Mark 9 - Part 3: The Other Kingdom

After Jesus explains that the kingdom of God is upside down, John, one of the inner circle, speaks up.  The disciples saw someone healing in Jesus name, but the man was not a disciple, so they rebuked him. But Jesus says to let the man continue: “…whoever is not against us if for us” (Mark 9:40). This leads us to the next principle about the kingdom. There is another kingdom opposing it.

There is a kingdom of darkness as well as a kingdom of light.

Jesus brings this home in the final passage. He describes your options. You are either in one or the other. There is no middle ground. He who is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Matt. 12:40). Either you are in the kingdom of light or kingdom of darkness. For those who stay in the kingdom of darkness, the end is hell. The word he uses here is Gehenna.

Gehenna was a deep valley southeast of Jerusalem. In the time of the kings of Israel, it had been used for the most appalling idolatry. The pagan deity Molech had been worshipped there. The worship of this idol required children to be burned alive. Israel’s kings participated in this travesty, burning their own children to death. The king Josiah put an end to this, defiling the place so that it could never be used again. It became a place where people threw garbage. The bodies of criminals would be burnt there. This is the image that Jesus gives for the end of those in the kingdom of darkness. Jesus quotes the words of Isaiah here, “the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48).  

This is scary language. But it is totally serious. Jesus is returning in glory and power. Every deed that a person has done will be judged. We cannot afford to be cavalier about our eternal destiny.

Jesus puts it this way. “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell” (verse 47). He is not encouraging body mutilation here. Obviously, it is not our hand or foot or eye that causes us to sin, but our hearts. Jesus said that it is from within that a man is defiled (Mark 7:20). The point is that if anything is causing you to stumble, get rid of it, no matter how precious it is to you.

Jesus is talking about habitual sin that leads us away from God. James 1:15 says that evil desires conceive sin, and sin when full grown leads to death. Sin, if not dealt with, leads us away from God. It has no place in His kingdom.

Instead, “let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22).

Finally, I want to return to the words of Jesus: “the kingdom of God is within you.” We carry the kingdom wherever we go. We advance the kingdom whenever we bring His system to our sphere of influence. His kingdom comes when his ways come to our world. That is our mission.

How do we do it? We do it when we lead by serving. We do that when we keep our lives free from sin. We do that when we follow the principles laid out in scripture. We do that when we live by faith.

If you are born again, the kingdom is within you!

Mark 9 - Part 2: The Upside-down Kingdom

In the next scene Mark describes, Jesus takes his inner circle to a mountain top. He is transfigured before them. He takes on the appearance he had before he was born, when the angels worshipped him. Three disciples get to witness this incredible moment: Peter, James, and John. These were his closest disciples. There were levels of intimacy that people had with Jesus. The furthest out were the crowds. They followed him sometimes, listened to him, shouted Hosanna as he entered Jerusalem, shouted crucify when he was condemned. They are fickle. They are not close. They know who he is, but they don’t have a personal relationship with him.

The second group was the disciples. These were followers. They got his teaching explained. Of those there were twelve, even more select, that he designated as apostles. And they went with him everywhere. Of those twelve, the three he brings to the mountain were closest to him. John, in his Gospel, refers to himself as “the disciple Jesus loved.” Following Jesus is all about relationship.

Jesus ministry method is counter intuitive. Instead of trying to reach the crowds, trying to influence as many people as possible, he focuses on just a few. He spends time teaching and training them. He knew that he would be leaving his infant church in their hands. In verse thirty, Jesus leaves the crowds so that he can focus on teaching just the disciples.

It is here that Jesus catches the disciples arguing over who would be the greatest in the kingdom. This is completely out of line with his system. He explains, if you want to be great, you must be a servant. This is the opposite of the world’s system. In the world, the weak serve the powerful. That is how the world has always worked. But Jesus is changing it. “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35).

