a parable of his teaching (In Mark 7:31-36 it is a deaf/mute man, and next week in Mark 8:22-28 we’ll see him heal a blind man) Both healings result in a…
6. A confession of faith (the people confess “He has done all things well,” Mark 7:37, and Peter will confess, “Thou art the Christ,” Mark 8:27-30).
So Jesus 1) feeds a crowd, 2) crosses the sea, 3) fights with Pharisees, 4) talks about bread, 5) heals someone, and then there is a 6) confession of faith. That’s the pattern and Mark repeats this cycle back-to-back.
What all this repetition is leading to is the very center of the book, and that is Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, and then Jesus for the very time in Mark’s gospel, is going to teach that the Son of Man must die and rise again.
Mark 8:31-32 says, “And Jesus began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he spake that saying openly.”
What has been concealed and kept secret for 8 chapters of Mark’s gospel, is starting to come out. It is not until this point, the halfway mark, that we are told how the Christ is going to bring about the kingdom of God. Jesus has been announcing “repent and believe for the kingdom of God is at hand,” but nobody knows how that kingdom is going to come.
So next week, we’ll look at that section in greater depth, but it is important for us to know that that is where our text is heading. This is the setup for that great confession and teaching from Jesus.
Let us turn now to our text which divides neatly into three sections.
Division of the Text
In verses 1-9, Jesus feeds the 4,000.
In verses 10-13, Jesus has conflict with the Pharisees.
In verses 14-21, Jesus talks with his disciples about bread.
Verses 1-3
In those days the multitude being very great, and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples unto him, and saith unto them, 2 I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat: 3 And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far.
We should notice here a point of contrast between the feeding of the 5,000 and this feeding of the 4,000.
In both instances Jesus has great compassion on the multitude, but the reason for his compassion is different.
With the 5,000, Jesus is moved with compassion because they are like sheep without a shepherd and need teaching. And therefore, Jesus meets that spiritual need by teaching them before he does that miracle.
Here, the people have been with Jesus for so long, three days now, that Jesus is moved with compassion because they have nothing to literally eat. And so Jesus meets their physical need by feeding them.
Already we have seen that physical food is an analogy for spiritual food, and Jesus continues to develop that theme here.
Another thing we should note is that this feeding of the 4,000 takes place in predominately Gentile territory, and so this crowd is probably a mix of both Jews and Gentiles (at the very least the disciples are Jews and the crowd are Gentiles).
Remember the scene just prior to this one, Jesus was in Tyre and Sidon (up northwest from Galilee) and then came down to the coasts of the Decapolis. All predominately Gentile areas.
We remember also the example of the Greek-speaking Syrophoenician woman (a Gentile) who begs for scraps of bread from the master’s table. Well here now is a hungry crowd, here also is The Master, and we might wonder, are there enough scraps from the children’s bread to go around for so many people?
That is at least what the disciples are wondering in part.
Verse 4
4 And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these with bread here in the wilderness?
This is a very dangerous question to ask. It is dangerous because this is the exact same question the unbelieving Israelites asked in the wilderness (and that was where they died).
Psalm 78:17-20 recalls this sin of unbelief saying, “And they sinned yet more against him by provoking the most High in the wilderness. And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust. Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, And the streams overflowed; Can he give bread also? Can he provide flesh for his people?”
So just like the Israelites tested God and did not believe, the twelve disciples are committing the same sin.
The Israelites witnessed firsthand miracle upon miracle upon miracle: the ten plagues in Egypt, the Passover, the Red Sea crossing, miracle water flowing in the desert, a cloud by day and fire by night, and yet for all of those signs and wonders, that unbelieving generation did not believe or enter into God’s rest.
The Twelve are in danger of suffering that same fate. They have already seen Jesus heal the sick, cast out demons, even raise the dead. They just partook and handled miracle bread that Jesus multiplied to feed the 5,000. And yet they look God in the face and say to him, “From whence can a man satisfy these with bread here in the wilderness?”
They still do not know who Jesus is.
How does Jesus respond?
Verses 5-9
5 And he asked them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven. 6 And he commanded the people to sit down on the ground: and he took the seven loaves, and gave thanks, and brake, and gave to his disciples to set before them; and they did set them before the people. 7 And they had a few small fishes: and he blessed, and commanded to set them also before them. 8 So they did eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets. 9 And they that had eaten were about four thousand: and he sent them away.
Jesus repeats what he did with the 5,000. He takes the bread, he gives thanks, he breaks it, and gave it to his disciples to distribute. This is of course a foreshadowing of what happens in the Lord’s Supper.
The major difference we notice is in the number of loaves, leftovers, and the people fed.
Jesus used 5 loaves and 2 fishes to feed 5,000 people, and there were 12 baskets left over.
Here he uses 7 loaves and a few small fishes to feed 4,000 people, and there are 7 baskets left over.
There is debate over what these numbers mean, or if they have any significance at all.
The church fathers saw in the 5 loaves and 2 fishes a reference to the 5 books of Moses (the law), and Psalms and Prophets. You can take that or leave it, but at the very least the food signifies the Word of God.
Twelve is of course the number associated with Israel, and this suggests that the twelve baskets signify that there is an abundance of food for all Israel to be fed.
So if the feeding of the 5,000 was ultimately about Jesus giving himself and his word to feed the sheep/children of Israel, what does the feeding of the 4,000 signify?
Because this is predominately a crowd of Gentiles, and because we just saw Jesus “feed” the Gentile dog, the Syrophoenician woman, this feeding of the 4,000 suggests that the Gentiles are not only going to get scraps, they are eventually going to get a full meal right alongside the children of Israel. Which is what the New Testament explicitly says in many places.
It is those with the faith of Abraham who are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:29).
In Christ, both Jews and Gentiles die and rise again and are united into one new man, the body of Christ (Eph. 2:11-14).
Paul echoes Jesus’ order of feeding, when he says in Romans 1:16, that the gospel is “to the Jew first and then to the Greek.”
So Jesus feeds the sheep of Israel in abundance, there are twelve baskets leftover, one for each tribe. And now he feeds both Jew and Gentile together, 4,000 people perhaps signifying the four corners of the earth. Seven baskets left over, perhaps one for each day of the week. Twelve is the number of Israel’s fulness. Seven is the number of creational fullness.
Whatever the significance of the numbers, Jesus gives a definitive answer to the disciples’ question: “From whence can a man satisfy this multitude with bread here in the wilderness?”
Jesus’ answer is, from me. I am the bread that comes down from heaven, and I will give myself for the life of the world, both Jew and Gentile alike.
Now before we hear the disciples’ response to this miracle, Mark inserts a discussion Jesus has with the Pharisees.
Verses 10-13
10 And straightway he entered into a ship with his disciples, and came into the parts of Dalmanutha. 11 And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him. 12 And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation. 13 And he left them, and entering into the ship again departed to the other side.
Do you notice the irony here? Jesus has been doing miracles for the last 7 chapters, showing forth his divinity, and now here come the Pharisees, asking for a sign.
Jesus, however, knows that what they want is not a sign, they want him dead (Mark 3:6). And therefore, the only reason they ask for a sign is to tempt him (like the devil) to do something that will get him into trouble with the authorities.The Pharisees are goading Jesus, they are provoking him to reveal openly that He is king, and Caesar is not. This is why Mark says they were “seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him.” What does Jesus do?
He does not take the bait. Instead he declares that no sign is going to be given to this generation, and then he leaves.
Why does Jesus do this?
Jesus is on a mission to expose just how wicked and sinful this generation is. He is on a mission to expose the sinfulness of sin. Like the prophets of old, Jesus calls them to repent, he performs signs and wonders, and he gives them ample opportunity and reason to turn and be saved. But for all of that patience and condescension, there are some people, like the Pharisees, there are even entire generations, like the Jews of his day, who are committed to wickedness, so that even if Jesus gave them a sign from heaven, it would only further harden them in unbelief.
The Pharisees have become Pharoah, and they don’t even know it. They are so hardened in sin, that no sign can persuade them otherwise. We’ve already seen them attribute Jesus’ miracles to the power of the devil. So why should doing some new sign from heaven be treated any differently?
Jesus says in Luke 16:31, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rise from the dead.” If someone does not believe God’s Word when it’s read from the Old Testament, they won’t believe even if they see with their own eyes a man rise from the dead.
Many unbelievers think that if God would just give them a sign, then they would believe in Him. But the testimony of Scripture and history is that signs do not do what people think they do.
Asking for a sign is in reality, just a front, just a cover, just another excuse, for willful unbelief.
Jesus says in Matthew’s version of this same story, that “an evil and adulterous generation” seeks for a sign.
In other words, people lie to themselves and think that if God were only to give me a sign, then I would stop sleeping around, then I would go to church, then I would get clean.
Sinners are so proud and self-centered that they think God owes them a sign, that He must save them on their own terms, and if He does not meet their criteria, their demands, then they have no responsibility to believe.
