AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?     Mark 10:17-30    Dr. Scott Wenig   (2nd Service)

{Manuscript–View video for complete content.}  So good to see all of you here today.  If you’ve been with us, you know we’ve been walking our way through the Gospel of Mark.  Starting about the eighth chapter of Mark, Jesus begins to orient himself and his disciples toward Jerusalem, where he’ll eventually end up, in what we call, Holy Week.  Today we’re looking at Mark 10.  At the beginning of Mark 10, there’s an encounter that Jesus has with the Pharisees over the issue of divorce.  After that, a bunch of children come to Jesus and they want to sit with them and the disciples get all upset so he has to correct them.  Let the little kids come to me, because that’s what the kingdom of God is about—accepting Him as a little child does.  Then once again, Jesus points himself toward Jerusalem.  He’s talking about his death and gets everyone freaked out.  James and John come up to him, in a narrative after that, and they make this weird request that when Jesus comes into his kingdom, they want to sit on his right and on his left—they feel entitled. After that, there’s this blind beggar, Bartimaeus, and he asks Jesus to heal him.  Given all of that, what I decided to do today was focus our attention on a narrative right in the middle of that starting with Mark 10:17.  That’s what we’ll look at today.  Jesus has an encounter with a young man that I think, Lord willing, speaks to all of us.  So before we look at that, let me lead us in prayer and then we’ll walk our way through this story.

Lord, you are a great and awesome God, and because of your power, grace, and mercy, you have called us out of that grave, and we thank you for that.  And Lord, because you’re sovereign and you care about your planet and you care about all the people of this planet, we pray today for the removal of the coronavirus.  We pray for government and health officials, that you would give them wisdom and grace, all around the world to get a handle on this.  We pray for our administration.  We pray for local and state officials, that they would be really up to speed.  Lord, we would pray that you would protect us.  Lord, as we think of other issues in the world, other issues in our own lives, we pray that you would come and meet with us.  We pray that you would speak to us.  We pray that you would give us wisdom and guidance.  Lord, as we look into this text today, I ask that you would enlighten our minds, you would touch our hearts, that you would speak to us through your word.  We ask this, Lord, for your glory and for our benefit, and we pray all of this in your powerful name, Jesus.  Amen.

This is Hetty Green.  She lived in a dark, downtrodden, cheap boarding house in New York City at the beginning of the 20th century.  Because of, what she perceived, the high cost of food and energy, each morning for breakfast she would eat cold, dry oatmeal.  A lot of people who saw or knew her called her a witch and didn’t want to be close to her, partly because she wouldn’t pay for soap or buy new clothes.  When her son injured his knee, she didn’t want to take him to a doctor.  Instead, they sat at home for two years and eventually, when his pain became excruciating, she decided to dress him and herself in rags hoping that the doctor would treat her son for free out of pity.  When the doctor found out who she was, he kicked her out and several years later her son’s leg had to be amputated.  Now what’s really interesting is that as a young woman, Hetty Green had inherited 20 million dollars in today’s currency from her parents.  And because of her frugality and her focus on enhancing her wealth, she eventually turned that into 100 million by the time she died in 1916.  She was the richest woman in America – the richest, saddest, loneliest, and poorest woman in America.  I wonder if there are any rich, lonely, and sad Hetty Greens around today in 2020?

Jesus once said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  He was a wandering, itinerant preacher with no home, checkbook or retirement account and only a cross to bear at the end of His earthly life.   But did Jesus live a life filled with purpose and joy?  Well, He must have possessed something magnetic because all kinds of people were attracted to him, not the least a young man who was seeking the kind of life that Jesus exhibited and lived out with the men and women who were his disciples, even though they didn’t have much of what our culture (or even theirs) supposedly has that makes for happiness.  To see who this man was and what happens in his encounter with Jesus let’s look at Mark 10:17-20. As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.  You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”  “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

In the parallel texts in Matthew and Luke, we’re told that his man was young, rich, and a ruler, and so we know him and refer to him as the rich, young ruler.  It seems that he was a person of wealth, power and prestige. In all likelihood he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth; perhaps he inherited the family winery and the business had gone from good to great.  And it’s clear that he was also well-educated in the local synagogue, because as he interacts with Jesus it’s clear that he knows certain portions of God’s Word. But despite his wealth, his education and his upper class culture something was missing; there was a gap in his heart—a yearning for something that life offered beyond the business, the clothes, and the books—so he comes to this rabbi seeking salvation.

Initially, Jesus directs his attention to the commandments and in v. 20 the rich young ruler responds that he’s kept them all since he was a child.  Now, to our ears, that sounds a bit presumptuous, doesn’t it?  From a Bible-believing Protestant perspective—where we emphasize the sinfulness of humanity and our inability to keep God’s commands—we might interpret that statement as either a sign of spiritual pride or a reflection that this guy’s unaware of how spiritually crippled he really is.  But here’s where his interaction with Jesus gets really interesting. Look at v. 21:  Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said.   Jesus doesn’t appear to interpret him as we might; instead Mark says Jesus loved him which means that He felt tremendous affection for this young man.  And because of that affection He tells him that he lacks one thing.  And once again, from our Protestant evangelical perspective, we might be pretty sure that Jesus means that ‘The thing you lack is faith in Me’; or ‘The thing you lack is finding your personal identity in me,’ or ‘The thing you lack is that you’ve never bowed your head and prayed that prayer to invite me into your heart.’  But Jesus says something really different.  Look at v. 21-22.  “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”  At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Jesus loved this guy and so He called him to give his money to the poor, to those who could really use it, and then join His apostolic band as one of His disciples.  But the rich, young ruler wouldn’t do it.  He couldn’t let go of his gold!   And what’s so tragic is that Jesus didn’t want his money.  He’s not doing a building program or a capital campaign or looking for a raise—not that those are bad things at all!!   What Jesus wanted was this man’s heart.  He wanted him to become like a child and enter God’s kingdom where there’s joy and fulfillment and purpose and happiness, but the rich, young ruler shook his head, and walked away dejected and sad.  C.S. Lewis once said, “Hell is the place where you get what you want but you’re incapable of wanting what is good.” Instead of following Jesus, this man decided to keep his wealth which he saw as his security, but in reality it was his prison, and in time it became his hell!

Friends, let’s not kid ourselves, that’s what money can do to us, whether we have a lot or just a little, because money has tremendous power in our lives.  Money can motivate people to neglect friends and family, in order to amass a fortune.  It can block out everything else of importance in life. It can cause us to turn away from God and others and live a life of frugal misery, just like Hetty Green.  In fact, money is so powerful that Jesus gave it a personal name.  He called it Mammon, because He understood that it’s a living, driving force in our lives.

Now, if you think that I’m misrepresenting the Scripture or over-stating the case, then let me ask you to consider how we treat money.  Do a little social experiment:  The next time you’re at a friend’s house or at a party and the conversation lags, just say, “Let’s all share how much money we made last year.”  See, how that goes over!  In our society, people will tell each other the most intimate details of their lives, but they’ll never share with you the contents of their checkbook.  Many of you here have heard of Howard Stern, the disc jockey and sometime cable broadcaster, who is well known for his vulgar, crude and, often times, very lewd antics on both radio and TV.  In fact, over the past 25 years, he’s been fined almost $2 million by the FCC for various and sundry violations. Back in 1994, Stern was considering a run as governor of New York, UNTIL he found out that he would be required to issue a public statement disclosing his finances.  At that point he withdrew, because he reasoned that talking about his money was WAY TOO personal to be made public.  Here’s a guy who regularly talks about his sexual behavior in vulgar detail to hundreds of thousands of people, but he won’t talk about money.

The reality is that lots of people aren’t all that different from Howard Stern when it comes to their finances. They’ll fight about it with their spouses, hide it from the kids, fret over it at three in the morning, spend hours and hours planning investment strategies to double it, work lots of overtime to get more of it, and then do anything the can to avoid talking about it in public or with others.  Money has an enormous spiritual power that can come to control us.  That’s why Jesus says what He does in v. 23-24:  Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

One of the things we must remember is that when a biblical author, or in this case the Lord Himself, repeats something, it’s VERY, VERY important because the Hebrews used repetition—like we use bold, CAPS, or underlining, or italicizing—in order to get the readers’ or the listeners’ attention.  Jesus uses repetition and this picture of a camel trying to go through the eye of a needle because He loves us and wants us to know that money can be dangerous to our spiritual and emotional health.  Wealth can give us the illusion that we’re self-sufficient and independent of God.  It has a way of binding us to the physical and temporal, and blinding us to the spiritual and the eternal.  Instead of being a friend that can be used to help ourselves and others, money can become an enemy of God’s best for us that leaves us unhappy, just like Hetty Green and the rich young ruler.

And what’s really scary is that wealth can deceive us into thinking we’re spiritually okay, when in reality we’re on the broad road that leads to destruction.  Here’s a man who thought he was godly, after all he told Jesus had kept the commandments, and yet when Jesus told him to give his money away and become a disciple he said ‘NO!’ and lost out on salvation!  Is it possible that the same thing might be true among some in 21st century America who call themselves Christians?

