EPISODE 143 GOSPELOFMARK CHAPTER3 "A spiritual family"

Welcome to Share the Word. In Mark chapter 3, we see that Jesus continued his course of action in spite of all of the opposition that he faced. He challenged the religious leaders and their norms. He demonstrated divine authority, but how that divine authority was perceived is one of the points that's addressed today. Let's listen in and find out more. Mark chapter 3: A Spiritual Family.

Thanks for joining us again for Share the Word. We're currently traveling through the Gospel of Mark, looking for its biggest ideas and being sure we understand them. If this is your first time through the Gospel of Mark and you found our podcast to be a good resource in understanding the Bible, we hope you'll tell others about it. I can tell you for almost certain you're going to be surprised by a couple of things we run into today in Mark's account of Jesus' early ministry time in Galilee, his home district. Throughout chapter 2, Mark writes about a series of clashes Jesus had with religious critics who turned into opponents, who ultimately turned into hateful enemies who wanted to kill him. Jesus elicited such a strong reaction from people, one way and the other.

His fame began to spread when he cast out a demon from a man during a synagogue service in Capernaum. Mark wrote about that in chapter 1 at verse 23 and following. Well, who could have a problem with that, giving relief to a man tormented? The news of that, Peter told Mark, spread quickly throughout the entire region of Galilee. Like, did you hear about what happened at the synagogue in Capernaum last Sabbath? This young prophet named Jesus from Nazareth commanded a demon to come out of a man.

He's been tormented for years. Just commanded him to get out, and it obeyed him. What? Really? Yeah, that happened. And that night, Mark says, many more things like this happened: exorcisms, miraculous healings.

Wow. People wanted to see this for themselves. And people started coming to Capernaum from everywhere, Mark says, so many, in fact, that Jesus left that town purposely to escape the curious but demanding crowds that were building. They spent time touring several other towns and villages in Galilee, preaching and teaching, but at some point they returned to Capernaum because that was Peter's home and had become Jesus' adopted home too. When word got around that they were back, curious and needy were back again, clamoring, pressing for an opportunity to see Jesus and be with him. This led to that evening when Jesus was in Peter's house with so many people crammed inside that four men who had brought their paralyzed friend, hoping Jesus would heal him, out of desperation tore off Peter's roof to get him in front of Jesus.

And seeing their determination and faith, Jesus had compassion and healed that paralyzed man right there in front of all kinds of witnesses. This was not a problem if that was the only thing that happened. But remember, Jesus spoke those words over the paralyzed man that shocked some of the religious leaders in the room: My son, your sins are forgiven you. They heard that as blasphemy. Who does this man think he is? Only God forgives sins.

They were right about that, actually. But that started the friction. Next, and we didn't talk about this last time, Jesus was invited to a new follower's home named Levi. Now, Levi was a despised tax collector working for the Roman occupying government in Capernaum. Religious Jews considered such people unclean, and they were shunned. Yet Jesus, when invited, gladly showed up with his other disciples and enjoyed a festive evening at Levi's house.

Some Pharisees who heard that was going on came to see if it was true, and it was true, all right. That convinced the Pharisees that Jesus could not possibly be a representative from God, or he would know who these people are he was associating with and denounce them, or at least shun them like the rest of us. But Jesus knew. Here's how Peter told it to Mark. When teachers of the religious law, who were Pharisees, saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, Why does he eat with such scum? When Jesus overheard this, he told them, Healthy people don't need a doctor.

Sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are religious, but those who know they are sinners. My word. Who does this guy from Nazareth think he is coming to our town and instructing us this way? Then, described in chapter 2:24 and following, Jesus clashed again with these men over his disciples doing something on the Sabbath day they thought was disallowed. The Pharisees saw themselves as the rules enforcers, but Jesus contradicted them and confounded them by explaining the real spirit and purpose of the Old Testament Sabbath laws.

He shut them down by insisting the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. And even more when he added, In any event, the Son of Man is Lord even over the Sabbath. Oh boy, did he really say he had authority over the Sabbath, over the Sabbath laws? Did they hear him correctly? Yes, they did. So the tension was growing.

The confrontations kept escalating. While Jesus' popularity kept rising with the common people, it was becoming clearer and clearer to the religious establishment that he was not one of them. Which brings us to chapter 3. I remember describing the uncomfortable confrontation with some religious leaders during another synagogue service when we studied Luke's Gospel. Jesus' critics apparently brought a man with a withered hand into the service in an attempt to set Jesus up. They had seen enough to know he could heal people, but they wanted him to do it on a Sabbath day and in front of witnesses.

What's the problem with that, you're thinking? Well, believe it or not, in their twisted world, healing someone was an act of work, like a doctor doing his job, and all work was strictly forbidden on Sabbath days. It was a time of rest from work and of worship for God. Jesus took their bait anyways. Seeing that man with a withered hand, he called him forth in the service and healed him. Then they pounced.

Aha! Look, he's broken the Sabbath code. But Jesus answered them, Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save lives or to destroy them? But they wouldn't answer him. How could they?

This stuff made them look bad. They were grinding their teeth in anger at being embarrassed right in their own church in front of their own people. Peter remembers, because Mark comments here, Jesus looked around at them, these spiritually clueless religious rules enforcers. He looked right at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts. Jesus was saddened and angry. The people in Capernaum had these hypocrites for supposed spiritual leadership.