But Jesus says, if you don’t believe the words of the Old Testament, then you won’t believe even if God gives you a sign.
The proof of Jesus’ words is that someone did die and came back from the dead, and yet still people don’t believe. This is the nature of sin, and this is what Jesus comes to expose.
As he says in John 6:63, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.”
If you want to be saved, you must utterly abhor and forsake your flesh. And if you find in yourself that temptation to ask God for a sign in order to believe, beware.Because you are like a fish asking for proof of water. There are signs of God everywhere, you are a living sign and walking image of God. Your conscience testifies to His moral law. Your desires testify that you were made to life forever. If you look up at the sky, the heavens are shouting the glory of God, the sky above proclaims His handiwork. And the fact that the world is full of Christians is a perpetual witness that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead.
We are those who Jesus spoke of when he said to Thomas, “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, and no sign from heaven will be given to them, only the sign of Jonah descending into the earth.
Well as bad as the Pharisees are, the disciples are hardly better. In verses 14-21, they continue to miss the point of Jesus’ miracles and teaching.
Verses 14-16
14 Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the ship with them more than one loaf. 15 And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod. 16 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread.
So what is the disciples’ problem? They are not like the Pharisees who are trying to get Jesus killed or tempting him for a sign. The disciples’ blindness is of a different sort.
They see the signs, they eat the bread, they hear the teaching, but they do not understand what it means.
Jesus says to them, “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven of Herod,” and they think he’s warning them about getting bread from those bad guys. But what Jesus is actually warning them about is the false doctrine and hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Herod.
The Pharisees elevated their traditions above the Word of God. Their leaven is to appear orthodox, to appear righteous, while inwardly nursing an adulterous and covetous heart.
Pharisaic leaven cloaks wickedness under the guise and appearance of righteousness.
The leaven of Herod on the other hand is uncloaked pomp and perversity. It is the delusional grandeur that styles oneself above one’s true rank. The Herodians and perhaps Herod himself thought that he was the Messiah, he was the king the Old Testament spoke of. But of course, anyone who inquired into Moses and the Prophet would know that this Herod does not qualify. And yet the “orthodox” Pharisees found an ally in Herod and the Herodians, because they had common cause together to destroy Jesus.
So Jesus says, beware of just a little bit of that leaven entering into you, because as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:6, “Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?”
The Pharisees and the Herodians represent the decadence and depravity of that generation. They are the elite amongst that evil and adulterous generation who demands a sign.
And although we might think ourselves, like the disciples, immune to that leaven of the Pharisees and Herod, Jesus knows how weak our wills are. Jesus knows how easily we forget all the miracles he has performed. Jesus knows that we need to get bread daily from him.
For man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Deut. 8:3).
Conclusion
In verse 14 it says the disciples forgot to take bread, and had only one loaf with them in the boat.
Jesus is that one loaf. He is the bread. He is the multiplier of bread. He is the Creator of bread. And if Jesus is in the boat with us, if the leaven of Christ (the gospel) is in our hearts, then we have food for eternal life.
So repent of your unbelief, seek not a sign from heaven, for the sign of salvation has already been given, Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sermon: Bread For Dogs (Mark 7:14-37)

Bread For DogsSunday, August 20th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 7:14-37
14 And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. 16 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear. 17 And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. 18 And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; 19 Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats? 20 And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: 23 All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.
24 And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid. 25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: 26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. 27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. 28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs. 29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. 30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.
31 And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. 32 And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. 33 And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; 34 And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. 35 And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. 36 And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; 37 And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.
Prayer
Father, we ask now that you would open the ears of our heart, that we might understand your word. And having understood your word, the mystery of Your Kingdom, we might open our mouths and pour forth praise that is worthy of You. We ask for you Holy Spirit to guide us unto the truth, and we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
The Lord Jesus has done all things well. Jesus has done all things well. As we pickup in chapter 7 of Mark’s Gospel we recall that Jesus has just laid the smack down on the scribes and Pharisees. The Pharisees were critiquing Jesus because his disciples were not washing their hands. Jesus claps back saying that the Pharisees elevate their manmade traditions (like handwashing) above the authority of God, and they have so trampled upon God’s command to honor father and mother, that they deserve to die. Jesus says their disregard for God’s law, while paying lip service to it, makes them worthy of death.
Jesus says in Mark 7:13, just before our text begins, “[You make] the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.”
We have seen a continual problem not only amongst the Pharisees, but also amongst the disciples and the crowds: they are unable to distinguish between sign and thing signified. They cannot see the difference between earthly sign and spiritual reality, between shadow and substance.
So far, no one has been able to see through the external miracles that Jesus performs into the truth of who Jesus is. No one recognizes this is God in the flesh.
And here now in our passage, we see that they are unable to discern the true meaning of the ceremonial law. They think that food and handwashing and physical cleanliness is all that God commands, when in reality, these are merely signs to teach us about the need to become spiritually clean, spiritually pure (to be baptized), so that we can partake of spiritual food (namely the Lord Jesus).
As the Apostle Paul says in Titus 1:17, “Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.”
Where did Paul get this teaching? He got it from Jesus, and He got it from being given spiritual insight into the true meaning of the Old Testament.
So this theme of true purity and true defilement is what unites our text, and our text divides neatly into three sections.
Division of the Text
In verses 14-23, Jesus teaches us the nature of true defilement, and then gives two real-life illustrations of this point in the following two sections.
In verses 24-30, Jesus casts out an unclean spirit from an unclean Gentile who turns out to be spiritually clean.
In verses 31-37, Jesus shows us that what comes out of him, his word, his spirit, even his spit, can make a man holy. He makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.
So that is the division of our text, let us now consider his teaching on true defilement.
Verses 14-16
14 And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. 16 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.
On the surface this might sound like Jesus is contradicting the laws of Moses.
For example, Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 both give long lists of what Israel could and could not eat.
If it divides the hoof and chews the cud, it is clean, you can eat it. But if it only divides the hoof, or only chews the cud, or does neither, then it is unclean, it will defile you.
God says in Leviticus 11:43-45, “Ye shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creepeth, neither shall ye make yourselves unclean with them, that ye should be defiled thereby. 44 For I am the Lord your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 45 For I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”
So these are the kinds of laws that the disciples and the Pharisees are accustomed to. And they come with divine authority. This is the law of God.
How then is what Jesus saying, not a contradiction? This is what the disciples want to know.
Verses 17-19
17 And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. 18 And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; 19 Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?
So Jesus makes an appeal here to what should be obvious to everyone. Where does food go? It goes into the body and then out into the sewer (draught). How then can something physical like food make the spiritual part of man defiled? If food does not enter our heart/our soul, how then can it make us unclean? It can’t.
What Jesus is explaining here is what the Levitical food laws always taught.
Genesis 1 is very clear that everything that God created is good, and that includes pigs and shellfish, bacon and shrimp, things that were temporarily forbidden by Moses. But nothing is unclean or evil in itself.
What Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 are teaching is that for Israel as a holy nation, these animals are going to be a sign of spiritual cleanliness or spiritual dirtiness.
So to summarize: Something can be called unclean in two ways, 1) it can be called unclean in itself (which nothing is) or 2) it can be unclean in what it signifies. So a pig might be externally dirty, but spiritually it cannot defile you, and therefore in itself it is clean. It’s just a pig. But a pig insofar as it signifies a filthy lifestyle, rolling in the dirt of sin, is unclean. And the Jews were commanded to observe this distinction to teach them that if you want to be close to God, you need to be spiritually clean.
The Jews were meant to see what is obvious in Jesus’ parable, that food doesn’t go into the heart, and from that truth, conclude that God must have given this distinction between clean and unclean animals to teach them a lesson.
And what was that lesson? That clean and unclean animals represent different kinds of people, different kinds of nations. Are you a vulture or a dove? Are you a lamb without blemish, or a ravaging wolf? Animals are the sign, and people are what they signify.
This is especially obvious when you consider that the entire sacrificial system revolved around this principle. Animals represent the worshipper; they can represent the priest or nation or a child or our works. And the only animals you were allowed to sacrifice were clean animals that had no spot or blemish (Bulls, Sheep, Goats, Doves, or Pigeons).
This is how King David (who knew this) could say things in Psalm 51 like, “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”
So what makes a man’s heart pure? That he is humble and contrite before the Lord.
What makes a man’s offering acceptable to God? That it is offered to Him in true faith and love.
As God says in Hosea 6:6, “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.”
Moses and David, Hosea and all the prophets, knew the meaning of the food laws, that they were teaching tools for Israel. And yet the Pharisees and the disciples and the crowds don’t get it. They do not yet have ears to hear or eyes to see what is obvious, “that whatever a man eats, only goes into the body, it cannot defile his heart.”
If that is true, where then does uncleanness come from?
Verses 20-23
20 And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: 23 All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.