Let me give us a statistic to ponder.  Twenty-five years ago the average amount of giving to charity in American households under $10,000 a year was 2.8%.   Not exactly a tithe of 10% but not bad considering that $10,000 a year isn’t much money.  You’d think that as income goes up so would giving, but in households with income between $50,000 and $75,000 a year, the average percent was 1.5%, and recent statistics don’t look any more promising even though Americans increased their net worth since 1970s by billions of dollars.  Have millions of people sitting in churches in North America been deceived into thinking that they don’t need to give to their church, or to the poor, or to other ministries and yet still be saved?  Have those of us who call ourselves Christians and live in the most affluent civilization the world’s ever seen been lulled into the false belief that what we do, or don’t do, with our money has zero impact on our relationship with Jesus?   If that’s true then Jesus wants to set us free from that erroneous cultural narrative.  Look at how He interacts with the disciples in v. 26-27 after the rich young ruler leaves.  The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”  Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”

The disciples were shocked when they heard Jesus say that wealth could be a huge hindrance to the kingdom, because they were part of a culture that believed being rich was a sign of God’s blessing. In fact, Mark says that they were amazed and then even more amazed because from the perspective of 1st century Judaism the amount of money you had was a sign of God’s blessing; the more you had, the more God was blessing you!  So Jesus corrects their misinformed and culturally-conditioned theology by teaching them about the true nature of salvation and eternal life.  He says that no one gets into the kingdom of God by what they do, not even someone like the rich young ruler who said he kept all the commandments.  Our entrance into the kingdom and our enjoyment of life in the kingdom is totally by the GRACE OF GOD.  Jesus went to cross for us and rose from the dead for us and ascended to heaven from where He’ll return, for US.  That’s grace and it simply requires that we receive from God what we can’t do for ourselves.

About four months ago I was on my way to school.  I was driving this way.  I always go through River Point.   I came up to the stop sign and went through it.   I’m turning right onto Santa Fe to go south towards school, and I notice there’s a Littleton police officer behind me.  Except, he’s not just right behind me, he’s on my bumper.  I think, “That’s a little bit weird.”  I pull out on Santa Fe and he is still on my bumper.  I’m thinking, “He’s running my plates.”  He wants to know if there are any outstanding warrants on me.  I’m thinking, “Wait a minute!  I haven’t done anything wrong!  I’ve kept all the commandments!  Why is he tailing me!”  Before I get down to Bowles, he turns the lights on.  I’m thinking, “Busted! But I don’t know for what!  I’m innocent.”  I turn onto Bowles and eventually pull over and stop.  The officer comes up—young guy, big guy, brute guy.  I give him my license and registration and as he looks it over, he says, “Mr. Wenig, do you realize that back there at River Point, you slid right through that stop sign?  You kind of slowed down, but you didn’t stop.”  I said, “You know, officer, I’ll be honest with you, I have a lot on my mind.  If you say I slid through that stop sign, I believe you.”  He says to me, “You’re confessing that you slid through the stop sign?  You’re taking responsibility?”  “Officer, if you told me I did that, I believe you.  I’m taking responsibility.”  He said, “That’s good to hear.  I’m going to let you off.  I’m going to tell you that from now on please stop at the stop signs, but no ticket.  We’ll let it go today.”  HE. GAVE. ME. GRACE.  He had me dead to rights, guilty as charged, I slid through the stop sign.  Yet, he let me off, and all I had to do was receive it.

It’s easy to make this story about Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler all about money, when in reality it’s just as much about God’s grace.  And Jesus’ response to a question Peter poses reinforces this.  Look at v. 28-30.  Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”  “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.  Now, a lot of commentators think Peter was out of line for asking what he and the rest of the disciples were going to get out of their sacrifice to follow Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t seem bothered by that at all.  He responds by telling them that everyone who follows Him will ‘receive a hundred times as much and will receive eternal life.’  The point is that we RECEIVE.  That means that when we genuinely, in our hearts, truly receive God’s grace, that enables us to follow Jesus fully.  When we’re following Jesus fully, we’re going to manage our money wisely.

This is Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf.  Zinzendorf was a rich young German count who grew up in the Lutheran church and went about his life as a nobleman with all the privileges that came with that.  He lived in the early 18th century.   One day, Zinzendorf was touring a museum in the city of Düsseldorf when he came upon a portrait by Feti called “Ecce Homo.” It’s a picture of Christ.  Christ has been beaten and is wearing the crown of thorns on his head.  At the bottom of the painting it says, “I’ve done this you for you; what have you done for me?”  Zinzendorf said later, “I’ve know Him all my life but I’ve never done anything for Him. From now on, I’ll do whatever he tells me.”  So he went home and prayed about it, and the Lord told him to open up his vast estate, called Herrenhut, to a group of Christians known as the Moravians.  Zinzendorf invested and gave his resources and helped these people.  The Moravians became the first Protestant cross-cultural missionaries in Christian history.   Zinzendorf was the rich young ruler who said YES!

See, once we realize that God really loves us and that He’ll provide for us, our whole perspective changes about what it looks like to follow Jesus.  We can enjoy all the blessings of life and God’s kingdom and live with purpose, peace and joy.  And then we can begin to value what God values.  His heart is our heart.   We start to  invest our financial resources in people, and projects, and institutions, and churches, that are about God’s advancement.  When we truly receive God’s grace, it enables us to follow Jesus fully and then manage our money wisely.

One of my favorite writers is Philip Yancey.  A long time ago, he wrote this article in Christianity Today and it’s still the single best essay I’ve ever read.  It’s about the relationship between Christian faith and money.  Yancey was talking about his pilgrimage with money.  In the mid-seventies, he and his wife Janet lived in a depressed area of Chicago.  She was a social worker there and he was a struggling writer.  He said they were kind of living on the edge.  Then he wrote a book called Where’s God When It Hurts?  The book went viral.  It sold thousands and thousands and thousands of copies very quickly, and all of a sudden Philip Yancey, poor writer, is now Philip Yancey, rich young guy.  He got a lot of money really fast.  He wrote more books and got more money.  He said, “Most of my life I haven’t had money and now I have a ton of money.”  In this article, he talks about his pilgrimage of learning to navigate money.  Here’s what he concludes:  “The act of giving best reminds me of my place on earth.  All of us live here by the goodness and grace of God – like the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, Jesus said.  Those creations do not worry about future security and safety; neither should we.  Not even Solomon, the wealthiest man of his time, could outshine a common lily.  Giving offers me a way to express my faith and confidence that God will care for me just as he cares for the sparrow and lily.”  Yancey’s right….If we’ve really received the grace of God, we can follow Jesus fully, and that will enable us to steward our money and give a lot of it away, very wisely.

I’ve been a pastor now for over 40 years, and I’ve learned that whenever you teach on money or giving, everyone gets nervous or defensive.  But I don’t want us to get nervous and I certainly don’t want to make you defensive.  I just want us to receive the abundance of Jesus’ loving grace, follow Him fully, and then steward wisely what He’s entrusted to us, however much that is or however little that may be.

In late 19th century Philadelphia, there was a church that wanted to construct a new building because their Sunday School was so over-crowded. One little girl, Hattie May Wiatt, went to that church and she knew there wasn’t any room for new children, so she began to collect pennies to contribute to the new building.  Tragically, two years later, she died from diphtheria.  Her parents found her purse, a short time later, which had 57 pennies in it and a note saying it was for the new building.  Her parents gave that note to the pastor who used it to make a dramatic appeal to the congregation.  Obviously, people’s hearts were touched and they generously responded.  One realtor gave the church a piece of land and said he wanted a payment of just 57 cents.  The local newspaper picked up that story and it went across the wire-services—like a U-Tube video going viral today —and money flowed in from all across the country.  People were touched by the story and the generosity of Hattie May Wiatt.  Now, in 2020, you can see the results.  That church has a 3300 seat auditorium and tons of space for Sunday school.  And eventually, due to its growth, it helped start Good Samaritan Hospital and Temple University in downtown Philadelphia.  And at Temple University there’s a special room dedicated to the memory of Hattie May Wiatt, the little girl whose 57 cents made such a dramatic impact for Jesus and the spread of His Kingdom.

Friends, you don’t have to be rich, or affluent, or live in Cherry Hills Village to make an impact for the Kingdom.  We all need to just receive God’s grace daily and then follow Jesus fully.  As we do that, we’ll manage our money wisely for the expansion of God’s kingdom, the good of His church, and the blessing of other people. Let’s pray.

Lord, wherever we are at today, I just pray that by your grace and your Spirit you would speak to us and that we would hear.  For our benefit and the good of the kingdom, we ask this in Jesus’s name.  Amen.

AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED? — Wait….What??   Mark 8:27-9:8   Pastor Yvonne Biel  (2nd)

It is well with my soul.  Sometimes when I’m singing this song, I want to take that truth and I want to push it, infuse it, into the inward parts of my soul.  Sometimes I also look around and I know those people that are singing it from the overflow of their heart.  You know those people.  The ones who are sitting in the midst of their storm.  Maybe they’ve been diagnosed with cancer and in the midst of treatment, they’re able to have a beautiful smile on their face and say, “It is well with my soul.”  I have some friends who lost a child—a stillborn birth.  They never got to meet their child.  And yet, on their blog and social media posts they said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Right now, I’m following my sister’s updates on my dad.  Currently he has something in his foot that needs to be removed.  Over the last couple of years, he’s been having eye issues—there’s an amoeba that got stuck in his eye.  Over this last week it started to act up and he’s in extreme pain in both his eyes.  He’s been getting medical help and is sometimes there at midnight.  On his way home, they went to get his car from valet parking and they lost his keys.  Midnight turns to two in the morning and the hospital decides to send them home via Uber.  My sister says that in the middle of the Uber ride home, my dad is telling the driver about Jesus!  In the midst of his pain, he’s still able to say, “It is well with my soul.”  What’s the secret?  How do we get to the place where we are able to have that phrase overflow from our soul?