Jesus gave us the greatest demonstration of this system. He, the king of heaven, the creator, the sustainer of all things, the most powerful God, the omnipotent one, the beginning and the end, came to the earth to serve his creation. He is born as a helpless baby in a filthy stable to poor parents in a conquered county. He gets down on his knees and washes his followers’ feet. Jesus, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of a servant, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8). He is our example.

On the way back from the transfiguration, Jesus sees a crowd gathered. There is a boy who is demon possessed there. The disciples could not cast out the demon. Jesus questions the boy’s father. He says, “if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” “‘If you can?’” said Jesus, “Everything is possible for the one who believes.”

This leads to another important principle of the kingdom of God. It is accessed by faith. We are born again by faith. In fact, faith is required to receive anything from God. “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). “But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord”(James 1:6-7). Remember that Jesus couldn’t heal very many people in his hometown because of the lack of faith. Belief is necessary for the kingdom. No one will enter the kingdom of God without faith. “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only son” (John 3:18).

Mark 9 – Part 1: The Unexpected Kingdom

In verse one of Chapter 9 of Mark, Jesus tells the disciples that some of them will “see the kingdom of God come with power.” What is the kingdom of God? What were the disciples expecting?

Jesus began his ministry preaching about the kingdom of God. Mark 1:14-15. “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said, “The kingdom of God has come near! Repent and believe the good news!”” The kingdom of God has come near. This would have been an exciting statement for the Jews. The concept of the Kingdom of God was tied closely to that of the Messiah. We saw in the last chapter how they Jews were expecting a different kind of Messiah, now we see that Jesus is bringing a different kind of kingdom.

Daniel had prophesied about this several hundred years before. Daniel 7:13-14/27. Daniel had (very accurately) predicted that they Jews would be ruled over by four different empires: the Babylonians, the Medio-Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Then he said a new kingdom would appear. It would wipe away the others and fill the whole earth and last forever. The kingdom of God.

We saw in the last chapter the disciples had some preconceived notions of what a Messiah was supposed to be. Peter couldn’t grasp a Messiah who suffered. Now Jesus is overturning their expectations about the kingdom. Despite the popular hope, Jesus said that his kingdom was internal, not external. He was not coming to bring political freedom from the Roman empire. As he said before Pilot in John 18:36, his kingdom is not of this world. His kingdom, in fact, was nothing like the kingdoms of the world.

The kingdoms of the world are all about the powerful dominating the weak. Those with the power make the rules. Jesus’s kingdom was different. His kingdom would change the world.

The Pharisees asked Jesus one time when the kingdom was supposed to come. Jesus answered that the kingdom does not come with your careful watching (Luke 17:20). The kingdom of God is within you. It begins in the heart. It is new life in the Spirit. He told the Jewish leader Nicodemas that you can’t enter the kingdom of God unless you have been born of the Spirit (or born again). In fact, he said, you can’t even see it if you aren’t born again. You can’t perceive it.

When we are born again, we change. This is really the only way to change the world. No amount of laws or governance can fix the issues in the world. The real issue is in the heart. Take racism, for example. It was a real issue in Jesus’s time like today. There was a deep seeded antagonism between the Jews and Samaritans. They despised each other. You can make laws that stop discrimination. You can provide every protection of the law for minorities, but unless you change the people’s hearts, you will never overcome the issue. Why is it that decades after the civil rights movement, racism is still alive in the United States? People’s hearts have not been changed. That is why we need Jesus. His kingdom is our only hope.

Paul explains the kingdom of God further in Romans 14:17. The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. It is the outworking of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is the life he brings to us. If we miss that, we miss everything.

Mark 8 - The exact representation of God

Mark 8

This chapter begins with Jesus performing a repeat of the miracle of loaves and fishes that we saw in chapter six. The crowds followed Jesus into the wilderness and the disciples want Jesus to send them away because it is getting late. There are too many to feed. But Jesus has compassion on them.

It is important to remember here that Jesus behaves exactly as God the Father does. Hebrews 1:3 says: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…” John puts it this way: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known” (John 1:18). Jesus is the perfect example of what God would say or do. We can see the heart of God in Jesus.