The source of evil and uncleanness in the world is not found in any material substance. There is no black goo out there called evil that has tainted everything. And in fact, evil has no substance, it is strictly a privation, evil is only an adjective that can only corrupt the good things God has given being to.
As Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:4, “Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.”
So man’s body, his mouth, his stomach, insofar as it has material existence, is a good creation of God. What makes a man spiritually clean or unclean is the immaterial, non-physical part of him called the heart, or the soul, or the mind. These are all synonyms for that rational part of our nature that reasons and wills, judges and loves.
Jesus says, it is out of that place, the invisible heart of man, that proceed evil thoughts.
Jesus then goes on to list twelve different sins that proceed from those thoughts: adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts and so forth. So for man, what takes place in our heart/mind/soul, that immaterial part of us, moves us to do things with our body that are indeed corrupt.
So the disciples can eat bread without washing their hands, and so long as they eat with thanksgiving in their heart, no defilement comes to them.
And at the same time, you could bathe your whole body, clean all your pots and utensils, and eat only clean animals, organic with no preservatives all natural, but if you eat that clean food without thanksgiving, without any real love for God, you are defiled. Not because of the food, but because of your heart as you eat that food.
Our culture loves to locate sin everywhere else except where it actually is. We always have someone else to blame, some mitigating circumstance, some excuse for why we did what we did. It’s always someone else’s fault. This is what Adam and Eve did in the garden, and it is what our sinful natures love to do.
So Jesus exposes our wickedness and removes every excuse by telling us exactly where the problem is. You cannot blame the food for why you are a glutton. You cannot blame the alcohol for why you committed blasphemy. You cannot blame the woman’s beauty for why you committed fornication. You cannot blame anything external to you, for the sinful actions of your heart. Those things might be the occasion for sin, but they are not the cause or source of sin.
Jesus says, “All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”
So this is the nature of true defilement. It is not what goes into the body but what comes out of your heart that makes you either clean or unclean.
To drive this truth home, Mark gives us two scenes to illustrate this point. The first scene is Jesus casting out an unclean spirit from an unclean woman’s daughter.
Verse 24
24 And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid.
In the days of David and Solomon, Israel had an alliance with the King of Tyre, and Tyre supplied both raw materials and workersfor the construction of the temple. Hiram of Tyre did all the brass work on the temple (1 Kings 7). So once upon a time, the holiest place on earth, was constructed with the help and materials of those in Tyre.
However, as time went on and Israel apostatized, so also did Tyre and Sidon.
The most notorious villain that came from this region was the Sidonian princess Jezebel, who married King Ahab. Jezebel promoted idolatry, she had hundreds of false prophets, she persecuted Elijah, and because of her, Tyre and Sidon came to symbolize pride and harlotry (Is. 23, Ezek. 26-28, Amos 1:9-10, Zech. 9:2-4). If ever there was an unclean land with unclean women, this was it. And this is where Jesus chooses to go, and who comes knocking on his door?
Verses 25-26
25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: 26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.
Notice Mark calls our attention to this woman’s language and birthplace, she is a Greek-speaking Gentile born in the Syrian part of Phoenicia. In Matthew’s version he simply calls her a Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:22).
Based on these facts, we should be suspicious of her. Remember Jezebel.
However, this woman insists that Jesus come and cast forth the devil out of her daughter. She has heard and believes that Jesus can clean the unclean.
Knowing this, Jesus gives her a test.
Verses 27-30
27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet (οὐ γὰρ καλόν) to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. 28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs. 29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. 30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.
What is the test Jesus gives her?
He sets up a scenario where hungry children need to eat, and it would be morally wrong to feed the dogs with the children’s food. The children are of course the children of Israel (the Jews), and the dogs are the unclean Gentiles (this woman and her daughter).
Jesus is calling this woman a dog.
Rather than being insulted, this woman recognizes that Jesus is inviting her to enter the story and wrestle with Him. He wants to make known to the world (and especially to the Jews) how great her faith is.
How does the woman respond? She calls Jesus, “Lord.” “Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.”
Remember the feeding of the 5,000, there were twelve baskets of bread leftover. Jesus fed in abundance the children of Israel, and this woman recognizes the priority Israel has in being God’s covenant people. The children should be fed first because God adopted them and promised to feed them. However, just because the children must be fed first, does not mean the Gentiles cannot, at the same time, eat the scraps.
The woman enters Jesus’ story, she accepts her place as a little dog under the table, and because of her humility and faith, Jesus says, “for this saying, go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.”
What made the daughter clean? It was her faithful mother, getting on the floor, crawling in the dirt under the table, looking for scraps from Jesus. And because of her faith, the devil is cast out.
Do you see the contrast Jesus gives us. There are scribes and Pharisees and Jews who are externally clean, they wash and eat the bread. But because they eat with unbelief, they are actually defiled. And then you have a Gentile Woman, this Canaanite, who is externally unclean and knows it (she’s a dog). But she is willing to do whatever it takes to get to Jesus. Faith has made her daughter clean.
Do you wrestle with God like this woman does? Are you persistent in your prayers? Or do you stop asking when heaven seems silent?
The Syrophoenician woman does what the patriarch Jacob did right before God changed his name to Israel. She wrestles with God and prevails. She argues with Jesus, and wins. This is what God wants from His people. He wants us to know our place, to own up to the sin that proceeds from inside us (no excuses), and then He wants us to do whatever it takes to get the bread of heaven. To partake of Him who is eternal life.
When God plays hard to get like he does with this woman, it is not because he is angry or upset or indifferent to you, it is because he loves you and wants your faith to grow. He wants your desires to mature. He wants your appetite to grow from settling for frozen tv-dinners, when a five-star feast awaits you. God wants us to desire the infinite glories of His kingdom, more than the fleeting pleasures of this world.
He says in Jeremiah 29:13, “Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”
2 Chronicles 16:19 says, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.
This is why God tests us. It is why Jesus tests this woman. To make known to her and to us and to the whole world, the cleansing power of faith.
Verses 31-37
Finally, we are given a second scene to illustrate the nature of true defilement.
I will summarize this scene for us.
In verse 31, Jesus enters “the coasts of Decapolis,” this was where he earlier cast out a legion of demons into a herd of swine, so this predominately unclean Gentile territory.
In verse 32, they bring to Jesus “one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech,” and Jesus proceeds to heal him. But the way that Jesus heals this man is rather strange.
Verse 33-34 says, “he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; 34 And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.”
Why does Jesus put his fingers in this man’s ears, and why does he spit and touch the man’s tongue? Let’s start with the fingers in the ears.
In Exodus 21:1-6, we are given the ritual for a servant to be adopted into his master’s household.
Exodus 21:5-6 says, “if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.”
This ritual of putting a hole in the ear was to signify that the servant’s ear is ever open to his master’s word.The servant could have gone free, but freely chooses to become a permanent servant of the master whom he loves. And because he is now a full member of the household, and adopted son, he is able to inherit what his master bestows.
This ritual was what God had done for Israel. He adopted them as his firstborn son, he had opened their ears to hear his voice, and if they love and serve him, they will inherit the promised land.
This is what Jesus is reenacting when he opens this man’s ears. His fingers are the aul (the needle) that opens the ear, and by doing this, Jesus is adopting him into the kingdom.
What about the spit and the tongue?
The first thing we should recognize is that the things that are gross and unclean in us, like our tongues and our spit, are pure in Jesus. Jesus’ spit, Jesus’ saliva, is actually cleansing.
And what Jesus is doing here is recreating man. How was Adam formed? From the dust of the earth, and the breath of God (Gen. 2:7).
And how is this deaf and mute man re-formed? By the hands of God in his ears and the wet breath of God on his tongue.
This is exactly what Isaiah prophesied 700 years prior.
Isaiah 35:4-6, 8 says, “Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: Behold, your God will come with vengeance, Even God with a recompence; He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, And the tongue of the dumb sing: For in the wilderness shall waters break out, And streams in the desert… And an highway shall be there, and a way, And it shall be called The way of holiness; The unclean shall not pass over it…”
Conclusion
Jesus is the God who comes to show us the way of holiness. And if we would be holy as he is holy, then we must observe his teaching in this gospel:
First own up to where evil truly comes from, it comes from within. We must stop blaming other people, we must stop blaming our circumstances, we must stop making excuses for our sins.
Second, we must humble ourselves like the Syrophoenician woman, we must be willing to get on the ground and wrestle with God for his blessing.
And Third, we must be willing to have Jesus make us uncomfortable so that he can remake us, poke open our ears, spit, and touch our tongue. All these things He must do, if we would become servants of The Master, and sons of the Most High King.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Sermon: Secular Pharisees (Mark 6:45-7:13)

Secular PhariseesSunday, August 6th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 6:45-7:13
45 And straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the ship, and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida, while he sent away the people. 46 And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray. 47 And when even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the land. 48 And he saw them toiling in rowing; for the wind was contrary unto them: and about the fourth watch of the night he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed by them. 49 But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out: 50 For they all saw him, and were troubled. And immediately he talked with them, and saith unto them, Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid. 51 And he went up unto them into the ship; and the wind ceased: and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered. 52 For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened.