It’s my privilege today to continue our series on the gospel of Mark.  As we read through the gospel of Mark, it seems like Jesus has a secret too.  It seems he entered a series of wilderness wanderings with forty days—no food, no drink—and he comes out the other side and he’s ready to grab a whole bunch of followers.  It’s like that didn’t even happen.  There are all these people sending rumors about him.  People think he’s demonic or some type of crazy fanatic.  Even the religious and the political leaders are trying to scheme against him.  And yet there’s this calmness, this confidence, that Jesus has.  What’s his secret?  As we open up to Mark 8 today, I think that John Mark, in his gospel, is finally unveiling the secrets.  Today I would love to share with you three secrets of the kingdom of God.  These secrets might be very familiar to you, but my prayer and my hope is that you can receive these secrets of the kingdom and you can allow them to permeate into your soul as an anchor in the times of the storms.  But I’m not trusting my own wisdom to tell you these secrets, I’m going to pray and ask that the Lord and the Spirit of the Living God would help you to receive these secrets and let them become an anchor for your soul.

Let’s pray.  Father God, King Jesus, Holy Spirit, we ask that you would be present with us right now.  As we read your Holy Scriptures and you make the truth real to us, Jesus, may your Spirit sink down these secrets, these mysteries of your kingdom, into the depths of our souls.  May they become anchors for us in the time of storms. I pray this in Jesus’s name and in the power of His Spirit.  Amen.

A few month’s back, I was hanging out with my two little nephews.  A four- and a five-year-old.  They live in Colorado Springs.  They are both learning the ways of the world and the ways of secret telling.  My four-year-old nephew David was really enjoying this.  He jumped up on my lap and gets really close into my ear—so close where they’re tickling the hair on your ear lobs and you can hardly hear what they’re saying.  David says, “Aunt Yvonne, I want to tell you a secret.”  He says, “Do like candy?”  “Yeah, David, I like candy.”   He says, “I’m going to tell you another secret.  Do you like coffee?”  “I love coffee, how did you know?”

As I was preparing for this message, I felt like the Lord reminded me that sometimes His secrets come in the form of a question.  Sometimes he lets us discover the secrets by just probing and asking.  We’re going to see several questions today.  Open your Bibles to Mark 8:27.  Here we have Jesus walking on the road with his disciples.  They’re in the middle of the earthly kingdoms.  Here they’re walking in Caesarea Philippi.  This is a place where Philip the Great went back and reestablished this place to be a place of the kingdom of the world.  It was like Rome wanted to show how amazing they were.  He made a little Caesarea and he dominated and wanted everyone to know that this was the center of the kingdoms of this world.

And in the middle of this kingdom of the world, a place that Rome had its fingerprint, Jesus started whispering his questions, whispered his secrets.  On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”  They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”   The secret revolves around “Who do you say that I am?”  If Jesus were to whisper that to you, I’m wondering how you might answer him.  In the reading of the gospel of Mark, we should know who Jesus is.  That’s actually not a secret to us.  Mark 1:1 says:  The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.”   He comes right out of the gate and says this is Jesus, He’s Messiah, he’s the Christos, the Anointed One, the One who is to come.  We should know who Jesus is when we come to this question.

As you can see by the way the disciples answer him, there are lots of rumors around of who Jesus is.  The crowds have rumors; they’re saying, “This guy is pretty cool!  He’ll heal you.  Maybe we should check it out.”  They’re trying to figure out where his power and authority come from.  The rumors are spreading and they’re trying to figure it out.  Even the political leaders and the religious leaders are trying to figure it out.  They don’t know who He is.  They don’t know where His power is coming from.  Many are accusing him of having demonic powers.  A couple weeks ago, Josh talked about even Jesus’s family hadn’t a clue.  He wasn’t even received in his hometown.  And now his disciples don’t have a clue either.  Earlier, in verses 17-19……Do you still not see or understand?  Are your hearts hardened?  Do you haves eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?  And don’t you remember? (v 21) Do you still not understand?  They’re suppose to understand the secret, but they don’t get it.

Jesus takes it a step further and says okay, that’s who people say I am, but he turns to his disciples and says:  “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”  Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”    Hooray!  He finally gets it!  The mystery is revealed.  Peter, one of the disciples, finally gets it!  We’ve reached this point in the middle, in the hinge passage in the gospel of Mark where they get it.  Jesus says, “That’s not the only part of my secret.  There’s more.”  It’s not just that Jesus is Savior, or the Anointed One come to save, but he begins to speak to them plainly it says:   then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.  He spoke plainly about this.

THIS is the secret:  Jesus is the suffering Savior.  Maybe you need to hear that today.  That’s a seed of the secret of the kingdom of God.  That Jesus is not the kind of God that comes blaring and blasting in and says, “You need to believe me.  You need to do XYZ.  You need to follow the rules and somehow make your way to figure out how to be good enough to reach me.”  Instead, Jesus WILLINGLY, voluntarily, comes and says, “I’m going to come to you.”  I’m going to suffer, be rejected.  I’m going to experience the pain and the agony, the suffering, the grief.  Maybe your soul needs to be reminded of that secret today.

Sometimes we don’t want to resonate with a Suffering Savior.  Imagine if you were in a dire situation (an accident) and somebody comes to save you, to help you, to rescue you, and they come bloody, and beaten, and frail, pierced.  Does that look like someone who could save?  I don’t know if I’d have a whole lot of confidence if my EMT has a bloody nose and is keeling over and suffering himself.

This was difficult for Peter as well.  With his Jewish lens, he didn’t want to receive a Suffering Savior.  In fact, that was very unexpected.  When Jesus was talking that the kingdom was near and that he was going to reestablish himself, Peter’s like yeah, I’m in!  Let’s reestablish this kingdom.  Let’s set up our power and authority and let’s take back what is good!  Let’s set the prisoners and captives free and the oppressed.  Let’s make and set up a new kingdom.  He didn’t want to hear that Jesus was coming to suffer.  Of course, he responds very adamantly.  Peter took aside and began to rebuke him.    This is a very strong word.  He’s correcting Jesus.  Saying that’s not a true secret.  No, no, no, no, no.  This word rebuke is ‘to forbid.’  No, I forbid you from saying that you’re going to suffer.  No, you’re the King of kings.  You’re the Messiah.  That doesn’t make any sense.  Wait!  What???

How often in our lives do we want to do the same thing to Jesus.  When our lives are going on and we hit a moment and we think, “Wait….what???”  You want my story to include WHAT??  Maybe it’s a health diagnosis that you never saw coming, and Jesus changes your story.  Maybe it’s difficulty in your relationship and it’s a divorce that you’re looking at.  Maybe it’s those places that you don’t want to go, like finances.  Maybe your life has taken a transition and it’s not gone the way you expected it to go.  Or even in your journey with God and you’re hitting a wall and He’s silent for you, and you think, “Wait….what?? No, I forbid it!  I don’t want this in my life!”  I think sometimes our rebuke comes in the form of anger or frustration.  Sometimes it comes in the form of resistance—No way, Jesus, I’m not going there.  Sometimes it comes in avoidance.

I think sometimes we do the exact same thing like Peter does and we want to say, “No, Jesus, this isn’t my story.”   We start to listen to a different kind of whisper.  A whisper that says, “Did God really say that you have to go through this?”  Did God REALLY say that this is going to be your new story.  That whisper started a long time before this moment.  Because that whisper originates from the pit of hell.  Satan himself is the one who said, “Did God really say not to eat of the tree?”  That whisper has been over and over in many of our stories.  I think this was what Peter was whispering and Jesus saw straight through it.  John Mark says it this way:  But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter.  “Get behind me, Satan!” he said.  “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”  Peter is listening to the lie of the enemy and in this moment, Jesus pulls back the curtain and says THIS is a war, and it is not between Jesus and Peter.  It is a war between Jesus and Satan.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12) 

In this moment as Jesus turns to Peter, Jesus is calling him out.   I love how Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn puts it:  “The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every human.”  Peter has just gotten it right.  He said, “Jesus, you’re the Messiah.  I get it!  We’re in!  I’m going to follow you!”  Then he says, “No way!  I’m not going to follow you.  Did God really say you had to suffer?  No way!”  He is tangled in between his story of good and evil.  I think this is where we often stand.  Sometimes when Jesus turns to us and he shows us and reveals to us those places that we’re listening to the whispers of the evil one, we think, “That’s painful! Ouch! That helps.”  Maybe, just maybe, Jesus wants us to be released from those places that we’re believing the lies.  It’s not that we’re a victim of Jesus’s confrontation, but it’s that we are a participant in his life.

