Mark 3:7-12
Well, let’s turn together in
our Bibles, if you would, to Mark chapter 3, and we’ll be
looking at verses 7 through 12 this evening. Mark chapter 3,
verses 7 through 12. You’ll find it on page 837, I’m sorry, 838
of your Pew Bible. It’s Mark chapter 3, verses 7 through 12. And before we read that passage,
let’s take a moment now to turn our attention to the Lord in
prayer. Let’s pray together. Father, we ask now that you would
open up your word to us, your living and active word that’s
sharper than any two-edged sword, the word that is breathed out
by you and which is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting,
training in the way of righteousness, that we might be fully equipped
for every good work. Open the eyes of our hearts,
that we might behold the wonderful things from it. We pray in Jesus’
name, amen. Mark chapter three, beginning
in verse seven. Jesus withdrew with his disciples
to the sea And a great crowd followed from Galilee and Judea
and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from
around Tyre and Siloam. When the great crowd heard all
that he was doing, they came to him. And he told his disciples
to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they
crush him, for he had healed many. so that all who had diseases
pressed around him to touch him. And whenever the unclean spirits
saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, you are the
son of God. And he strictly ordered them
not to make him known. Amen, this is God’s holy, inspired,
and inerrant word to us this evening. Well, if you remember
the Ten Commandments, you’ll remember that the first two commandments
speak of our worship of God. The first commandment says that
we are to have no other gods before God, and the second is
that we are not to create and worship idols. In other words,
we’re not to worship God in ways that are in conformity to our
imaginations, but in conformity to who God actually reveals himself
to be within his word. And so it is a well-traveled
path to self-destruction when we bind ourselves to someone
or something other than God to save us and to bring us ultimate
hope. to validate our existence, right?
That’s what a violation of the first commandment would look
like. And then on the other hand, it is also a well-traveled path
to destruction when we worship the true God, but we worship
the true God in ways that he’s not revealed to us in his word.
We manufacture a God of our own making, of our own thoughts,
rather than who he actually reveals himself to be in the pages of
scripture. And so the violation of these
two commandments, what ends up happening there is all the other
sins that we commit, all the other ways that we fail to honor
God end up trickling out of those failure to obey those commandments.
And it also compels us to resist loving our own neighbor, to loving
the people in our lives. And so if you look at the pages
of scripture and you consider that Genesis chapter one is there,
which displays that we are created by a sovereign king of the universe,
that he is the creator of all things and we’re created in his
image by his design and for his glory, then what we need to understand
is that we fundamentally malfunction. when we seek to live our lives
without him. When we seek to live our lives
without reference to him and without reference to what he
fundamentally reveals himself to be and to who he shows himself
to be in scriptures. And so if we don’t bind ourselves
to him and we don’t bind ourselves to his purposes, then we will
bind ourselves to someone or something else and to their purposes. We’re either going to be slaves
to God, which paradoxically brings about freedom, or we’ll be slaves
to something else, which brings us destruction. And let me explain
what I mean to you just by looking at this story. If you scan up
just a little bit in your Bibles and you look to the first section
of chapter three and then the last section of chapter two,
we see that it is the Sabbath day and Jesus is quite active
on the Sabbath day. We see that his his servants,
his disciples, had been picking heads of grain on the Sabbath. And then on, you get to chapter
3 and you discover that Jesus heals a man with a withered hand
on the Sabbath as well. And so The Pharisees were not
particularly happy about this. Jesus doing work on the Sabbath. They had this high view of the
fourth commandment, which is a good thing, but what they did
is they not only took the fourth commandment and said that this
is a day of rest and worship, A day of works of mercy and necessity
and piety, which we discover in scripture. But what they did
is they eradicated that and they added their own extra layer of
law on top of the law, which made the law, which was good,
something that was enslaving, something that was restrictive.