53 And when they had passed over, they came into the land of Gennesaret, and drew to the shore. 54 And when they were come out of the ship, straightway they knew him, 55 And ran through that whole region round about, and began to carry about in beds those that were sick, where they heard he was. 56 And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole.
7 Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. 2 And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault. 3 For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. 4 And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables. 5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? 6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. 7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. 8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. 9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. 10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: 11 But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. 12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; 13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.
Prayer
O Father your Word says that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Father, we confess that our churches, our cities, our state and our nation, has walked contrary to Your Spirit, we have grieved Your Spirit, we have hardened our hearts against Your Spirit and so we are in bondage to sin. Grant us deliverance we ask. Give us life from the dead, for we ask this in Jesus name, and Amen.
Introduction
Last week we saw Jesus perform the miracle of feeding 5,000 men. What began with five loaves and two fishes, concluded with thousands of full bellies, and twelve disciples each with his own personal take-home basket. We saw in this miracle that while bread and fish can feed a man’s body, only the Eternal Word from the Father, can feed a man’s soul. And unlike bread and fish which perish in the using, the teaching of Christ is imperishable, unlimited, and infinitely valuable, for it shows us the way to God.
Now in every miracle that Jesus performs, there is a sign and there is a thing signified. Miracles are living parables that have a surface or external meaning, which is usually pretty obvious (ex. multiplying loaves, calming the sea, casting out a demon, etc.), but only those with living faith, “eyes to see, and ears to hear,” can understand their significance.
As the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:6, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
In other words, you could be standing in front of Jesus, listening to him teach, you could be like the disciples, watching him heal the sick, raise the dead, and walk upon the waves, and yet still not recognize who He is.
So far in Mark’s Gospel, nobody understands who Jesus is. They might recognize Him as a great prophet, as a great teacher, as a mighty worker of miracles, but none of them see that this is God in the flesh.
Our text this morning continues the same theme and gives us three different groups of people who encounter Jesus but continue to not see Him as He is.
Outline
In verses 45-52, the disciples continue to not understand, their heart is hardened.
In verses 53-56, the crowds continue to seek Jesus, but only for their bodily/physical needs.
In verses 1-13 of chapter 7, the scribes and Pharisees continue to make themselves look silly by arguing with God.
Starting in verse 45, let us walk through our text.
Verses 45-46
45 And straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the ship, and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida, while he sent away the people. 46 And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray.
So Jesus has fed the sheep, he has taught them and given them food, and now he sends them away. And the purpose for sending his disciples on ahead of him, is so that he can be alone to pray.
In that Jesus is Divine, he has no need to pray, for He is the God who answers prayer. But by this human action we are given an example of what is most needful as humans. We need solitude, we need elevation, we need quietness of mind. We need sanctuary.
When God talked to Moses, where was it? Upon a mountain (Ex. 3). When God talked to Elijah, where was it? Upon a mountain (1 Kings 19). What is the tabernacle and temple, but symbolic mountains? They are the high points, the high places where sacrifice is offered, where heaven meets earth, and God comes down to speak with us.
What Jesus does physically in ascending the mountain, all of us are called to do spiritually.
This is why Paul says in Colossians 3, “seek those things which are above…set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”
This is what Jesus is teaching us by his actions, he sends everyone away, and “departs into a mountain to pray.”
Send away the crowds of thoughts, put off the carnal man, and put on the Lord Jesus, ascend with him to prayer.
Verses 47-50
47 And when even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the land. 48 And he saw them toiling in rowing; for the wind was contrary unto them: and about the fourth watch of the night (that is between 3am-6am) he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed by them. 49 But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out: 50 For they all saw him, and were troubled. And immediately he talked with them, and saith unto them, Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.
So Jesus is alone on the mountain to pray, and he is there from the evening until the early morning hours. And when the fourth watch had come (that is, the last watch before morning light) he sees the disciples toiling in rowing. The wind is fighting them. And so “he cometh unto them.”
It says in Psalm 102:19, “The LORD hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary,” and therefore, Jesus looking down upon his struggling disciples, descends the mountain, and walks upon the sea.
Who is this man that he has such power?
A pious Jew would recognize that walking upon the sea is something only God does.
It says in Job 9:8, “He alone spreadeth out the heavens, And treadeth upon the waves of the sea.”
Job 41 says that God, “draws out the great sea dragon with a hook,” and “plays with Leviathan as with a bird.”
Psalm 74:13 says, “He breaks the heads of the dragons in the waters.”
So who is Jesus, if God alone “treadeth upon the waves of the sea?” He is the Lord. The Creator. The ruler over all.
And if walking upon the sea was not enough to make this plain, Mark draws our attention to two other things that reveals Jesus’ divine identity.
First, it says in verse 48, that Jesus “would have passed by them.” That is, just as the glory of God was revealed and passed by Moses on the mountain (Ex. 33), so also Jesus passes by his disciples.
And whereas God said to Moses, “thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen,” to the disciples, God reveals his very face, it is the face of Jesus Christ.
This is the irony. Although they see the physical face of Jesus, they do not perceive that this is the glory of God. That kind of perception requires a different kind of sight, which we call the light of faith.
Paul says in 2 Cor. 4:6, “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
So at this point in Jesus ministry, the disciples see, but do not see. They are looking at the face of God and don’t even realize.
Second, Mark draws our attention to what Jesus says to the disciples before he gets into the boat. In verse 50, Jesus says, “Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.”
This phrase, “it is I,” in Greek is “ἐγώ εἰμι,” “I AM.” Which should remind us of God’s personal name, “I AM THAT I AM” (Gk. Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν).
So Jesus is hinting at, if not outright revealing, that He is the great I AM, who revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush.
The disciples, however, do not perceive this. They are like Eliphaz, one of Job’s worthless counselors who says, “the spirit passed before my face…but I could not discern the form thereof” (Job 4:15).
Verses 51-52
51 And he went up unto them into the ship; and the wind ceased: and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered. 52 For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened.
Notice that amazement and wonder is not the same thing as having true and saving faith. You can be amazed by the miracles of Jesus, you can be impressed by his teaching and power, and yet have a heart as hard as Pharoah. The disciples then are in dangerous territory. Like Pharoah they have seen signs and wonders firsthand, they have as Hebrews 6:5 says, “tasted the good Word of God, and powers of the age to come.”
But despite this close and up-front experience, Mark says, “they considered not the miracle of the loaves,”that is they failed to perceive that Jesus is God when he multiplied loaves and fishes. And now, again, they fail to perceive that Jesus is God, when he walks upon the sea.
The exhortation for us then is summed up by Hebrews 3:12, “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.”
Many people have found themselves amazed and impressed by Jesus, amazed and impressed even by the Christian religion and what is wrought in the Western world. But admiration and respect for Jesus, is not the same thing as true belief. It is not the same thing as love for God.
So take heed brother and sisters, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.
In verses 53-56, we see the crowds coming again to Jesus for healing. This itself is a multiplication of what we saw back in chapter 5, when Jesus came into the region of the Gadarenes (Mark 5:1). There a demoniac came running to him and found healing, and now the crowds come running bringing the sick.
Verses 53-56
53 And when they had passed over, they came into the land of Gennesaret, and drew to the shore. 54 And when they were come out of the ship, straightway they knew him, 55 And ran through that whole region round about, and began to carry about in beds those that were sick, where they heard he was. 56 And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole.
This section sets up a contrast between the masses who are sick (and know it) and therefore Jesus makes them whole. And the Pharisees, who think they are healthy, clean, holy, and therefore criticize Jesus for not washing his hands.
One group knows they are physically sick, and therefore receive physical healing.
The other group (the scribes and Pharisees) are physically clean but spiritually they are sick, and do not realize it.
Both of these groups have the same problem in that they do not recognize their true need. Physical healing is great, but what they really need is spiritual healing, the forgiveness of sins. Washing your hands before you eat is a good and fine tradition, but washing your heart is infinitely more important.
Like the disciples, both of these groups see the sign, but not the thing signified. They see Christ’s power, but not His purpose for revealing that power.
So as we get into chapter 7, verses 1-13, we launch into a debate over tradition and authority. What is the place of tradition in relation to God’s Word?
In verses 1-5, the Pharisees pose a question, and in verses 6-13, Jesus gives his response.
Verses 1-5 – The Pharisees’ Question
Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. 2 And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault. 3 For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. 4 And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables. 5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands?
The theological position of the Pharisees was that Israel was called by God to be a holy people, but because of their unholiness, God had judged them. And this is true insofar as it goes.
However, the Pharisees erred in two major places as Jesus will show.