Jesus keeps going on because he wants people to understand what this invitation is, the invitation from the Suffering Savior.  So he not only grabs his disciples, he grabs the crowds.  This is so important that he wants more people to know.    called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple {Whoever wants to participate in this journey and even in the struggle.} must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”    This is the cornerstone of discipleship.  Volumes have been written on this, and I am not going to be bold enough to speak much about it, but I do think that some of us need to hear that the secret invitation from the Suffering Savior is to voluntarily surrender in solidarity with Jesus.

This invitation is a voluntary action.  That means that we are free to decide that we can surrender.  That’s like the most free thing that we can do….that we get to volunteer ourselves and say yes to God.  The type of yes that Jesus wants and is inviting is a yes to surrender.  It’s like bowing down before a king and we have no idea what he’s going to do to us, and if we bow down our head, he just might slice off our head.  Or we can trust that he’s good and that he will bless us for surrendering to him.  This invitation is solidarity.  I love this word because it’s ‘union.’  It’s we’re in this together.  Union with Jesus, the Suffering Savior.  So we voluntarily surrender in solidarity with Jesus.

Sometimes this also doesn’t resonate with us and we really want to push back on this type of full life, voluntary surrender.  That’s because we’re in the middle of the tension between good and evil.  Jesus’s heart is so for us in this instance.  Where he says if you want to actually save your life, you’ll lose it.  If you’ll lose your life, you’ll save it.  He wants to give us hope in this, but sometimes we wrestle with what this really means.  On top of that, in our Christian world, sometimes we misapply what Jesus means by this.  Have you ever heard someone say that they’re denying themselves, and they say, “I don’t want to be selfish by asking people for what I need.”  Maybe you’ve heard somebody say, “Well, I don’t really want to be prideful and put my gifts out there.”  I think those are ways we’ve misapplied denying ourselves.  Jesus never said that we’re to deny the goodness inside of us.  He has created us in his image—We are fearfully and wonderfully made.  We have a God-given calling.  It says in Ephesians 2:10 that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.  If Jesus were to deny the goodness in Him and His God-given calling, we would never have the cross.  So we don’t deny ourselves anything that is good, we actually offer ourselves.  That’s part of it.  It’s not sacrifice out of ‘I want you to pity me….oh, I’m denying myself.’  Or to get accolades or self-advancement.  Sometimes we do that; we think we’re following Jesus, but it’s really about us.  It’s about me feeling like a good Christian.

No.  Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, and even he, as Creator of the universe, said, “This is tough. Can you just take this away?”  God, I don’t want to go through with this suffering.  In his flesh, he was crying out, but he said, “Not my will, but yours be done.”  This is denying self.  It’s saying, “It’s not my way.  It’s your way, God.”  And your way is to deny the tangle of the evil within me.  If I deny that—the sin that so easily entangles me—I can set it aside and run and flourish in the way of Jesus.  If I deny that I’m shortsighted.  I’m only human and I have a limited capacity.  I need to trust in God and align with his ways.  I need to say, “God, I don’t know the full picture, but you do.”  I can deny that I know the way.  It’s a voluntary, self sacrifice.  This word deny is kind of self-forgetfulness or forgetting.  It’s like whatever is in front of me is so much more important than my thing and my self that I’m almost forgetting myself so that I can move toward what is good and love a God who loves me.

I think we do the same thing when it comes to this metaphor of taking up our cross.  We deny ourselves and let something go in order to take up the cross.  Sometimes we do the same thing with this metaphor of the cross, because we look on Jesus and we see that this is a heavy weight, it’s a burden.  It’s a hardship.  He’s suffering.  He’s going through total rejection and pain and agony.  Sometimes we think that our burden needs to feel like pain and agony, and it needs to feel like condemnation.  Sometimes, for the reason of being good Christians and good disciples of Jesus, we get weighed down by shame and hardship, and the enemy’s lies of condemnation.  That is not what Jesus says.  In Romans 8:1, it says:  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  The carrying of our cross should not be the type of weight that oppresses.  Jesus was obeying his Father and he was obeying with the strength of the Spirit within him.

Taking up our cross is not suffering under condemnation.  It’s also not taking up somebody else’s burden.  How often do we do that?  We think,  “Oh, this is life.  This is hard.  I’m going to be a good Christian and help you carry your burden,” but then it starts to push us down.  Sometimes I think we carry burdens that are not ours to carry.  Not that we don’t carry other people’s burdens, I think we do, but sometimes it’s not what God’s called us to take up.  Sometimes we make that kind of hardship an excuse to not do what God is really asking us to do.

I have a dear friend, who I worked with on the mission field, who was going through a period where she was under this kind of weight, and shame, and pain, and oppression.  She said it was her cross to carry.  She started reading The Voices of the Martyrs and she was finding solace and solidarity with them.  What she really needed to do was deny her fear that she might have something chemically wrong in her body.  She was so afraid by being embarrassed by having her story be one of mental illness that she continued to hold under the weight of the pain, instead of denying the things that were inside of her that stopped her from saying, “Yes, God, I will embrace a new story.  It might be embarrassing and difficult, but I will take that up for you and your kingdom.”

I can’t tell you what you need to deny and what you need to take up, because it’s different in everyone’s story.  Of course we want to deny those things—the sin that easily entangles us—and we need to choose the way of Jesus.  Sometimes we’re in situations where two people are in the exact situation and it’s different for them.  They may be in a situation where the work environment is not fulfilling, not satisfying and they don’t know what to do.  One person may need to stop fearing that God won’t provide if they step out and step into their calling.  Maybe you need to trust that he will provide financially and He will carry you even though you don’t know what’s ahead.  The other person might need to die to their unforgiveness, their struggles with their boss.  Maybe they need to sharpen their character as they love the people in their working environment.  God will turn that around to have them be a witness within their workplace.

So for everyone of you I can’t tell you what you need to deny and what you need to take up, but I can tell you that the secret of the Jesus way is to endure this kind of hardship with purpose.  Suffering with hope.  Using Jesus’s strength to sustain you as you obey his call to voluntarily surrender in solidarity with Him.  Maybe you need to hear today that you need to re-up your commitment to surrender your life, to give it up freely to the Lord.  Oftentimes, right before Easter, we take part in a journey called Lent.  This is a good way to actually strengthen our solidarity with Him, to recommit to voluntarily give our lives to Him, by setting aside some things that we’re intentionally denying in order that we might take up the banner of Christ yet again.

We know there are people throughout church history who have done this very thing.  They’ve denied themselves and taken up their cross, even to the point of their death.  I think about the Apostle Paul as he’s saying, “I count it all joy to take up my cross, to endure hardship and pain.”  I was reading The Seeds of the Martyrs last week and these two women stood out to me—-Perpetua and Felicity.  They had just given birth.  Even though they could have chosen saving their babies and raising them and being wonderful mothers, they said, “Yes, I am a Christian,” and were sentenced to the stadium where they were attacked by wild boars and speared to death by gladiators, in the name of Christ.  We have this happening all over our world, whether it’s a Columbine shooting, execution in the Middle East, or globally, believers who are saying, “Yes, I believe,” and becoming martyred.  That word means to witness for the sake of the gospel.  How in the world do you get that kind of resolve to fully surrender, voluntarily surrender, even to the point of death?

I wondered, “Jesus, why are you making me talk about suffering?”  I can look out and see that many of you have experienced and walked some heavy roads.  I’m thinking, “How do I get that kind of resolve to walk like the people here at South and those that have gone before me?”  I think, “Yes, it is voluntary surrender to the way of Jesus, but there’s another secret that if we miss we might just crush under the weight of condemnation.”  That secret is that there is glory on the other side of our pain.  John Mark does not stop with you just need to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.  He keeps going as we see as we begin Mark 9 — After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone.  There he was transfigured before them.  His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.  And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.   {This interaction of the heavenly realms coming to the earth.}  (verse 7) Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love.  Listen to him!”  Jesus showed off his glory.  This was not the end, it was a promise of what was to come.  A promise that there would be a hope of glory on the other said.  I love how Paul says it, that Christ in us is the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27)  This is one of the secrets that maybe today your heart needs to be reminded of.  Glory is on the other side of the pain.  The pain is temporary and the glory will be eternal.  THIS is what we look forward to, and this is why we’re willing to voluntarily surrender our lives because THAT is the way that we save our souls.  We can’t gain anything in this world, whether it is power and wealth, or influence….none of that will save our soul, but trusting that these secrets and mysteries of the kingdom will ground us, will anchor us, in the time of storm.

One of the best practices we can do as believers and followers of Jesus is to be strengthened by the practice of communion.  This is a practice where we’re claiming in our hearts and receiving elements (bread and juice) in our bodies and saying, “Jesus, we want these mysteries of the kingdom to become so integrated inside of us, just like bread and juice, that they might flow out of us.”  I think this practice of communion would be a practice that can remind us of the solidarity that we have with Jesus.  As you come and receive these elements, maybe you’re receiving the fact that Jesus is the Suffering Savior, that He’s close to the brokenhearted because he knows your pain.  Maybe the secret you need to treasure as you receive communion is that this is a recommitment to voluntarily give up and surrender our whole lives in solidarity with Jesus, knowing that we’re doing it with Him, not alone.  Maybe you need to be reminded that there’s glory on the other side of the pain, and that you can go through this pain knowing that it is temporary and that glory is what Jesus bought for you.  He victoriously rose from the dead to purchase that victory so that you can say, “It is well with my soul.”