And that’s what a legalist always does. A legalist is someone who
takes the law and adds more layers to it as a means to honor God
or to be redeemed by Him. And on the other hand, there
are those who take the law of God and they eliminate it, they
reduce it, they push it to the periphery. So there are two ditches
on each side that we can fall into. And these Pharisees had
the tendency to add things to the law that the Bible never
required. They bound consciences to that
which the Scriptures never required. So Jesus is not just taking their
rules and not taking them seriously enough for them, but what he’s
doing is he’s displaying in those previous passages a couple of
factors about themselves which are true, which are, number one,
they had a misunderstanding of themselves. They did not understand
the deceitfulness of their own heart. They believed that honoring
the Lord was a merely external thing. And then secondly, they
not only had a misunderstanding of themselves, but they had a
misunderstanding of God. They did not know God as they
ought. They did not understand God as
he truly revealed himself to be. In other words, what they
didn’t understand about themselves was the natural wickedness of
their heart. They missed the fact that their
hearts were naturally self-absorbed. naturally hostile to God. They
took so much hope in the covenant sign that they had received,
that they were part of God’s visible outward chosen people
of Israel, and that was their comfort, but their hearts were
far from Him. So they honored God with their
mouths, but their hearts were far from Him. That’s what these
Pharisees were like. They misunderstood God, they
misunderstood themselves and they also thought that everything
is really okay in here because of that. The problem is out there. Does that make sense? The problems in the world, the
problems in our lives, as far as they were concerned, were
all external. What’s going on in the government,
with the Roman government, this foreign rule that is taking place
in their land? That’s what the real problem
is with life. The real problem is all of this
stuff out there. I’m personally fine if we can
just get that fixed, then everything will be okay. Do you see how
at odds that is with what scripture actually teaches about us and
about God. See, they completely missed it.
They had the scriptures, they had all the promises, it was
right there before them. And they missed it, they did
not see it, they did not get that. And so what they thought
about Jesus is that, They thought of Jesus as, if he could be the
one who was indeed performing all of these miracles that he
had performed, just as we saw here with the healing of this
man with the withered hand, if he could do that, if he could
overrule evil, if he had this power, merely by the word of
his power to bring healing and restoration and do away with
demonic powers, then certainly he had the power to be their
political savior, to rid their land from this foreign, intrusive,
despotic government of the Romans that was making their lives miserable. And what they really needed was
someone to go into the proverbial oval office of the day and make
Israel great again. That’s what they really wanted. That’s not what Jesus’ purpose
was. See, so many people use Jesus
as a means to an end. They seek a political savior.
They seek a cultural transformation savior. They seek a financial
savior. They seek a physical savior. They seek a savior of
all different types of ailments and relational issues and all
this. And the problem is that there’s
actually enough truth in that to make it appealing, because
there is a sense that when we honor the Lord, when we worship
Him as we’re called to worship Him, many times there are tangible
benefits that come from that. But that’s, those are the fruit,
that’s the fruit of the true worship of God, not how we’re
actually called to worship Him as he reveals himself to be.
See, he is our chief end. What is the chief end of man?
To glorify God and enjoy him forever. The chief end of man
is not to worship God so that we’ll get all the stuff that
we’ve already decided that we wanted for ourselves. That’s the difference. The Pharisees
didn’t get that. And so once it became clear to
them, that it was not Jesus’ purpose to fulfill their idolatries,
to fulfill their false understandings of God, a crazy thing happens
if you look back to verse 6 in chapter 3. The Pharisees went
out and immediately held counsel with who? The Herodians. I mean, you think Republicans
and Democrats have a hard time getting along together. How about
the Pharisees and the Herodians? But they found an issue that
they were both in lockstep agreement with. And what they were in agreement
with is that they had to get rid of Jesus. Because Jesus was
threatening them. He was threatening their power,
he was exposing the false worship and the false hope and the false
understanding of themselves that they had. So we get to this section
that we just read here, and what happens? We see in verse seven
that Jesus withdrew with his disciples. Now, the reason why
he withdrew was not because he was cowering in fear, but because
it was not his time yet to go to the cross. I mean, they were
conspiring with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
They wanted him done away with. They didn’t want him to just
pack his bags and leave. They wanted him on a tree. And it wasn’t the time for that. And so, we get to this passage. And Jesus withdraws. He moves
away from them. He gets out of where they are
because it was not yet his time. But then what happens? This great
crowd follows. The great crowd followed from
Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the
Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. They come from everywhere. People are coming from everywhere. and they’re coming to Jesus for
healing. These people are a mess. I mean, you’re talking about
people with leprosy, maimed limbs, heinous diseases. I mean, there
are no amount of N95 masks that you could possibly wear to keep
you safe from these people. They are a wreck, but they’ve
heard about Jesus. They hear what’s going on. They
hear what he’s able to do, and they’re seeking him out. They’re
seeking healing, and they’re coming from everywhere. And I
would say as a sidebar comment, it sort of displays how God’s
kingdom will expand and include people from every tongue, tribe,
and nation. It’s gonna move from beyond the
narrow borders of Israel. It’s gonna include all kinds
of people. Have you considered that in the
new heavens and new earth, you’ll get to meet Ezekiel? You’ll get to have a conversation
in a common language with John Calvin, you’ll have a relationship, a
bond unlike anything that you have ever experienced with another
human on the face of this earth in your life at this point with
South Sudanese Christians who don’t look like anyone in this
room. Isn’t that a beautiful thing?