First, they did not understand the nature of true holiness. They equated external cleanliness with internal cleanliness, and therefore only had the appearance of godliness without the substance.
And second, they misapplied the law of God. They took a true command that was unique to the priests at the Tabernacle and applied it to the whole nation, and enforced as if it had Divine warrant.
This tradition of washing hands before eating appearsto have its roots in Exodus 30:19-21 which says,
“For Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet [in the bronze laver]: 20 When they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn offering made by fire unto the Lord: 21 So they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they die not: and it shall be a statute for ever to them, even to him and to his seed throughout their generations.”
So while it is certainly no sin to wash your hands before you eat, it is a great sin to treat a voluntary custom as if it is equal to the Ten Commandments.
And what Jesus exposes in the Pharisees is that human beings care far more about looking righteous than being righteous.Mankind has an incessant need to justify himself in the eyes of others, and so we invent laws and customs and regulations that give us the appearance of godliness, without ourselves being godly.
Let us watch how Jesus exposes this.
Verses 6-13 – Jesus’ Response
6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. 7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. 8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. 9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. 10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: 11 But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. 12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; 13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.
Jesus goes for the jugular here and minces no words with the Pharisees.
He meets them on their own turf by quoting the authority that they claim to hold in highest esteem, Moses.
For Moses said, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” But notice, Jesus stops there, he does not give the full citation which is, “that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”
Instead of giving the promise for keeping the 5th commandment, Jesus inserts the penalty for breaking the 5th commandment, also from Moses.
Exodus 21:17, “And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.”
So Jesus gives two witnesses from their highest authority, Moses. And then he proceeds to demonstrate that they are guilty of breaking God’s law, and according to Moses, should be put to death.
The example Jesus gives is that instead of providing financial support to their aging parents, they write it off as Corban (a gift). In other words, they have the wealth to support their needy parents, but they give it to their buddies at the Temple instead, using God as their “tax shelter.”
Why can’t they help their mother and father, why can’t they give them honor? Because they must honor God above them. You can see how holy this sounds. And Jesus says, you deserve to die for this.
Not only are you breaking the 5th commandment by not giving your parents honor, you are blaspheming the name of God by invoking Him as your excuse.
So Jesus hangs them by their own principles. If Moses is the highest authority in your tradition, well according to Moses you deserve to die.
This is the threat and warning Jesus gives them when he says, “This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”
He is quoting Isaiah 29:13, which is a prophesy of Jerusalem’s destruction.
Just as God destroyed Jerusalem for idolatry in 586, so also the Son of Man will destroy Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Why? Because “in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”
Conclusion
There are a multitude of applications we could make from this passage, but I will limit myself to just one.
We are presently governed by Secular Pharisees (hypocrites) because there is still a little Pharisee inside all of us. Satan was the original Pharisee, he wanted to make the rules instead of following God’s rules, and ever since Adam and Eve heeded the voice of the serpent, we have been inventing and enforcing false versions of godliness, false versions of righteousness.
What were the Covid restrictions but Militant Secular Pharisaism?
Our government worships itself, their prophet was Dr. Fauci, and the CDC was their divine lawgiver. And if you did not sanitize sufficiently, or mask up, or keep your 6 feet of distance, you were not keeping the laws of cleanliness. You were unclean.
They shut down churches, they locked up pastors, they prevented family members from seeing their loved ones in the hospital, and all in the name of “public safety.” Because they care about your wellbeing. This is the hypocrisy we are ruled by.
God makes it very clear in Scripture, that when you worship idols, you get the bondage of bureaucracy. Proverbs 28:2 says, “When a land transgresses, it has many rulers.”
If we as a nation, continue to harden our hearts against God, we will continue to be governed by Pharisees. The kind of Pharisees that Jesus denounces saying, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.”
If you don’t want to be ruled by Pharisees, crucify the Pharisee in your own heart. It’s not hard to spot a Pharisee out there, it is very hard to kill the Pharisee in here. But this is what Christ calls us to do.
Our old man deserves to die. All of us have broken all of the commandments. And this is exactly why God came to earth in Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus is walking on water, healing the sick, and arguing with Pharisees. It is because he loves them.
Jesus loves his hard-hearted disciples, and eventually he will open their eyes.
Jesus loves the crowds coming to him for healing like sheep without a shepherd, and eventually he will save their souls.
Jesus loves even the Pharisees, and he is going to take their best and brightest, a man named Saul of Tarsus, and turn him into an Apostle.
So while it may seem bleak out there (and it really is) and wicked in here (which all of us must fight against), Jesus has the power to make us actually holy, actually righteous, and that is what his death and resurrection offers to all.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Sermon: Like Sheep Without A Shepherd (Mark 6:30-44)

Like Sheep Without A ShepherdSunday, July 30th 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 6:30-44
30 And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught. 31 And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. 32 And they departed into a desert place by ship privately. 33 And the people saw them departing, and many knew him, and ran afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together unto him. 34 And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things. 35 And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him, and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed: 36 Send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat. 37 He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat? 38 He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? go and see. And when they knew, they say, Five, and two fishes. 39 And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass. 40 And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties. 41 And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. 42 And they did all eat, and were filled. 43 And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes. 44 And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men.
Prayer
Father, you are the God who satisfies the desire of every living thing. We thank you for giving us Christ to be the bread of life for us, and ask that you would nourish us now, by Your Word and Spirit. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
We come now in Mark’s gospel to one of the most famous miracles in Jesus’ ministry, the feeding of the five thousand. This is the only miracle (besides his resurrection) that is recorded in all four of the gospels. Each gospel does something a little bit different with it, and here Mark’s emphasis is on the contrast between the feast that Jesus prepares and the feast the King Herod prepares.
Last week we saw that Herod prepares a feast for his nobles and governing officials, and in a sick twist of events, the head of John the Baptist is brought out on a serving dish. The feast of the wicked is to have a prophet on a platter.
Jesus on the other hand is the good shepherd, the true king, and unlike Herod and his court who devour the sheep, Jesus feeds the sheep both physically and spiritually.
The crowds are hungry for teaching and so Jesus feeds them God’s Word. And when the day is spent, and their bodies are hungry, Jesus miraculously multiples bread and fish to feed their bodies as well.
Who else can do this but God alone? Who else can make bread and fish multiply but the God who created bread and fish in the first place?
On every single page of Mark’s gospel, we are given signs both implicit and explicit, that Jesus is the Son of God. This is of course what we should expect because the opening words of this gospel are, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
So Mark is hammering home this thesis that Jesus is divine, Jesus is the YHWH of the Old Testament, Jesus is the promised Messianic King. And in this scene where he feeds 5,000 men, plus women and children, we are given another visual fulfillment of many Old Testament prophecies (Ezek. 34, Jer. 23, etc.).
So let us walk through this text together and see how Jesus fulfills the promises God made through the prophets.
Verse 30
30 And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught.
We remember that earlier in this chapter, in verses 7-13, Jesus called, anointed, and commissioned The Twelve to go forth preaching in the surrounding villages. We were told they cast out demons and healed the sick, but before we got that full report of their ministry, Mark inserted a flashback to describe the death of John the Baptist. Well now that flashback is over, and we come to back to real-time, and the disciples return.
Mark calls them apostles here (literally “sent ones”), and this is the only time they will be called apostles in this gospel. These apostles tell Jesus about the exorcisms and healings accomplished by their hands, and also tell him what they had taught.
Jesus, seeing that they did what he commanded, now invites them to a retreat.
Verse 31
31 And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.
Notice again we have this motif/theme of the wilderness (deserted place) as a place where God meets with His people.
The wilderness is especially where God meets with his prophets, his spokesmen, and that was of course the place where John the Baptist’s voice used to be heard.
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Mark 1:3).
John baptized in the wilderness, but now that Herod has beheaded him, it falls to Jesus to pick up Elijah’s mantle. And just as Elisha surpassed Elijah, being given a double portion of Elijah’s spirit and doing twice as many miracles, so also Jesus far surpasses John, having received the Holy Spirit without measure.
So Jesus picks up John’s mantle (so to speak) and continues to show his disciples the way of the Lord, and where does that way lead? It leads back to the wilderness.
However, rather than finding a restful retreat from the crowds and ministry, the crowds and the ministry follow them.
Verses 32-33
32 And they departed into a desert place by ship privately. 33 And the people saw them departing, and many knew him, and ran afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together unto him.
You can imagine the scene here, Jesus and The Twelve get back into the boat, and that is about as much privacy as they are able to find these days.
And while they are casting off from shore, looking forward to a little R&R, some peace and quiet, people see them departing and start to run after them.
These people are so desperate to be with Jesus that they run ahead of the boat (“outwent them”) and get to Jesus’ destination before him.
And this was not just a handful of people who ran to meet Jesus, this is thousands (“they ran afoot out of all cities”). This is a stampede of running sheep. So what does Jesus do?