{Communion commences}

AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?   Mark 7   Pastor Larry Boatright     (2nd Service)

{Manuscript—View video for complete content.}  Ladies, I have something I need to tell those of you who are currently in a relationship or hope to be in a relationship with a handsome fella. It might be hard to hear, but I need you to hear it:  MEN ARE GROSS SOMETIMES!!  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been eating at a restaurant and need to go to the restroom.  So I go in and do my business, and then wash my hands.

And I can’t tell you how many times someone was in the urinal next to me, and while I washed my hands,  they finished their business, flushed, walked towards the sink, and walked right passed it, and grabbed the door handle and went back to their table.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been washing my hands when I hear a toilet flush, the stall door opens—and you know what happens in the stall—and I see a man walk out of the stall toward the sink, only to walk right passed it, and go to the door and HEAD BACK TO THE TABLE!!!  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to follow him out of the restroom to his table and tell his lady, “HE DIDN’T WASH HIS HANDS!!” I mean, you deserve to know, right??  I was telling a friend about this the other day, and she said, “It’s not just guys, plenty of women do that too.”

Now let me ask you a question: does not washing your hands after using the restroom and then eating somehow make you a bad person unworthy of God’s love?  It might make you sick, but Jesus definitely still loves you… although I’m sure he would be a big fan of you washing your hands before you eat!  Turn in your Bibles to Mark 7.   Today we’re going to see a story where a group of people have a huge amount of rules they follow in order to keep themselves acceptable and pure before God, including rules around hand washing and dinner, and, in the process, they miss God completely.  If we’re honest, all of us have taken on certain practices and rules and behaviors to feel like we measure up.  If we’re really honest, chances are those things don’t make us feel closer to God at all, in fact, often, they leave us empty and exhausted.

We’ve been in a series called And Then What Happened?  We’ve been going a chapter or so at a time through the Gospel of Mark, studying the life of Jesus.  Our hope has been to learn more about: Who Jesus is, what Jesus does, and what Jesus invites us into.  Really, we want to see how Jesus shows us the heart of God by His teaching, His character and His actions, and we want to let that inform how we think and act as we seek to live in His way, with His heart.

In this series, we’ve seen a lot of pretty incredible things so far.  Jesus has healed lots of people of all kinds of things.  He’s cast out impure spirits/demons. He’s frequently challenged the religious establishment.  He calls His disciples and trains them as they journeyed together.  In Mark 6, we see that Jesus feeds the multitudes.  Jesus travels all over, preaching the good news, including going to places good religious folk would never go.

And so, as Jesus travels, he’s teaching and healing and casting out impure spirits, and large crowds begin to form.  By the time we get to Mark 7, Jesus is a bit like a modern day celebrity, in that he drew a crowd everywhere he went and he struggled to get away for some peace and quiet.  His reputation precedes him.  People hear about him, they see him, they see what he does, and by the end of Mark 6, people were so convinced he was a healer that they were bringing their friends to him.  They didn’t even have the expectation that he must ‘say something’ to heal, they thought, “If we could just take our friend to him and touch his garment, we’ll be healed.”  That’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?

The bottom line is that we see Him bringing God’s goodness everywhere He went.  As Jesus’ popularity with the common people increased and crowds grew, the Pharisees and teachers of the law became increasingly agitated and confronted Him regularly.  And as we’ve seen earlier in the book of Mark, there’s a pattern here where the Pharisees confront Jesus because He or His disciples didn’t behave in a way they deemed appropriate.  He didn’t interpret the law the way that they did.  And Jesus, instead of being intimidated by that, leverages it as an opportunity to teach the proper way to think about subject X.  He also demonstrates God’s heart for the people.  He didn’t just talk about God’s heart, he didn’t just quote Scriptures, he didn’t just give rules and regulations, He demonstrated the heart of God.

Mark 7 starts with Pharisees and teachers of the law coming down from Jerusalem to once again observe Jesus, looking for faults.  I’m imagining they went into the restroom to wash, and they noticed Jesus’ disciples using the bathroom and not washing their hands, and then returning to the table.  And unlike me, who never followed someone to the table, they went to the table of Jesus and essentially said, “Why don’t your disciples follow the rules we have established instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”  See, the law dictated that priests must follow a very specific set of rules to come before God and be considered clean and pure.  As you might know, God had tasked Israel with being a light in the world, and tasked them with representing God well as a pure and holy nation. As you might also know, Israel had a rather checkered past, and frequently drifted from God’s best for them.  And so a few centuries before this encounter with Jesus, a group of religious leaders thought, “If doing all of these rules made the priests pure and holy before God, why don’t we have everyone follow all of these rules so we can ensure the nation is pure and holy before God!”  In addition, they came up with hundreds of other rules that would help them to do what God asked them to do.  Listen, in some ways, I can understand that—let’s put guardrails in place, parameters to ensure we walk in a way worthy of being called God’s own.  It’s like having a rule that says, “Thou shalt not lust after a woman.”  A good rule, indeed, but then adding ten other rules about how to walk and what angle your eyes should be, and then adding rules to women about how they should dress and so on and so forth, in order to prevent you from breaking God’s law.

You can see a clear picture of this even today by going to some parts of the Middle East.  And if you’ve ever been a part of a legalistic tradition, you know all of the additional rules can be impossible to keep up with, and can actually keep you from connecting with the God you so desperately want to and need to connect with.

So the Pharisees challenge Jesus about His disciples, not because of the disciples’ hygiene, but because the disciples didn’t ceremoniously wash their hands.  They didn’t follow the man-made rules in the way the Pharisees deemed acceptable.  Get the picture?  Let’s pick it up in v 6:  He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:  “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’  You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”    Ouch!  That would not be fun to hear, right?

He called them hypocrites.  They’re actors, mask-wearers.  They put on the illusion of having it all-together, doing all the right things.  We see stories in the Scriptures of people standing on the street corners and loudly praying and giving their money as a tithe and all these sorts of things to externally look really good.  Maybe some of them legitimately thought the things that were doing caused them to be pure.  But Jesus said that their hearts were far from Him.  He said their worship was in vain and their teaching was merely human rules.  I can only imagine how much that must have agitated the Pharisees and teachers of the law!

Jesus goes on to give an example of how they would claim money they should give to their parents they actually intended to give to God, so they wouldn’t have to take care of their parents, and justify it as if it were God’s law.  Jesus reminded them of the command to honor your father and mother.  He said, “You created these rules as a way to get out of following the words of God himself.”  Why was Jesus so worked up about this?  I want you to pay close attention, because I think you can be so focused on following rules and regulations that make you appear to be pure before God and completely miss having a real relationship with God.  That’s kind of scary. But you can do all the right things—you can go to church all the time, you can go to all the Bible studies, you can pray the prayers and do all that stuff.  It reminds of the Scriptures where people said, “Lord, we cast out demons in your name.  We healed in your name.”  And Jesus said that’s really nice and all, but we never hung out.  I didn’t even know you.  The thing is, living in a system like that ALWAYS puts yourself and sometimes others in bondage and dehumanizes people, but worst of all, completely misses the HEART of GOD.

I know so many people who have focused on sin avoidance in their lives.  They’re like I don’t have a problem with X so I’m going to do everything I can to walk away from that.  Their lives are a series of don’ts—I’m not going to do this, I’m not going to do this, I’m not going to do this.   I’ve said this before: Don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t smoke, don’t chew, and don’t hang out with those who do.  Then it’s a life that’s a slave to what not to do.  It’s one thing to say all the right things, to do all the right things, to do your best to live in the way of Jesus, but as Rodney Pennington pointed out so helpfully a few months ago, you can do all these things to emulate living in the way of Jesus, but you can’t fake living with the heart of Jesus.

The Pharisees taught a faith of rules and regulations—you just do this and measure up, you do this and stay pure—and so they confronted Jesus about why His disciples didn’t live by all of those rules.  And so, Jesus called them out on it and reframed the message for the crowd and then his disciples in a way that shaped an understanding of rules that surrendered to a relationship with the Savior.  See, the Pharisees wanted a faith that was clean, that avoided dirt and being associated with the wrong kind of people, so they avoided people, they avoided going to places where people they considered dirty were, they weren’t willing to get dirty in order to help people have a relationship with God.  And so, in their system, God’s heart for human contact was completely lost.  I think it’s important that we know that in God’s economy, relationship is greater than rules.  The Scriptures point us to a relationship with God, but when we add all these peripheral things to it, rules become more important than relationship.

The Pharisees believed that external things defiled them—that is, kept them from being pure before God—so they engaged in a religious system that focused on avoidance.  But Jesus flipped that thinking on its head.  Look at v 14:  Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this.  Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”

This was completely against what the Pharisees taught with all of their extra rules.  They thought if they just avoided coming into contact with unclean things, they would remain clean.  But Jesus said no, no, no. You have all of these rules and avoid all of these things, but your HEARTS are unclean—dead as a doornail.  At one point, he called them whitewashed tombs—you look good on the outside but the inside still smells like death.  He said it was what comes out of the heart that makes someone defiled.