People are coming to him from everywhere, from the north, mainly
Gentiles. People from Tyre and Siloam,
which is in modern day Lebanon, right? The Mediterranean coast. They’re coming from the east.
Places like Syria and Jordan of our present day. They’re coming
from, it says, Idumea, the southern part of Judea, of Israel, down
in the desert. These were Jews, but they were
not particularly religious Jews. They were just kind of more ethnic
Jews. And it all points to us that
the kingdom is expanding like new wine and new wineskins. And
it doesn’t feel like that. I mean, it feels like in America
in 2022, it’s contracting, right? It feels like we’re, but it’s
like shrink wrap going around something. And it’s our public
witness and our influence is becoming less and less profound. But what’s really happening when
you look at global Christianity and you look at what’s been happening
over the course of 2000 years is that God Well, first he calls Abram, and
then he creates this family, the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, and the seed multiplies, and it grows, and it flourishes,
and then we have the covenant people of God in the church.
and it just extends to the ends of the earth. Now look, I don’t
know what my ancestors were doing 2,000 years ago when this was
written, but I’m pretty sure I know what they were not doing.
And what they were probably not doing, given that my ancestors
are from Northern Europe, what they were not doing is worshiping
Jesus Christ. I mean, if that’s where your
ancestors are from, and you look back 2,000 years ago, they were
barbarians. But the gospel went there, didn’t
it? And there were people that repented and believed, and they
came here. And maybe you’re the first person in your family ever
to know Christ, and it came to you purely out of free grace,
nothing of your own merit. And Jesus came to you. The Spirit
gave you a heart of flesh. And those dry bones took on flesh. And they began to worship the
one true and living God. It’s so easy to be discouraged,
but God is still working. And he’s drawing people out,
seeking healing. And the thing is, is that when
you look in scripture and you see these healings, they always
point to something greater. He heals the body here by the
mere word of his power, but what he is doing, what they’re actually
pointing to, is that he is able to bring healing to the soul.
He rules and reigns over sin and evil and the effects of sin
and evil. And so we are the beneficiaries
of that. Praise the Lord. So they come
from all over the place. But many a person is coming for
Jesus, for physical healing as the end itself rather than ultimately
to Jesus. And you’re going to find over
the course of time as you go further and further into the
Gospels and you finally get to the cross that there aren’t very
many people there and no one’s trying to come to him and be
with him at that particular time. Because following Christ is costly. You know, these people naturally
desire the blessing itself, rather than the giver of the blessing.
And isn’t that our inclination? To desire the blessing, the benefits
that God gives, rather than just God himself. You know, think
about it. Why are these people sick? Why
are they suffering? It’s because there’s sin in the
world. And maybe they’re suffering,
it’s not necessarily a direct correlation, like they did something
and as a result they’re suffering physically, that may be the case,
but generally that’s, you can’t draw a straight line from that.
Right? But the fact of the matter is
that there’s sin in the world. The covenant of works was broken,
there is death. And these people are experiencing
the decay of the body right in their souls and right before
their very eyes. And all of this is happening because of sin.
And that’s the great problem. That’s what the real problem
is. The problem in life is not people who don’t think like us,
or people who don’t live like us, or just a certain set of
Issues that we don’t gravitate towards. It’s ultimately, the
issue is sin. It’s our native rebellion and
indifference to God. And that’s the greatest problem.
But if you look back to Mark chapter 2 and to verse 17, turn
there with me, Mark 2, 17. What Jesus says there is that
those who are well have no need for a physician. but those who are sick. I came
not to call the righteous, but sinners.” In other words, even
though Jesus has compassion on the symptoms, he is most concerned
about the problem. Does that make sense? He’s concerned
about the cure, not the band-aid. The sickness is sin. If you have a pain in your neck
and you go in and you have a scan and they discover that it’s a
tumor, and that’s what’s causing your pain, and the doctor says,
well, okay, what you really just need to do is go home and take
a couple of Tylenol in the morning and evening, That doctor’s gonna
lose his license and he should. Because all he’s doing is addressing
symptoms. He’s not getting to the problem.