Verse 34
34 And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things.
Jesus gets out of the boat, sees this crowd, and it says, “he was moved with compassion toward them.”
In Greek this work for “moved with compassion” is a very visceral term that denotes the bowels or guts or inward parts of us where we feel things. It’s like saying Jesus’ stomach was tied up in knots over what he saw. He was moved in his bosom, in the depths of his being with pity for them.
And the reason for this stomach-turning pity is that the people are like sheep without a shepherd.
They are wandering in herds and hungry, but no one is there to feed them.
They are lost in the woods and in need of rescue, healing, and love, but no one is there to give that to them.
And this is the state of many millions of Americans today, even many millions who call themselves Christians. They are lost. They are lonely. They are easily led astray by the things they read and watch and hear on the internet.
One of the reasons church membership is so important is because we all need a shepherd, we all need accountability, we all need someone to watch over and protect our souls.
This is what Paul commands in Hebrews 13:7, “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.”
Jesus Christ is our chief shepherd, but he has appointed under shepherds, pastors and elders, to care for his flock, to feed the sheep and tend to them.
There are millions of professing Christians who do not go to church, who have no real relationship with their pastor or elders, and they think that watching a sermon online, or getting together with some friends for a Bible study, is all they need to be spiritually healthy.
But that is so far from the picture of the church we find in Scripture.
In Acts we see the church meeting together in person regularly. At times they even gather daily in the temple for worship, and break bread in one another’s houses (Acts 2:42-47).
The biblical picture of the church is one that has structure, and hierarchy, routine and ritual, government and discipline, and a whole lot of eating together.
That is how God wants the sheep to be organized and cared for. And when the shepherds fail in this duty, the sheep wander. And that is what Jesus finds when he comes to Galilee and it grieves him.
What is God’s heart towards a lost and wandering nation?
Jesus reveals that He is moved in the depths of his being with compassion and pity. God is sad at the lostness of these Galileans.
These are the people that Herod is supposed to protect and care for. But he is away, busy at court, feasting sumptuously and murdering their prophet. The one faithful shepherd they had; Herod executes.
This phrase, “sheep without a shepherd” is actually a quotation from the mouth of Moses back in the book of Numbers.
In Numbers 27, God is talking to Moses about a succession plan for the nation since Moses is going to die, and Moses says this, “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, 17 Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd. 18 And the Lord said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him…”
So the nation of Israel are the sheep, the shepherd is their king/leader, and who does God appoint so that they are not like sheep without a shepherd? God appoints Joshua.
Joshua is just the Hebrew form of the name Jesus (Gk. Ἰησοῦς). And that name Ἰησοῦς or יְהוֹשׁוּעַ (Joshua) literally means YHWH Saves or YHWH is Salvation.
Who is the one who shepherds Israel? YHWH Saves.
Just as God appointed Joshua to lead his flock Israel into the promised land, so also God sent forth His Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus, to lead us into His kingdom.
How then does our Joshua lead us?
Verse 34 tells us, “He began to teach them many things.”
The mark of a true shepherd is to give the Word of God unto the people. The shepherd is like a chef or a cook, who rightly divides the Word, and apportions it out to all who will hear.
And notice the order in which Jesus feeds this crowd. First, he feeds them spiritually the Word of God, and only after that, does he feed them physically.
This order and priority is exactly what Jesus says in Matthew 4:4 (quoting Deut. 8:3), “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
We read this story and are rightly amazed that Jesus can multiply 5 loaves and 2 fishes into an abundance that feeds thousands. But think about it, what is of more lasting value? The feeding of someone’s body for one meal? Or the feeding of someone’s eternal soul? Which meal has a more lasting impact? Food is good and necessary, but the Word of God is even more so.
The whole purpose for this miracle we are about to read, is to signify that the teaching of Jesus, the preaching of God’s Word, the food of the kingdom, is unlimited in supply. You just need faithful shepherds to give it out.
So keep that in mind as we watch how this miracle plays out.
Verses 35-36
35 And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him, and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed: 36 Send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat.
Remember, the disciples have just returned from a short-term missionary trip, where Jesus explicitly told them not to bring food, or bread, or a knapsack or extra provisions, and to trust God to give them what they need.
Well, did God provide for them? Yes. They survived. God provided. And so here is a new test for their faith. Can God provide for even this many?
I suspect the thought did not even cross their minds to try to feed this many people. They recognize it’s getting late, they know they don’t have enough food to feed the crowd, and so it’s quite reasonable to tell Jesus to send them away for dinner. How does Jesus respond?
Verse 37
37 He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?
The disciples think Jesus is just sending them on an errand to go buy a bunch of bread. And so their first thought it is well we don’t have that much money. We can’t afford that.
Two hundred pennyworth (denari) is roughly two hundred days’ worth of wages. This is a big crowd!
Verse 38
38 He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? go and see. And when they knew, they say, Five, and two fishes.
The disciples are still confused at this point, and probably think Jesus’ request is a little pointless. Obviously 5 loaves and 2 fishes are not enough to go around.
Nevertheless, Jesus says, “make everyone sit down.”
Verses 39-40
39 And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass. 40 And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties.
There are two peculiar details that Mark includes here.
The first is that Jesus makes the people to sit down “upon the green grass.” And this is kind of odd because the place they are located is still the wilderness, the deserted place. How can 5,000 men, plus women and children all have green grass to sit on?
Well what Mark is doing is calling to mind by this detail, Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.”
What has Jesus done in this gospel? He just commanded the Sea of Galilee to become still waters. And now, he makes these thousands of sheep without a shepherd to lie down in green pastures. And now he is going to feed them, so they have no want.
In Psalm 23, who is the shepherd? It is the LORD, YHWH.
Here in Mark 6, who is the shepherd? It is Jesus.
Jesus is LORD. YHWH Saves. This is the message of every miracle!
The second details Mark draws out is that “they sat down in ranks, by hundreds and by fifties.”
In Exodus 18, by hundreds and fifties is how Israel is divided up and organized in the wilderness.
And the Greek word here for “sat down in ranks” (πρασιαὶ πρασιαί) comes from this image of orderly planting rows in a garden bed.
What is Jesus doing here?
He is replanting the nation of Israel. Instead of being a disorganized mass of sheep without a shepherd, he leads them and feeds them and sets them in order. Instead of being thorns and thistles scattered in the wilderness, he plants them in orderly rows like a skilled gardener.
Jesus is the one who comes to make Israel alive again. He comes to make true what they sang in the psalms.
Psalm 100 says, “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”
By this miracles Jesus reveals he is both the Creator who made us, and the Shepherd who rules us.
Psalm 104:14-15 says, “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, And herb for the service of man: That he may bring forth food out of the earth; And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, And oil to make his face to shine, And bread which strengtheneth man’s heart.”
Jesus opens his hands (arms outstretched) and satisfies the desire of every living thing.
Finally, we come to the miracle itself.
Verses 41-44
41 And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. 42 And they did all eat, and were filled. 43 And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes. 44 And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men.
We are not told exactly how this multiplication happened. We don’t know if the bread and fishes grew in Jesus hands as he divided them, or what this might have looked like if you were there. But what we do know, is that if God spoke the world into existence, and created everything out of nothing, then by that same divine power, he can make fish and bread to multiply.
In Genesis 1:28 it says after the creation of mankind, “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”
Well here, Jesus follows that same pattern we find at creation. He blesses, he breaks, he gives, and he multiplies. He blesses Adam, he breaks him open, he gives him Eve (he gives them the world), and then tells them to be fruitful and multiply.
Jesus is doing with bread and fish, what God commanded the human race to do at the very beginning. Our sin had frustrated that task. But in Jesus, a new creation is dawning.
A new humanity that lives not by bread and fish alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
We will see this same miracle again in chapter 8, when Jesus feeds the 4,000, and he says afterwards to his disciples in essence, “Are you so blind, is your heart hardened that you do not understand, why are you only thinking in earthly terms? Don’t you see that bread and fish signify something greater. They signify the multiplication of true doctrine. He says to them, “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15). They have false food, false doctrine, whereas Christ has the true food, the true leaven.
Jesus says in Matthew 13:33, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”
What do five loaves and two fish signify? They signify the Word of God.
The church fathers saw in these five loaves a reference to the five books of Moses (the Law/Torah). And in the two fishes which make the bread more flavorful, they saw a reference to the Psalms and the Prophets which expound that Law. Whatever the case, it is clear that what Jesus is signifying by this miracle is that the entirety of the Old Testament is taken up and blessed and fulfilled in Him (in his death and resurrection).
As Jesus Himself says in Luke 24:44, “All things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.
So when Jesus is blessing and braking and distributing this food in superabundance, what is the real miracle?
The real miracle is that God’s Word is infinite. God’s Word is unlimited. The message of salvation, the doctrines contained in Scripture, unlike material bread and fish, can be shared and given freely to anyone.