Verse 20 — He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. {Then he gives a list of what defiles us.  The external things that are happening as a result of a corrupt heart.} For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”  Imagine living a life filled with rules trying to appear as good, pure people, and then this man gives this list of things (things the Pharisees would have wanted to avoid), and points out the fact that they come from the HEART—the core of a person, the inside, the seat of emotions, NOT from external things.  Now I know what you’re thinking, “Can’t external things impact your heart? The way you think?”  Absolutely. Some of us are so focused though on AVOIDING what we let in that we strip our lives of real human interaction, of meeting people where they are in fear others will corrupt us. Here’s what I want us to know: A corrupt heart is a heart that isn’t fully surrendered to the lordship of Jesus. I’m not talking there’s a gun to your head, you must surrender.  I’m talking about understanding who Jesus is and what he does and what he invites us to prompts a surrender.  It’s not a ‘you must surrender,’ although we should, it’s because of who Jesus is and because of what he does….    Surrender is an inevitable by-product of following whole-heartedly after Jesus.

Years ago in my early 20s, I was a good little Baptist boy and was doing lots of things trying to put my name out for the kingdom.  The thing is I was in a system that gave us a lot of rules.  I was very convicted about that because I constantly heard sermons about what not to do.  I thought, “You can’t listen to secular music.  You can’t watch R-rated movies.  You can’t go to Disney.”   I had these secular CD’s I really liked, but I felt so convicted that I thought, “I MUST get rid of these things.”  I had this plan that my buddy and I were going to go down this country road and get rid of the devil—these secular CD’s that were going to defile me.  We threw the CD’s on the road and shattered them….not thinking about the fact that in my effort to run to Jesus, I was littering all over the countryside.   But, within a couple of weeks, I was going, “I really like Nirvana,” so I’d go to Walmart and buy the CD all over again.  And go through that cycle and litter again in an effort to purge my life.  Fast forward three or four years—I ended up going on staff at a church where this guy listened to secular music by pagans such as U2 and Cold Play and the Beatles.  He sometimes watched R-rated movies and every now and then he had a beer.   For me, good little Baptist boy trying to please the Lord, I’m going, “Holy cow, you can’t be doing that and walk with Jesus.”  What confounded my brain was that he seemed to love Jesus way more than I did.  He was deeply connected to the Spirit of God.  That was a big turning point in my life.  I thought, “This doesn’t compute because I’m doing all the rules and I don’t feel I’m connected to God, and here’s this person who’s doing these things I was told I was not allowed to do and he’s connecting with God deeply.”  He’s an amazing person.

Listen.  Hear me, I’m not advocating for you to go break all of the rules.  The Apostle Paul told us that although we CAN do lots of things, it doesn’t mean we SHOULD.  Remember, the Isaiah passage Jesus quotes said the people did all of the right things, but their hearts were far from God.  Jesus is showing us by his words that we can play the part, we can go through the motions, but our hearts absolutely can be far from God.  This is the contrast we see between Jesus and the Pharisees.  I love that we see in the beginning of the chapter who Jesus is and what he does and so much about the heart of God.  I would be shocked if when we took an honest look at our lives, that most of us in here didn’t fall victim to that other way of thinking at some point in our life.

The list of things he gave that came out of a defiled heart, I would guess that most of us could spot one, two or three things on that list that come up on a regular basis.  If so, consider that maybe, just maybe, you have a heart that’s not fully surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus.  That’s the whole issue… you can externally look good, but still have a heart that is far from God.

How do we make sure we have a heart that is fully surrendered to the heart of Jesus? I think Paul, in Galatians 5, kind of gives the answer.  Paul’s a theological rockstar and in verse 16 of Galatians 5, he says:   So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.   The flesh seeks outward approval…seeks to look right, to say the right things.

And Paul gives a list of acts of the flesh—the corrupt heart—that look very similar to the list Jesus gave.  But Paul also goes on to say that if we’re led by the spirit, we’re not under the law.  And then he explains what it looks like to be clean from the inside out—to live a life surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus.  Look at what He says in Galatians 5 starting in verse 22—But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.  There are laws against ‘don’t do this and don’t do this’ and there are man-made laws, but against THOSE things, there is no law.  It’s like eating your vegetables—eat as many as you can stand.  It’s not bad for you, do it.  Against love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, all of that, there is no law.   And in verse 25, Paul tells us to keep in step with the Spirit.  That’s how we have a heart that’s surrendered to Him, that’s fully His.  If we do that, the Spirit will produce that fruit.  If you’re asking yourself, “Am I connected to the Lord?” well, the question you probably should be asking is “Do I see the fruit of the Spirit in my life?”  If you don’t, there’s probably parts of your heart you have yet to surrender to the lordship of Jesus.

So the Pharisees contended that being unclean came from external things, but Jesus showed that a life of doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things apart from being connected to the Spirit of God is what defiled.

So Jesus confronted their thinking and corrected it, teaching about the heart of God, but as Jesus does time and time again, He then demonstrated what He was talking about.

Then the story shifts a bit; Jesus left and went north to get away, up to a place called Tyre, which was a city way up on the Mediterranean Sea coast.  I have to tell you what, after all the snow we’ve had, the Mediterranean Sea (or any kind of ocean with a beach) sounds heavenly, doesn’t it?  Here’s the thing….Tyre was well known as a pagan area, not a God-following area, and definitely an area Pharisees wouldn’t be caught in.  Why? You guessed it, because they didn’t want to become unclean by stepping on such ungodly soil.  I think it’s really interesting that Mark, after taking us through the first narrative in this chapter, has Jesus going right into a place that was unclean.  He goes into a house to get away, but he was known in that area.  He had been there before and healed lots of people and cast out impure spirits.  So a woman boldly comes to the house who was a gentile (Syrophoenician).   She so strongly believes Jesus can heal that she persists in asking him to cast an impure spirit out of her daughter (who’s not even there) and Jesus relents and does it.  What we’re learning here is that

Jesus shows us the heart of God.  He goes to an area most people wouldn’t go, and serves someone most people wouldn’t serve.  And as we see time and time again, He responds to the faith of this woman by restoring her daughter to wholeness.

But what I want to do with the rest of our time is to look at the last account in Mark 7, which I think is an absolutely beautiful contrast to the Pharisees and their way of thinking at the beginning of the chapter. And here, I think we see an incredible picture of the heart of God on display which really shows us what his teaching from earlier really means.  Verse 31 — Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis.  I don’t want you to miss this….Jesus went to the Decapolis, the region of the ten cities southeast of Tyre.  Yet He took a really circuitous route to get there, because he went up to Sidon, which was on the coast another twenty miles or so north of Tyre, before He went down to the Decapolis?   Why did he take that route?  I don’t know.  He most definitely went through an area that the Pharisees believed was unclean, filled with Gentiles.   Maybe it was a foreshadowing of what Paul says is the mystery of the Gospel:  that the gentiles were also recipients of the Gospel and not just the Jews.  Jesus is going and healing people and bringing wholeness to people that the Pharisees thought were ‘out,’ us versus them.  In versus out.  Jesus is modeling that he’s for everyone.  To the point that this woman comes to him, who is gentile, and he uses this illustration about the dogs and the children.  But this woman says, “I understand that Israel is suppose to receive the gospel first and then the rest of us, but I tell you what, I’m okay just getting scraps, because at least the dogs under the table get to eat at the same time as the children do.”  She was relentless.  He marveled at her faith and he healed her daughter.

He goes up through Sidon and then southeastward  to the Sea of Galilee, and here is the most beautiful part of the chapter, in my eyes:  There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.   The Pharisees had dead hearts, think about it.  God gave rules to help them stay pure.  They made up additional rules to help them stay pure.  God came in the flesh to them and didn’t abide by their rules.  They judged God harshly for not abiding by their rules.  Again, they were so focused on rules that they missed God Incarnate right in front of their eyes.  Yet these people in this area—the gentiles, unclean—had seen with their eyes and heard with their ears exactly what the Pharisees did, and yet they had faith.  If we can honestly take a look at who Jesus is and what He does, surrender of our hearts is easy because it’s a natural overflow of seeing Jesus for who He is.

Imagine having friends who loved you so much, or even were just people so full of faith that they would bring you to the feet of Jesus.  See, they so believed Jesus could heal, that they brought this man to Jesus. The man had become deaf, and he had a speech impediment so severe he couldn’t be understood.  Imagine what a low quality of life that man must have felt.  Imagine how people might have treated him.  Imagine being frowned at, yelled at, maybe hit, mistreated, a host of other things.  That man would have been labeled and blamed by the religious establishment—his sin, maybe his parent’s sin, had caused this.  The Pharisees would NEVER touch a man like this.  Yet the story becomes very intimate here, and we get such a marvelous glimpse of the heart of the Jesus we seek to be like.   After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue.   

The man is pushed through the crowds, his friends are taking him to Jesus, but Jesus could have spoken a word and healed this man.   But no, no, no, no, something different happens, something incredible happens.  Do not miss this!  This is the heart of the story.   Notice, Jesus ‘took him aside.’  I would bet that man had been taken aside many times for being in the way, taunted, teased, etc.   Yet in a deeply personal demonstration of who Jesus is and therefore, who God is and what God is like, he takes the man aside.  This verse has gripped me for weeks.  Thank God we have a Savior who is deeply personal, who pulls us aside, who meets us in our infirmities, who isn’t just out there, and cold, and distant, and judging, and who, unlike the Pharisees, gets dirty on our behalf.  Jesus put his fingers in the man’s ears.  He spit and touched the man’s tongue—spit on spit— deeply personal and intimate.  This was the epitome of doing something that, if you followed the Pharisee’s way of thinking, would make someone unclean.   But for Jesus, it was deeply, deeply personal.   For us as spectators, 2000 years later, it’s deeply, deeply beautiful.