Sometimes people get a skewed view of God reading the Old Testament. There are many passages in which God is executing judgement and wrath on humanity, and it’s possible to use those passages to create a picture of what God is like. But that would be incorrect. It is so easy for us to take things out of context and get an image of God that is not like him at all. Jesus remedies that situation. He is the clearest expression of God. He is a revelation of God’s heart towards us. Keep this in mind as we continue through the book of Mark.

And he is compassionate on the crowd. When Jesus sees them, he is moved by their needs.  The Father’s heart is one of compassion towards us. He is not indifferent towards your needs. He cares. And when you come to Him, he takes care of you. The scriptures say He “longs to be gracious to you” (Isaiah 30:18).

Later in this chapter, we see the Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign. They want something to prove that he is from God. What exactly were they looking for? He had already performed a host of miracles practically everywhere he went. He had healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead, and feed the masses. What more evidence did they really need?

The Gospel of Matthew gives some further details of this encounter. Jesus says “a wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign”. They already had all the evidence they needed. They weren’t looking for a chance to believe, they were just trying to find faults.

The picture Jesus paints of the Pharisees is clear in the scriptures. They were hypocritical, concerned with appearance, and not truly holiness. They claimed to be the closest ones to God, and yet they couldn’t recognize Him. Here was Jesus, the exact representation of God, and they wanted a sign. It just shows how far away their hearts were from Him. Jesus warns the disciples about the teaching of the Pharisees. They cared about the outside, the regulations, the traditions, but not the condition of the heart.

Jesus later takes them to Caesarea Philippi, the furthest most north part of the nation. This was a place full of gentiles, a place full of idolatry. And in front of a cave called the “Gates of Hell” he asks the disciples this question: who do you say I am? This is the focus of the entire book of Mark. Who is Jesus? Peter makes the inspired exclamation, “you are the Messiah”. Matthew records him adding, “the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). God has revealed himself to man in the person of Jesus Christ.  

At this point Jesus changes gears. He begins to explain what would soon happen to him. He would suffer, and be rejected, and be murdered, and then in three days be resurrected. This was difficult for the disciples to accept. How could the Messiah die?

Peter cannot take it. He rebukes Jesus. This is odd considering that he just confessed that Jesus was the Son of God. His preconceived notion of the Messiah didn’t fit Jesus version.

Jesus rebukes Peter in no uncertain terms. He calls him Satan. In just a few minutes, Peter has been the voice of both the inspiration of the Father in heaven, and of the devil. In a worldly sense, Peter’s rebuke makes sense. How could the messiah be rejected? How could God die? It was surely improper. It was scandalous. But is was true.

Jesus death and resurrection were absolutely essential to his mission. He was going to be the sacrifice that “takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). This is the ultimate expression of love. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). This is the heart of God. He gives his very life for you.

Jesus goes even further. He has described his death, now he goes on to describe the death of his followers. Pick up your cross and follow me, he says. In those days, criminals would be required to carry the heavy crossbeam of their cross to the place they would be executed. What Jesus meant would have been perfectly clear. You would carry your cross to your execution. No other reason. When Jesus said, pick up your cross, he meant that following him was a death sentence. There are consequences for following Jesus.

Let’s not water this down. Jesus didn’t say, you’ll have to give up some stuff to follow me. He didn’t say, you’ll lost some of your spare time when you choose to be my disciple. He didn’t say, it’s going to be burdensome to follow me. He said you’d have to give up your life.

He told them he was going to die and be resurrected. “If we die with him, we will also live with him” (Tim. 2:11). To be resurrected, you first have to die. Jesus is not interested in half-hearted devotion. Your faith is going to be tested. Either you give him everything or nothing. You have to decide what he is worth to you. Is he worth your life?

Mark 7 - Dropping the formula

This week I want to revisit Mark chapter 7, specifically the last passage in the chapter. This is story is the story of a healing of a man who is both deaf and mute. The people who bring him to Jesus are from the region of the Decapolis. You may remember them. They are the ones who not long ago asked Jesus to leave their region because of the demons who killed a herd of pigs. Their attitude is completely different now. They were once terrified of him, and now they say “he does everything well.”