What the problem is is that there’s a tumor and it needs to be rooted
out and thrown out. It needs to be completely plucked
out. It needs to be removed. And what these people fail to
see is the fact that the only one who can heal their bodies
by the word of his power is also the only one who can heal their
soul. The greatest problem in life
is not an unsatisfactory quality of life. The greatest problem is the reason
why we have an unsatisfactory quality of life in the first
place, which is sin. See, we were created to live
in paradise. All of the sufferings that we
experience as a result of sin. Everyone longs to be relieved
of their greatest fears. Everyone wants their deepest
suffering to be washed away. But if we’re seeking that only
and not the, if we’re seeking the blessing and not the blesser,
then we’re just seeking a cure for the symptom and not a cure
for the problem. And when Jesus heals the sick,
he’s always bringing something that greater in view. He’s bringing
that thing in view that God has come to bring healing to all
parts of our lives. He will heal the body perfectly.
We will have glorified bodies and he will heal our soul to
the degree that we will not have any inclination towards sin at
all anymore, but we will only seek to honor and enjoy the Lord. All of those temptations, all
of those cracks in that jar of clay, they will all be mended
There is great hope for that. Then you see here the unclean
spirits. You see them doing the same thing
Jesus did when he confronted them back in chapter one. See, this isn’t the first time
in the gospel of Mark that he’s confronted unclean spirits, demonic
spirits. And then he would go on later
into Mark, I believe it’s chapter five, He sends demons cowering
in fear into a flock of pigs and the pigs run into the water
and they all drown. Remember that? Crazy. Can you even imagine that before
your very eyes? And the pigs, which were the
foulest, most unclean creatures on the face of the earth for
these folks, that’s what happens. But Jesus has mastery over them. But here’s the amazing thing
that you discover about the demons, right? Verse 11, and whenever
the unclean spirit saw him, they fell down before him and cried
out, you are the son of God. You know, I want you to imagine
if you’re at the grocery store, Home Depot, whatever, and someone
comes up to you who you don’t know, never seen him in your
life, But they say to you, I know who you are. You work at such
and such a place. And your address is such and
such. And your kids’ names are such
and such. And your phone number is such
and such. And you drive that car out there
in the parking lot. And I even know the car you drove
before that car. If a person came up to you that you’d never
seen before and said that, that would creep you out, right? I mean, you would think someone
had been stalking you. Like, what else do they know
about me that they’re not telling me? If they know that much, they
must know other things. And that’s creepy. And it would
make you feel as if that person might be trying to gain control
over you and you were being threatened. I mean, it would be gravely concerning
if that were the case. Well, the demons are sort of
doing that here. The demons, and there’s a belief
at the time, and I would say just as true now, that the knowledge
of the precise name or the quality of a person somehow confers mastery
over them. And so, in other words, the unclean
spirits, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to intimidate
Jesus. And you see that when you get
to that passage in Mark chapter five about the pigs as well. They’re trying to intimidate
Jesus in the context of what is already a profoundly overwhelming
situation. He’s got the Pharisees and the
Herodians clamoring together trying to destroy him and then
he’s got this mob, I mean this is a paparazzi moment. These
people are coming from everywhere and they are just overwhelmed,
I mean they are just up up in him, right there, all seeking
healing. And then you add to the ingredients
these demons here. This is what we would call a
high-stress situation, right? That’s exactly what’s going on
in this circumstance with Jesus. And the point is obvious, though,
with Jesus. in his relationships, his connection
to these demons is that they seek mastery over him, but he
has total mastery over them. You look at the evil, he has
total mastery over it. He reigns and rules in his providential
sovereignty over every drop of evil that has his will happen
until he comes again. The Prince of Darkness continues
to wreak havoc all over the world. How many of us have just seen
the events of the past week and just wondered, how can this be?