Verse 34 — He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”).  At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.  Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it.  People were overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”    Jesus is in a gentile area, getting dirty, sharing spit, and I love how it says, “With a deep sigh.”  If you notice Jesus healing, quite often he expresses some kind of emotion.  It’s as if he is feeling the weight of the broken world we live in, feeling grief that his people are hurting so badly, so broken.

There were lots of so-called “magicians” who did all sorts of incantations in that area, made-up words to conjure up some kind of experience.  I believe Jesus demonstrated surrender to God here, but the transliteration of the word Ephphatha, a real word that means ‘be opened,’ wasn’t just made up words like the magicians.  I think this is Mark’s way of showing this was a real word uttered by a real God leading to a real healing.

No doubt, readers of Mark’s gospel would think of the words in Isaiah 35:3-5 —  Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution, he will come to save you.”  Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.  Hundreds of years before Jesus came, Isaiah shows us what the kingdom of God looks like.  He shows us Jesus’s divine agenda.  Then Jesus shows up on the scene and goes to the most unlikely of places and heals the most unlikely of persons, exactly as it says it Isaiah 35:5.  The crowd seemed very surprised and delighted that Jesus healed him. This is such a beautiful  picture of the heart of God. Jesus pulled him aside—out of the crowd.  He could have just spoke a word or they could have just touched his garment.  No, Jesus got down and dirty with this guy.  He touched him, he spit, he shared saliva.  Touch was so important because the man couldn’t hear words of healing.  His friends brought him to the Savior and Jesus went beyond words to touch and beyond that to deeply personal, deep intimacy in sharing his saliva.

In Mark 7 we see this crazy contrast where the first part is the Pharisees with their rules and regulations, trying to help them look pure, to appear to be righteous.  I’ve been thinking of words that describe the encounter with the Pharisees:  Rules.  Regulations.  Oppression.  Stress.  Emptiness.  Bondage.  Corrupt Hearts.  I don’t know about you, but I feel stressed just looking at those words.  That’s the way of man-made rules and regulations.  That does not reflect the heart of the Father.  But I’ve also spent time thinking of words that describe Jesus’ encounter with this man.  So, the way of the Pharisees and the way of Jesus.  Ear.  Tongue.  Dirt.  Spit. Touch. Intimacy.  Compassion.  Freedom.  Look at those words.  They’re very earthy, aren’t they?  They’re very human.  They’re very relational.  Remember, earlier I said relationship is greater than rules, and Jesus modeled this so incredibly well.  I guess the question I would ask is which set of words more closely resonates with the type of king and God that you want to serve?

I’d like you to listen to me….if you’re here this morning and you believe that you’re unlovable, that what you’ve done keeps God at bay, that you’re not worthy of the love and affection of Jesus, you need to know that Jesus, just like he did in going to Tyre and Sidon and down to the Decapolis, goes out of his way to meet you. He is ready and willing to forgive you, to meet with you, and so much more.  If you’re here this morning and you’re trapped in trying to do all kinds of things to “measure up” and you realize your heart isn’t with Him.  Maybe you’ve gone through all the motions, but you realize your heart isn’t fully surrendered to the lordship of Jesus.

You just need to know that you can simply run to the heart of the Father and let go of those things, and just have a real relationship with the One who spoke all things into existence.

You might be here this morning and you have a friend or a spouse or a family member that desperately needs an encounter with Jesus.  Maybe their heart is hardened, maybe their heart is broken, maybe they’ve given up asking Jesus to bring them freedom.  The Scriptures over and over honor the faith of those who bring their friends to Christ.  I just want to say whether that’s your spouse or friend or family member, DO NOT GIVE UP!!  I plead with you!  Continue to bring them to the feet of Jesus, and like that Syrophoenician woman, go to the arms of God and say, “I beg you for the table scraps on behalf of my friend!”  DON’T GIVE UP.

And finally, you might be here this morning and desperately need Jesus to heal you and set you free.  Jesus still heals today.  This isn’t just some account we read in lifeless pages made from wood.  This is the story of the Living God intersecting with humanity and He still intersects with humanity TODAY!  You might be here and you need to be set free, whether it’s something physical, or it’s a broken marriage or a relationship, or patterns of thinking you can’t seem to get free from, or you can’t seem to walk away from emotional bondage.  I want you to know that myself and our elders would count it all joy to pray that Jesus would meet you in your brokenness and ask Him to free you and heal you.  I don’t know how he chooses to do that.  Sometimes it’s instant and miraculous, or through the work of a doctor or a therapist, or whatever His good plan is.

The last thing we see in Mark 7 is that the people marveled at what they saw and said, “He does all things well.”

The Pharisees judged things that people didn’t do well. They tried to do things well, according to their tradition, but their heart was not in step with the Spirit.  But rest assured, Jesus does all things well.  Listen, Jesus does all things well. He shows us what God is like well.  He goes beyond man-made boundaries and expectations to come to us.  He pulls us aside and meets us where we are. He shows us exactly what He wants His Kingdom to look like.  People moving back to wholeness.  Relationships being moved back to wholeness, and ultimately, all of creation achieving shalom.  And humans living out the fruit of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  That is the way of Jesus and Jesus gets what He wants.

And I have no doubt that He is here, He is in charge, that this kingdom is breaking forth in this room, in this moment, and in this city that God has strategically placed us in, and around the world.  In all of creation the kingdom of God is breaking forth.  We get to be on board for the ride.

So my question is this:  What is Jesus asking you for?  Your money? Your Time? Your attention? Maybe.

But most importantly, He wants your heart, fully surrendered to Him.  All that other stuff will come.  Listen, surrender isn’t forcing you to do this thing, it’s a response to who Jesus is and what He does.  So remember,

it’s out of the heart that we connect with God, and it’s out of the heart in step with the Spirit that leads to transformation.

As we sing, would you bow your hearts before God, ask the Spirit of God to show you if any part of your heart isn’t fully surrendered to Jesus, and give it over to Jesus?

AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?  Mark 6:1-11  Pastor Josh Suddath  {1st Service}

{Manuscript—View video for complete content.}  On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee.  Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had been invited to the wedding also.  When the wine was gone, Jesus mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” “Dear woman, why do you involve me,” Jesus replied, “my hour has not yet come.”  Jesus mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you to do.”  Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.  Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water;” so they filled them to the brim.  Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”  They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned to wine.  He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who drew it out knew.  Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have all had to much to drink, but you have saved the best until now.”  This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee.  He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in Him.  (John 2:1-11)

I love this account in John’s gospel for two reasons.  First for what it says about Mary and her strength.  Mary was a young woman when she had Jesus, but she isn’t young anymore.  And like many of you in this room who have had children, Mary’s word to Jesus is, “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it.”  She knows the power he holds.  And when Jesus balks at his mother’s request for more wine, Mary forces the hand of God.

Secondly, I love this account for what it says about the servants. Given the opportunity to hear the voice of God, to do what He told them to do, and then to know where the wine came from. When they bring the wine to the master of the banquet, the text says, the master did not know where it had come from, but the servants who drew it out, they knew.  This was first of the Spirit’s public demonstrations of Jesus miracle working power.

And as we continue our series in Mark 6, a quick note about what we will cover today.  We’re only going to look at Mark 6:1-11. If you want, by all means, go ahead and read the other three stories in this chapter.  Let me sum them up for you.  Two of them involve a platter—one holding five loaves and two fish by which Jesus feeds five thousand, and the other holding the head of John the Baptist, by which an angry woman feeds her pride.  And then Jesus walks on water.

In Mark 6, we find Jesus returning to the place where he was raised, Nazareth, for the first time since his earthly ministry has started.  Nazareth is eight miles from where the wedding at Cana took place.  That’s from here to the Hogback.  When Jesus returned to Nazareth, it must’ve been midweek, because the text seems to indicate that there are a few days before the Sabbath came, which is Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown.  When the Sabbath comes, and people are off of work and going to the synagogue, when crowds would’ve been present, Jesus begins to teach.

And we can notice from the nature of the questions that follow, that something felt different to the people gathered.  “Where did this man get these things?” they asked.  “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing?”   Whether Jesus had made any small demonstrations there, or whether the wind had blown far enough that the Nazarenes had heard of Jesus miracles in other cities—we aren’t told what was said or what was done—but we’re told people recognized it as wisdom and remarkable and they were amazed.  And they recognized him right off the bat.   Isn’t this the carpenter?  Those were the hands of a blue-collared teenager from their town.  The hands that had fixed some of their stables and maybe even built a few of their dinner tables.

As they think back to Jesus’s teenaged years, they become a little bit agitated that this kid from their town would now speak to them with authority.  Several of them were probably much more thoroughly trained than He was, so they begin to mock him.  As they begin to mock him, they were faced with a dilemma.  They couldn’t seem to easily bring to mind a time when he screwed up as a teenager.  Nothing that every hurt anybody at least.  There wasn’t much to poke at.  So they do what anyone does who has no ammo—they went after his mom.  Isn’t this Mary’s son?  Certainly we’re told the full story with Mary, of the immaculate conception, and the virgin birth, but this text and others in scripture seem to indicate that people in that day either didn’t know or didn’t believe that part of the story.   They saw Jesus as the son of Joseph and Mary.  And they don’t even mention Joseph.  So this is an underhanded dig at Mary and at Jesus.  “Aren’t you the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon?  Aren’t your sisters right here?   They’re all pretty normal human beings.  What makes you any different?”  And Jesus, knowing their hearts, responds, not with thunder from heaven, but with a universal truth that pierces the hearts of the people gathered, and might just pierce ours.   A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives, and in his own home. 