Jesus heals this man in a very interesting way. He could have healed him with a word; he had done that before. He could have healed with a touch. Instead, he goes through an elaborate, and frankly gross, ritual. He sticks his fingers in the guy’s ears, spits, and touches his tongue, and says be healed. Why go through this whole ordeal?

Jesus knows the source of our infirmities. He doesn’t heal us the same way as everybody else. He treats every one of us as an individual. Jesus separates the man from the crowd before he heals him. We are not just a number to him, not just a nameless face. The scripture says he has every hair on our heads numbered (Luke 12:7). Jesus personalizes this miracle, I believe, to suit the needs of the deaf man. He does what is needed to address the root of the problem.

There is a connection between the way Jesus heals and the way the Holy Spirit moves in the book of Acts. Jesus worked his miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit. We saw how he began his ministry when the Holy Spirit rested upon him at his baptism. He promised that we would do the same things (John 14:12). The power that was at work in Jesus is at work in us as well.

If Jesus had always healed in the same way, we would have tried to formulize it. We would have made it ritual. We would have tried to take the steps and divorce them from the person of the Spirit. People love formulas. We want things to be a set way, and we want it to work every time. Look at the Pharisees at the beginning of this chapter. Jesus rebukes them for giving more attention to their traditions than the commandments of God. They had turned the worship of God into a series of formulas.

This is the appeal of witchcraft. Witchcraft is a way of getting power apart from God. If Jesus had always said the same words, or always done the same thing, we would have made it into an incantation.

We see an example of this is in Acts 19. The seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, tried to cast out demons using Jesus name, like Paul was doing. “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” The demon possessed person laughed at them, beat them up, tore off their clothes, and chased them off. They were trying to use the formula. They didn’t know Jesus, and they didn’t have the Spirit. They were just trying to use his name to get what they wanted.

But that is not how the Holy Spirit works. He is not some impersonal force that we can bend to our will. We are in a relationship with him. His power is worked in our lives when we yield to him.

Later on, in Acts 19, the people build a huge bonfire with all their books of magic spells. They have realized that the formulas don’t work. Relationship is what is needed.

We can rest assured in God that we are unique to him, and he knows exactly what we need. He is not interested in rituals. He does not care about traditions. He wants a relationship with you.

Mark 7 - clean hearts

Mark chapter seven covers three different encounters in Jesus ministry. I want to do things a little different this week and only focus on the first story. It begins with some religious leaders coming from Jerusalem to see Jesus. Jerusalem was the home of the temple, the capital of the nation. It was, in a word, important.

 Jesus fame has spread now to the religious elite there. When they show up, they are not happy. Immediately they find fault with this miracle worker. His disciples are defiling themselves, eating with unwashed hands.

Jesus defends his disciples and turns the accusation on its head. The disciple’s hands are dirty, but the Pharisees hearts are dirty. What is important to God is the condition of the heart.

There are two things that I want to focus on in this passage. First, is the application of the law. This law was the law given to Moses in the first five books of the bible, also called the Torah. The Pharisees were extremely concerned with following the legal requirements of the Torah which included a host of dietary restrictions. 

Jesus makes this amazing declaration: it is not what goes into you that defiles. He declares all foods clean. This must have come as a real shock to the Pharisees. Was Jesus just throwing out the entire Torah? But Jesus said himself that he didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfil it (Matt. 5:17). This is a question that many believers encounter sooner or later. Why is that we follow some of the old testament laws (i.e., not to murder or commit adultery) but not others (like dietary restrictions)?

There are three types of law in the old testament. The civil law, the ceremonial law, and the moral law. 

The civil law was for the purpose of governing the nation of Israel in those times. These are laws that were not meant to be applied universally but were meant to provide a legal system for the people at that time. This would encompass some of the punishments that were required for certain sins. How can we be sure that this part of the law has passed away? Jesus himself does not follow it. When the woman caught in adultery was brought before him, the law required that she be stoned. Jesus offers her forgiveness (John 8). Mercy triumphs over judgement (James 2:13).