In Jesus, the Law, and the Psalms, and the Prophets, become fruitful and multiply. The truth contained there in seed form, becomes food that can feed the whole world.
And who is going to distribute this doctrine to the people? The twelve apostles. At present they are just handing out bread and fish. But after Christ’s resurrection, their eyes will be opened, and they will understand the true meaning of the feeding of the 5,000. They are the shepherds who must feed God’s sheep. Just as Jesus commands Peter three times in John 21.
There are twelve baskets left over, one for each disciple, one for each tribe of Israel, and Jesus wants them to know that when they preach the Word of God, there will always be more than enough.
Closing Application
If you think about the difference between your physical and spiritual appetites, you will begin to understand more the kingdom of heaven.
We all know what it feels like to be hungry and then full. After we eat our fill, our bodily appetite goes away, and desire for food disappears. And therefore, it doesn’t really matter if you have a superabundance of bread or fish, or whatever your favorite dish is, because your physical appetite is finite and limited. And in fact, eating more, not matter how good that thing is, will probably make you sick.
But this is not the case when it comes to the spiritual appetite. When God awakens our spiritual desire to know the truth, he awakens in us something that is infinite.
As it says in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has placed eternity in the heart of man.”
C.S. Lewis famously says in Mere Christianity, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Lewis recognized that there was something inside of him that food and drink and physical pleasures could not satisfy. And when God awakens you to this reality, that you have a spiritual appetite, eternity in your heart, then the only logical conclusion is that you were made for something or someone who is spiritual and immaterial and infinite.
The gospel is that Jesus Christ is the eternal Word from the Father. He is the infinite God, made flesh for man.
And if you want to live forever, then you are going need spiritual food. Because man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
In the name the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Sermon: A Prophet On A Platter (Mark 6:14-29)

A Prophet On A PlatterSunday, July 23rd 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 6:14-29
14 And king Herod heard of him; (for his name was spread abroad:) and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. 15 Others said, That it is Elias. And others said, That it is a prophet, or as one of the prophets. 16 But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead. 17 For Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold upon John, and bound him in prison for Herodias’ sake, his brother Philip’s wife: for he had married her. 18 For John had said unto Herod, It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife. 19 Therefore Herodias had a quarrel against him, and would have killed him; but she could not: 20 For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly. 21 And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee; 22 And when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee. 23 And he sware unto her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom. 24 And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist. 25 And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist. 26 And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath’s sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. 27 And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, 28 And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother. 29 And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for the example of Saint John the Baptist, a man greater and holier than any others before the coming of Christ. We thank you for the testimony of his martyrdom, and for his willingness to decrease that Jesus Christ might increase. As we reflect upon his execution in the Gospel of Mark, we ask for your Holy Spirit to guide us into the truth, for we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
Last week we saw what happens when Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth. Jesus has been away for a time, ministering in Galilee, and yet despite the many signs and wonders and wisdom of his teaching, the people of Nazareth refuse to believe in Jesus.
This is of course exactly what Isaiah prophesied would happen when the Messiah comes.
Isaiah 53:2-3 says, “For he shall grow up before the LORD as a tender plant, And as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness; And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: And we hid as it were our faces from him; He was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
So Jesus did not walk around with a halo around his head or a divine glow radiating from his skin.The glory he had from all eternity was something hidden and concealed. There was not outward beauty that made people attracted to him.
John 1:11 says likewise, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”
So Jesus is suffering rejection from those who should be closest and kindest to him. His family, his brothers and sisters, his friends who grew up with him, they do not yet understand who Jesus of Nazareth is. They think that just because they knew him according to his humanity as a common carpenter, that therefore he could not be the promised Davidic King, and certainly not the Creator God in the flesh.
We saw last week that there are many diverse motives for rejecting Christ and the gospel, some are intellectual, some are theological, but more often than not, they are usually personal reasons like envy, jealousy, pettiness and pride.
And while these sins may seem relatively small or minor to us, Jesus says that it will be “more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city that rejects him” (Mark 6:11).
So what we might deem as a minor sin, like nursing a grudge, or coveting what someone else has, can actually become the cause of far more serious sins like rejecting God and his offer of salvation. The slope of unbelief is very slippery. And this is the sin of people of Nazareth.
However, by now, Jesus is used to rejection, He is no stranger to opposition, but that does not remove the sorrow in his heart over the people’s unbelief. And while many of us would be tempted to despair or discouragement or bitterness because our family or friends reject us, Jesus continues to minister undeterred.
As Isaiah 50:6-7 also says, “I gave my back to the smiters, And my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help me; Therefore shall I not be confounded: Therefore have I set my face like a flint, And I know that I shall not be ashamed.”
Jesus (like the prophet Isaiah), for the joy that was set before him, despised the shame of the people who rejected him. He despised the shame of those who wanted to distance themselves from his movement.
And this absolutely fixed determination to do the Father’s will, come what may, is what Jesus wants all of his disciples to learn as well.
As the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 1:10, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
And so Mark has written this chapter in such a way as to teach us this lesson from Jesus: that no man can serve God faithfully if he also desires the approval of others. Just as you cannot serve God and Mammon, you cannot serve God and seek the approval of others.
Listen to what John 12:42-43 says about the people who attempt this, “Many even of the authorities believed in Jesus, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; 43 for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.”
The test of a true Christian is to answer the question: Who do you want glory from? Whose approval do you most desire?Is it God? Or is it man?How you answer that question will determine your fitness for the kingdom of heaven.
And so to help us aspire to this seeking the glory of God above the glory of men, Mark inserts this story of John the Baptist. And he inserts John’s martyrdom between the sending out of the disciples in verse 13 and their return in verse 30.
You can think of these verses (14-29) as a kind of interlude to inspire and encourage the disciples before they go out to preach. This is a coach’s pep talk in the locker room before they head out to the field.
And the takeaway from this interlude is pretty straightforward: Sometimes the reward for obeying God, is to have your head chopped off. Sometimes the reward for doing exactly what God commands you to do, is imprisonment and martyrdom.
And this is basically the opposite of how most people think about the Christian life. We think that obedience leads to blessing. Which is exactly right and true. But what we miss and often overlook is that God’s blessings sometimes come to us disguised as curses.
For John the Baptist, sitting in prison, might not seem like effective fruitful ministry. He can’t preach, he can’t baptize, he can’t point people to Jesus, he’s just sitting there in chains. And yet, his imprisonment and beheading, are going to be written down by the apostles and proclaimed until the end of the world in every nation under heaven, and the testimony of his faith, which is sealed in blood, will resound into eternity. John was counted worthy to suffer for the name, and that cursed death he endured was the reward of his faithfulness.
God’s blessings sometimes come to us disguised as curses. This whole scene of course is a foreshadowing of Christ’s death. If this is how the powers that be treat John a holy prophet and forerunner for the Messiah, then how they will treat the one who comes after him?
So with this in mind, let us turn to our text.
Verse 14
14 And king Herod heard of him; (for his name was spread abroad:) and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.
Notice first that Mark calls Herod, “king Herod.” There are a bunch of Herods in the Bible (this is a different Herod than the one that tried to kill Jesus as an infant). This is Herod Antipas who was the tetrarch of Galilee. You can think of a tetrarch as a kind of local governor who only had power insofar as Caesar granted it. Rome was the imperial power, and Herod Antipas was the local governor over the regions of Galilee and Perea.
And the ironic thing about Mark calling him “king Herod,” is that he never actually held the official title of king though he desperately wanted it. The Jewish historian Josephus tells of how his wife Herodias goaded him into requesting this title of king from Caesar, and it was that ambitious request to be made king of the Jews, that led him to him being deposed and banished by the emperor Caligula (AD 39).
Now for all intents and purposes, for those who lived in Galilee, Herod very much lived and acted like a king. And beyond the irony of him being deposed for aspiring to that royal title, Mark calls Herod, “king Herod” because he wants to set up a contrast between two different kinds of king, two distinct visions of kingship.
Mark is wants us to compare King Herod with King Jesus, and therefore the rest of this chapter is a kind of commentary on what a true shepherd/king is compared to the false shepherd/king that is Herod.
We’ll see next week that Jesus will say in verse 34, the people are like “sheep without a shepherd” and then Jesus is going to miraculously feed those sheep with five loaves and two fish.
The contrast then, and the question Mark wants us to ask is, What kind of shepherd is king Herod? Does he feed the sheep, or devour them? Jesus multiplies and divides loaves and fishes, what does Herod divide?
So “king Herod” has heard of Jesus, and he thinks that John the Baptist has risen from the dead. And again, there are layers of irony here, because in Jesus, John will one day literally rise from the dead, but in the meantime, John was Elijah, and Jesus is Elisha, who comes with a double portion of the same spirt. The ministry of Jesus then is what John’s ministry looks like resurrected. John did no mighty signs and wonders, but he preached the truth. Jesus comes as “a resurrected John” and is performing miracles all over the place.