 

And you and I wonder how in the world they could be so blind, deaf, and rude? This was the son of God they mocked.   And yet we’ve done the very same things him.   We’re the hometown.   Corporately and individually, we become inoculated by our culture and we’ve lost our sense of anticipation of seeing the Spirit work.  We’re the master of the banquet who doesn’t know where the wine has come from.  Or maybe we’re so drunk that we fail to see the Spirit moving.   Maybe that’s why the scriptures say don’t get drunk on wine, but rather be filled with the Spirit.  And when we mock Jesus in this way, we also often mock the ones in whom His spirit resides,   sometimes the people closest to us.

When was the last time someone close to you went away for a while?  Maybe for a year, maybe off to college, maybe just a mission trip or a retreat.  Here’s what may have happened.  They came home, and in the first few days of being home, they did something, or said something remarkable….something unexpected and something that proved some significant spiritual growth.  And you mocked them.  You didn’t do it intentionally.  It’s your default.  You’ve seen them screw it up so royally that when you see the Spirit do something amazing in them, at best you question it, and at worst you fail to see it altogether. We dismiss it and without knowing just what we’ve done, we’ve simultaneously preached a false gospel to our loved ones and we’ve given the enemy a foothold.

I know a young man who went away to college and this very thing happened.  God did something radical in him.  He came back and he looked different.  He had a zeal for Jesus that I hadn’t seen before.  He wanted to share with me some scriptures he was learning and excited about.  This was at the beginning of Christmas break.  And then what happened?  He hung out with his old friends from high school and some of his extended family members, and this zeal for Jesus wasn’t met with the same kind of encouragement that he had hoped for.  I saw the young man after Christmas break and he looked like he’d just gotten out of the ring.  He said, “I just don’t know what happened.”  He shared that the enemy had had a hey-day over his life over that break.

A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.  Sometimes without knowing it, the gospel that we’ve preached to those people we love the most is ‘something like that could never come from someone who’s screwed it up like you have.’  We’ve said to those closest to us, God chooses to use the strong things of the world, the ones who have it together, the pure, the wise, and the polished people.

And God says to us,  “I chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  I chose the lowly things of things and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are.”  Because if it was the other way around we’d beat our chests and show everyone the number on our jerseys, but if it’s this way, our only recourse is worship.  The next time the Spirit shows his work, show your worship.  When you see Him working, or moving, or speaking in someone you love, encourage it, pour gasoline on that fire.   Paul says it like this to the church in Thessalonica:  Don’t put out the Spirit’s fire.  Don’t treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all; hold on to what is good, rejecting all that is evil. (1 Thess. 5:19-21) 

In one of my favorite Jerry Seinfeld stand-up routines, he impersonates the flight attendant who stands at the barrier between first class and economy and gives you that look.  “If only you had worked a little harder.”

At first glance, this seems to be what Jesus is doing to his hometown of Nazareth.  The text says:  He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.  I think the verse, in and of itself, is kind of funny.  He couldn’t do any miracles there, except the ones he did.  This begs the question, could He do miracles there?  I bet half the people in this room would say, “Absolutely, He’s the Sovereign God of the universe.  He can do whatever he wants.”  He’s not limited by human beings.  The other half of this room might say, “No, the text said he couldn’t do any miracles there, so that must be what it means.  He was limited in some capacity, obviously.”  I wonder if it might not be a little bit of both.  Maybe he is limited but not by what we see in this verse.  Maybe he’s not limited just because of their lack of faith.  Maybe God’s limited in this moment with his hometown because He’s so committed to his character and to the unraveling of his kingdom, that when He’s presented with this moment of the lack of faith of the people He knows the best—He came to that which was his own and his own didn’t receive him.  He loves them so much that he withholds the full measure of his blessing and his healing in that moment because he knows he has something better for them.  Sometimes what looks to us like the judgment of God is actually his mercy.  So often we want mercy in the giving from God, but we get mercy in the withholding.  In Nazareth, Jesus withholds the full measure of his healings, and miracles in his hometown because knows it’s these “things” that the people are fixated on.  In a place where people are failing to see WHO it is behind the WHAT.  They proved it with their questions in the beginning of this text:  Where did this man get these things?    So, by withholding the full measure of his gifts, he’s giving Nazareth a chance to wrestle with the person they’ve just encountered.  That’s mercy. I wonder this morning, what is it that God is withholding from your life right now?  The thing that’s just eating away at you, and that He would have you wrestle with himself.

So Jesus’s time in Nazareth comes to an end and he moves on from village to village, meanwhile calling twelve disciples to himself, gives them authority and sends them out to do what he’s doing.   These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.  Wear sandals but not an extra shirt.  Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town.  And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.”  

While this seems like a list of directives to his disciples, Jesus is not giving a list of rules that will cause their mission to fail if broken.  He’s not giving a mandate that should be followed by all future missionaries.  He’s not calling all of his followers to a life of poverty.  He’s making a statement about his kingdom.  He’s using language that would’ve made his disciples scratch their heads and think, “Where have I heard that before?”   That’s right—the stories from Egypt.  Exodus 12:11 when God is instructing his people on how to observe the very first Passover meal in Egypt.  These were the directions.  This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand.  Eat it in haste.  Because the Israelites were about to go on a journey to a new land, new hope, and new life.  By using this language in Mark 6, Jesus is telling his disciples, “I’m inviting you and giving you authority and power to invite the people around you on a new kind of exodus.  A new journey into a new land with new life and new bread to eat…..and it’s me.”   In John 6:33, Jesus says:  For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

“Sir,”  they said, “always give us this bread!”  Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never go hungry.”   And in that moment, the Jews who were with Jesus did the same thing that the people in Nazareth did…they began to mock him.   Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he say, I came down from heaven?  All too often all we can see is humanity, when Jesus is showing us heaven.

Mark’s message is the same as John’s—God’s Spirit is at work, but there are some of you who just don’t see.  Quick note to those of you who may be in here this morning and you’re struggling to see or hear Jesus……get out.  I’m totally kidding!  Isn’t that what you hear from the church pretty often?  We see and you don’t; we know and you don’t; we get it and you don’t so if you’re not there, just get out.  Jesus would warn us to be careful if you think you stand, lest you fall.  The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know and right now you only see dimly through a glass.  There’s nobody sitting in this room that sees clearly.  If you’re here and you’re struggling to see God and hear from Him….lean in!  Ask.  Seek.  Knock.  Cry.  Get mad.  To be balanced, if you’re a person who’s pushing against the goads and you’ll have nothing to do with it, the truth should’ve been reaching out to you and they’ve been  extending their hand for a while.  Maybe you’ve taken what they give you because things are fun, but you don’t want to listen to anything else, don’t be surprised if the church moves on.  At least for a season.  Because there’s something in this passage from Jesus that seems to say to his disciples that if no one’s going to listen to you or welcome you, shake the dust from your feet and move on.  In other words, if it starts to rust, shake the dust!   If God is working in you and through you, don’t let the blindness and deafness of others slow you down.

Jesus’s statement to his disciples may have been part euphemism, but he may have actually wanted them to literally do it.  He may have been reminding them that the feet of those who bring the good news are actually quite beautiful.  Don’t miss the irony that Jesus chooses one of the ugliest parts about us to remind us how beautiful we are.

Jesus’s words to the servants at the wedding are his words to us.  Just fill the jars with water.  You’re the jar.  He’s the water.  And when we do, people around us will begin to ask the same questions they asked of Jesus,

“Where do these people get these things?”  You and I then have the opportunity to tell them where the wine came from.  But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God, and not from us.

One of these precious jars of clay, a friend of my family, passed away this week.  She was, as I observed from afar, a woman who lived a life expecting her Jesus to move and expecting him to speak.  Her name was Robin.  Robin lived 50+ years with down syndrome.  Somewhere along the line Robin developed a friendship with Joni Erickson-Tada through Joni’s work with the disabled community in her Joni and Friends summer camps.   The story goes that one of Joni Erickson Tada’s representatives called Robin after a few years of Robin attending their camps as a camper.  “Robin, we have an exciting opportunity for you.  This year we’d like you to be a counselor at Joni and Friends and lead other campers.  Is that something you’d like to do?”  The representative heard no immediate response.  Instead she recalled hearing the phone set down on the table on the other end of the line.  Then, in the background, she heard Robins’ voice, “Jesus, do you want me to be a counselor at Joni and Friends this summer?”  Then a pause. Then this.  “Sounds good, Jesus.”  And she picked up the phone and said “Jesus told me I’m in.”  Robin was a servant who knew where the wine came from.

Let’s pray.  Heavenly Father, I love that song—we came here with nothing, but all that you’ve given us, Jesus, bring new wine out of us.  Lord, we need you.  Fill us with your water.  In Christ’s name.  Amen.