How in the world can this be? How can someone do that? How
can That is reprobation of the highest order. But what we have to remember
when we see here in Scripture, over and, it’s not a one-off
incident. It’s over and over and over again
is that the enemy is on a leash. He has been defeated, he has
been bound, and we know this because Jesus conquered sin and
death and evil on the cross, and the objective historical
fact is that he has risen again. He has conquered it. And he has
ascended to the right hand of God the Father. And he has put
all enemies under his feet. And that is good news. That is
good news. Because if you don’t know that,
and that’s not just pie in the sky hopefulness that religious
people created somewhere to help them deal with the problems of
life. No, Christianity, look, it’s a historical religion. It’s
based on fact, it’s based on evidence, it’s based on something
that happened in history, and what happened in history is that
Jesus came and he plunged these demons into the ocean, or into
the sea, and he reigns over them, and he conquers them, and he
defeats them. And he defeats the evil, even in
our own day. Sometimes we see in very clear,
active ways in which He does that, and sometimes we don’t,
and it leaves our heads scratching. But we have to remember, as I
have said before here, and I’ll say it again, we are in chapter
four, five, six of a 10, 12, 15 chapter book. We don’t know how
it all ends from our perspective, but we do when we read Scripture,
that it all ends at the marriage supper of the Lamb. That’s the
good news. See, the Pharisees, they had
a political and moral gospel. They wanted everything to be
right with getting rid of this government that was making their
lives miserable. And the crowds, they had a faith-healing,
prosperity gospel. where they really wanted just
to be set free from the physical ails of life. And you get to all over the pages
of scripture and you discover that so many people who may say
they want Jesus, what they really want is Santa Claus. What they want is a bag full
of gifts. but they’re not really interested
in Jesus at all. And the question is, where are
you? Do you want Jesus? Do you want
him more than you want anything else in life? The passage we
looked at this morning helps us to consider that question
more deeply, doesn’t it? That in the midst of the deepest
possible pain, in the midst of when your flesh and your heart
fail, Do you know and desire Jesus to be the strength of your
heart and your portion forever? I wanted to say a couple things
before we wrap up. You know, this, the sin that
we see in the world and the sin that we experience in our own
life, it has gripped our souls and it is just amazing that it’s
not worse. It’s amazing that Jesus has still
kept a benevolent, gracious hand upon us. And the Jesus who healed
the sick and who cast out the demons and raised the dead is
the same God who is ruling and reigning right now. We do feel
so often like it doesn’t seem that way, but what we really
need to understand what’s going on here is think of it almost
like the Harlem Globetrotters game. Who’s the opponent of the Harlem
Globetrotters? It’s a team called the Washington
Generals. They have lost to the Harlem
Globetrotters over 13,000 times. And they go out and they play
these games and they know, the outcome, everybody knows who’s
gonna win the game. I mean, it’s an act, right? So everyone knows that the Harlem
Globetrotters are going to win the game. The Washington Generals
know it, the Harlem Globetrotters know it, the crowd knows it.
And yet they still have to play the game. They still have to
go out there. And the Washington generals,
they’re good players. And they make their baskets.
And they shoot the three-pointers. And they go through the hoop.
And they get fouled. And things happen. But the fact
of the matter is that the Washington generals are going to lose the
game again. and the Harlem Globetrotters
are gonna win. And even though the game still
needs to be played, Jesus ultimately wins. He never loses every single
time. And so the opponent hits the
basket and maybe it seems like, oh, this is gonna be a close
one. I’m not so sure. And you start to kind of get
on the edge of your seat and get a little edgy, but that’s
not what’s gonna happen. What’s gonna happen is that Jesus
is gonna win. Jesus has already won. The game
is already over. It’s still being played. And
that final buzzer will buzz one day, but it hasn’t buzzed yet. And that’s good news for us.
Don’t miss who Jesus is and what he came to do by looking to the
physical, the social, the financial, the political, whatever is the
cure-all, is the hope of all that we desire and need in this
world, because that’s not ultimately what it is. Don’t look for the
things that Jesus never promises. He never promises that our country
will last into the new heavens and the new earth. He never promises
that our bodies, our souls, our finances, our relationships and
so forth will all be one big carnival cruise experience. But
what he does promise is that he will plunge sin into the depths
of the sea. What he does promise is that
he loves you. He loves you at the cost of his
very own life. He loves you and he gave himself
for you and he has prepared a place for you and he is with you to
the very end of the age. And he is gathering his people
from the very ends of the earth, just as he has gathered us here
this evening in this little corner of the earth, thousands of miles
away from where this story actually happened, to be beneficiaries
of the good news that Christ has come into the world to save
sinners. And that is where all of your
hope and life and death lie. Amen. Let’s pray. Lord, thank you for the hope
of the gospel. May we remember it, may we live
according to it, and may we ultimately delight ourselves in you above
all things on heaven and on earth. We pray this in the name of him
who came such a distance for us. Our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.