In verses 15-16 we hear what people are speculating about Jesus’ identity…
Verses 15-16
15 Others said, That it is Elias (Elijah). And others said, That it is a prophet, or as one of the prophets. 16 But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead.
Herod appears here haunted by the execution of John. And perhaps in his mind, Jesus is a kind of divine vengeance for John’s murder (the ghost of John is haunting him).
And then in verse 17, we get a flashback from Mark, which tells us how John’s execution went down.
Verses 17-20
17 For Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold upon John, and bound him in prison for Herodias’ sake, his brother Philip’s wife: for he had married her. 18 For John had said unto Herod, It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife. 19 Therefore Herodias had a quarrel against him, and would have killed him; but she could not: 20 For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly.
King Herod is a man divided. He has married his niece, Herodias, who was also the wife of his half-brother Philip, and so there are multiple violations of God’s law in this marriage between Herod and Herodias.
Leviticus 18:16 says, “Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife.”
Leviticus 20:21 says, “And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.”
Herodias had already had a daughter together with Philip, and so for her to divorce him and then marry Herod Antipas was a scandal to the Jews.
John the Baptist therefore confronted Herod about this unlawful marriage, and ever since then, Herodias had wanted to kill John.
This should remind us of the various scenes in 1 Kings where King Ahab is controlled by his wicked wife Jezebel, and uses her husband’s power to get what she wants.
Elijah slaughters the false prophets of Baal, and then Jezebel tries to slaughter Elijah (1 Kings 18-19).
Naboth has a vineyard that Ahab desires, and Jezebel sets up false witnesses to have Naboth murdered.
There are many parallels between Ahab and Herod, Jezebel and Herodias, Elijah and John the Baptist.
And if you remember how Jezebel dies, she is thrown out of a window, eaten by dogs, and when they go to bury her it says, “they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.” Jezebel has her head severed from her body.
So just as Jesus is John “risen from the dead.” Herodias has “resurrected” the spirit of Jezebel, and she now seeks the head of John the Baptist.
We should also note here that it belongs to the prophet to confront kings when they deviate from God’s law. It did not matter that Rome claimed supremacy, or that king Herod was not a professing believer. According to the law of God as set forth in Leviticus 18 and 20, it was unlawful for Herod to have his brother’s wife.
This prophetic ministry now belongs to the church, and therefore the job of preachers is not only to feed the people of God, but also to confront the lawlessness that happens in Washington D.C., in Olympia, and wherever the city council meets. The church is Christ’s mouthpiece to tell the powers that be, what is lawful and what is not.
It does not matter if the President or Governor or Mayor is not a Christian, the moral law of God is forever binding on all men, and if they deviate from it, we have the authority given to us by God, to tell them, “You may not have your brother’s wife.” You may not allow abortions in this state. You may not allow transgender surgeries in Washington. You may not allow same-sex mirage to exist. You may not draft our daughters into the military. On and on I could go. These people who desire to corrupt our children and spread perversity need to be punished, not elected to public office.
This is the prophetic ministry of the church, and if we start to preach like John the Baptist, we should not be surprised when they like Herodias, want to kill us.
The fact that we have so many women (like Herodias and Jezebel) in government is not a sign of great progress, it is a sign of God’s judgment.
Isaiah 3:12 says, “As for my people, children are their oppressors, And women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, And destroy the way of thy paths.”
If you go to vote, and your options are Herod, Herodias, Jezebel, or Deborah, of course choose righteous Deborah. But as you vote for her, remember that this is not how it is supposed to be.
When God ordained the government of Israel in Exodus 18:21-22, this was the standard for being a ruler, “Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens: 22 And let them judge the people at all seasons.”
There are 4 basic qualifications for a godly ruler. You must be:
1. An able man (competent to rule)
2. Fear God
3. A Man of Truth
4. Hate Covetousness (hate a bribe)
Where are these men today? How many of our senators and representatives meet that very basic criteria? Not many.
If Christ is King of the world, then He is King of Centralia, He is Lord of Chehalis. Jesus is the ruler of Washington State and these United States. And Psalm 2 issues a warning to all human governments that we must constantly put in their ears, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, And ye perish from the way, When his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”
The blessing of God will not come to our nation, until we as a nation put our trust in Him. In the meantime, we can either lock up and behead preachers of God’s truth, or we can amplify their voice and repent at their preaching. Which way Western man?
In verses 21-23 we have Herodias’ wicked scheme.
Verses 21-23
21 And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee; 22 And when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee. 23 And he sware unto her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom.
This was most likely a very lewd dance from a teenage girl. And if you were to read about what took place in Herodian courts, this is not surprising activity. There was all kinds of incest and perversity there.
This dancing damsel stands in contrast to another damsel we just read about back in chapter 5, Jairus’s daughter who was at the point of death. We said that Jairus’s daughter signifies the death and resurrection of Israel of Daughter Zion, and here we have another picture of how corrupt Daughter Zion has become.
Here is a royal princess, dancing and debasing herself for the pleasure of men. This is exactly how God describes Jerusalem in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and elsewhere: Jerusalem is a daughter that has been made royalty, but who then debases herself with fornication and murder.
Ezekiel 16:15 says, “But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it.”
Jeremiah 11:15, 27 says, “What hath my beloved to do in mine house, seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many, and the holy flesh is passed from thee? when thou doest evil, then thou rejoicest…I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be?”
Here we have another angle on this theme of Jerusalem as God’s daughter that has become corrupt.And just as Jerusalem is the city that murders and devours the prophets, so also this damsel will be the cause of John’s murder and their devouring of him.
So Herod offers the girl whatever she wants, up to half the kingdom, and now we get her request.
Verses 24-29
24 And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist. 25 And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou give me by and by in a charger (on a platter/serving dish) the head of John the Baptist. 26 And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath’s sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. 27 And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, 28 And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother. 29 And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.
What is the dish that the wicked desire to eat? It is the flesh of prophets. What is the communion meal and sacrament of the perverse? It is to consume the head of those who spoke the truth.
Herodias daughter is no innocent young girl, just doing what her mother says against her will. This is a daughter who has embraced her mother’s murderous intents, and even embellishes them. It is the girl who adds to the request, “I want his head on a platter, immediately.”
She, like her mother, knows that Herod is double-minded. Herod fears John and respects him as a holy man, and therefore John’s imprisonment is a compromise to keep John alive, and his wife at bay.
And so Herodias and her daughter look for and press upon Herod’s great weakness, which is his desire for approval and the keeping of appearances. The text says, “And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath’s sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her.”
What did Herod want more than to keep John alive? He wanted to keep his reputation as king intact.Herod knew murdering John was morally wrong, he also knew it was bad public policy, it could incite rebellion, and endanger his ability to rule. He had a bad conscience about the whole thing. But feeling bad about sin, is not the same thing as repentance.
And at this point of the girls requests, Herod still had a way out. He could have given her half of his kingdom instead. He could have broken his oath as an unlawful oath, we know he had no problem breaking marriage vows.
And so Herod, instead of dividing his kingdom, divides the head from the body of John the Baptist. He caves to the pressure of his wife and this girl and the people who are watching.
We have then a great inversion here of something that happened in King Solomon’s court. You remember the scene where two women come in, with competing claims of who is mother of the baby. And Solomon threatens to divide the baby in half. And the true mother out of love for her child, pleads for the baby’s life (give it the other woman), and thus Solomon discerns true mother from false mother.
Well King Herod has no such discernment. And rather than judging righteously between two women, here two women exercise authority and judgment over him. This is the kind of king that King Herod is: weak-willed, compromised, double-minded, controlled by women and what they think.
In contrast to Herod, we have the examples of both John and Jesus.
John and Jesus preach the truth and care only for the approval of God. They could care less what people think of their preaching.
What gives a man courage to confront kings and authorities and those who could do us great harm, is an absolute trust that God is on our side. That the Father is pleased with us, and it his good pleasure along that we desire.
Conclusion
If we want to become a faithful and honest church, where truth and love abound, then we are going to have to be a little bit brave.
We are going to have to first confront the wickedness and perversity in ourselves. We are going to have to repent, and put to death that little Herod and that bitter Herodias that dwells in our flesh. Our envy, our lust for power, for money, for reputation. The hankering for other people’s approval must die in us if we want courage to stand.
The true prophet is willing to lose his head for Christ. To decrease that He might increase.
The true king is willing to lay down his life for the sheep, to face down wolves to protect those who are his.
And so take John and take Jesus as your examples of what it means to be a true disciple, a true Christian.
The path that Jesus is taking us on is a path that leads through the valley of the shadow of death.And if you trust Jesus, even unto death, then you will find on other side: green pastures, still waters, beautiful and pleasant places that will restore your soul.
So trust the good shepherd, trust the true King, and surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.