The second type of law was the ceremonial law. This law was given to teach the Israelites how to worship. They all revolve around the proper way to provide a sacrifice. These were fulfilled by Jesus when he died on the cross. “For by on sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy (Hebrews 10:14). There is no longer any need to provide those sacrifices, because Jesus was the perfect sacrifices. That whole sacrificial system was simply a stop gap measure, meant to point us to Jesus. The law “can never, by the same sacrifices continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near” (Hebrews 10:1). But “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10).

The third type of the law is the Moral Law. The Moral law governs how we treat each other and how we treat God. Jesus summed it up neatly. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. In these laws everything else is fulfilled (Galatians 5:14. Mark 12:30-31). These are binding for all time. The ten commandments are a good example of these laws. Jesus really simplified it for us. Love God, and love others.

God has always put higher priority on the moral law than the ceremonial law. Look at these passages. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6). “The sacrifices of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him (Proverbs 15:8). “Has the Lord as great a delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord?” (1Samuel 15:22).

The Pharisees were concerned about the outward expression of worship, but they neglected what’s on the inside. Jesus calls them out: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me…” (Mark 7:6). If you want to really be clean, wash the heart. The ceremony means nothing if we are not committed to following God.

The second thing that I would like to point out here is that traditions can sometimes interfere with the plans of God. The Pharisees had all these terrible traditions that were opposed to God’s rules. The illustration Jesus gives is the “Corban” or gift devoted to God. Instead of supporting your parents, you gave that money to God. And the Pharisees would not let you help your parents after that.

It seems so obvious that this tradition is exact opposed to God’s law, but we have a better perspective than they did. We might well ask: what traditions or habits do we have today that are in opposition to God’s plan? I think we should consider that question carefully lest we make ourselves hypocrites.

To be clear, I am not talking about matters of preference. There has been a lot of division in the church over unimportant things, like the style of music we play. I can not think of any reason why playing either traditional or contemporary music would be opposed to God’s plan. Or the color of the carpet or a million other things that spilt churches. I fear that much of that argument has to do with prioritizing selfish motives. If you are not the one in charge of a particular aspect of ministry in your church, maybe you should leave those decisions to those God has placed in that position of authority.

What I am talking about here is how you follow God. Is your spiritual walk based on what it says in the word of God, or is it driven by habit? How many things do we do that are just going through the motions? Are we just honoring God with our lips? Maybe it’s time to ask God if he wants to make any changes in your life. We need to be flexible with God. 

Remember a few chapters ago, Jesus told the disciples, new wine must be put in new wine skins. If you want God to do something new in your life, you need to be flexible. You need to be yielding. God may need to stretch you.

The washing of the hands was symbolic. It was to remove the defilement. The idea of defilement was that it made something dirty, or filthy, or unholy. It was not longer set apart.

To give an example, I once had a toaster. On morning as I walked up to it, I was shocked to see a mouse jump out of the toaster and run behind the refrigerator. I looked at my toaster and realized I could never use it again. How do you clean a toaster? All I could imagine was the little mouse feet running all over my bagels. I got a new toaster.

My toaster was defiled. I could not use it anymore for the purpose that I had set it apart for. Hand washing was a good symbol for defilement. It was easy to see the grime that was swept away as the hands were washed. But the Pharisees had missed the point. What we really need to be kept clean is our hearts. Our spiritual life needs to be pure, because that is set apart for communion with God.

Today handwashing is particularly relevant. One of the top things the CDC recommends to protect against the spread of the coronavirus is handwashing. It prevents the spread of disease. But even more important is our spiritual cleanliness. We need our hearts to be washed. We need to protect ourselves from spiritual disease. Jesus gives a list of things that defile our spiritual lives: “evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, pride, foolishness” (Verse 21-22). Let’s come in repentance to God and let him wash our hearts. Let’s yield to the Holy Spirit and let him work out him his love inside of us.