How do we know that these escalating confrontations, these public clashes, were infuriating his opponents? Because it was on the heel of that that Mark writes, the Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how they might kill Jesus. Whoa. It's interesting, the Pharisees sought out the Herodians to enlist their help against Jesus. The Herodians were a political faction that supported the Herod dynasty in Israel. They were not religious at all, had zero in common with the sect of the Pharisees.

The only thing that would bring these two groups together was their common fear of Jesus' rapidly growing popularity and influence. Mark notes that by this time, the spreading fame of Jesus among the common folk had traveled well beyond Galilee, the northern district of Israel. People, he says, were coming to Capernaum from all around the country to see this bold young prophet who it was claimed had miraculous powers for themselves. It was getting very crowded in that town. Unwieldy large crowds started treating Jesus like a superstar, like a celebrity. Everyone wanting to see him, get close to him, hear something from him, touch him, maybe see a miracle.

Listen to this. This is how Peter described the chaos at that point to Mark. Jesus went from there out to the lake with his disciples, and a large crowd still followed him. They came from all over Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, from east of the Jordan River, and even as far north as Tyre and Sidon. The news about his miracles had spread far and wide, and vast numbers of people were coming to see him. So much so that Jesus instructed his disciples to have a boat ready, as the crowd could crush him.

Maybe it was also for his own safety from the plotting Pharisees that he didn't want to be in town anymore. He retreated to the open space along the Sea of Galilee. And can you imagine the throngs of people wanting to get close to him were so large and so uncontrollable, Jesus told his fisherman disciples, Have one of your boats at the ready in case we need to escape this madness. He was preaching to these crowds. He was also healing the sick brought to him. Here's how the scene was described to Mark.

Jesus had healed many people that day, so all the sick people eagerly pushed toward him, trying to touch him. But whenever those possessed by evil spirits caught sight of him, the evil spirits would throw them to the ground in front of him, shrieking, You are the Son of God! But Jesus sternly commanded those spirits not to reveal who he was. How crazily ironic is it that the religious leaders at that time and place did not recognize Jesus for who he really was, but that demons who were coming out of possessed people at Jesus' command knew exactly who he was. And yes, if you've ever wondered, demon possession and oppression are very real. Not just in ancient times or in primitive places with witch doctors or whatever, but in our day and in our midst as well, is this becoming more obvious.

That's not the biggest idea in this passage, and I won't get into it now. At another time we will. But I'll emphasize to you, stay away from anything to do with the occult. Don't expose yourself to anything dark. Spiritual forces of darkness are real and are dangerous. It was at this time, around this time, that Jesus formalized his selection of his band of closest disciples, Mark tells us in this chapter.

We've already met four or five of them. The others are named here in Mark chapter 3. These are men Jesus hand chose to be with him, Mark says, during his public ministry years, so that they would be with him. I like how he puts that. They weren't volunteers. They were selected by Jesus on purpose.

These twelve were at once his staff, his emotional support system, and those he was deliberately going to prepare to carry on his work once he was gone. They would become the foundational leaders of the coming Christian church, with the exception of Judas, of course, who went on to betray him. Apostles, he called them, were unique, as we've discussed before at some length. One thing unique to their office, Mark mentions here, is that Jesus gave them power over evil spirits, and we'll also see him doing healing miracles. This shared authority from Jesus authenticated these men when they carried on the Great Commission by building the foundation of Christianity. Twelve was a deliberate number, I think, probably corresponding to the Old Testament's twelve patriarchs of Israel.

Jesus had many more followers than these, many more women followers too, but these were personally trained by Jesus over the next three years with a view that one day they would be sent out as Jesus' official representative, his apostles. You wouldn't know it from Mark, but I'm pretty sure Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount was delivered to these earliest followers at this point in his ministry. It outlined the parameters and objectives of his building spiritual kingdom. Mark doesn't even get into that. Perhaps Peter fell asleep during that sermon. But we'll get into it in detail when we cover the Gospel of Matthew.

And also about this time, religious leaders from Jerusalem, some serious bigwigs, showed up in Capernaum to try and get control of this Jesus movement, which the local Pharisees obviously couldn't. How did they deal with what they heard, which no one disputed, that is, that Jesus had obvious supernatural power, the authority we talked about last time, and he has sway over these throngs of people? At verse 22 it says, The teachers of the religious law who arrived from Jerusalem said, 'He,' that is Jesus, 'is possessed by Satan, the prince of demons. That's where he gets the power to cast out demons.' Wow. If they were determined they would not get on board with Jesus, and he scared them and threatened them and contradicted them way too much to consider that, then they must attribute his undeniable power to Satan, who they called Beelzebul here, the prince of demons.

What else could they say as to its source? Jesus did not kowtow to these bigwigs. He publicly refuted them, in fact, pointing out how irrational their charge was. I am freeing people from Satan's grip, he told them, and your explanation is that Satan is fighting against himself. Satan is defeating his own kingdom here? He mocked the absurdity of that.

And then he sternly warned these religious authorities to their faces. I tell you the truth, all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. That's a sin with eternal consequences, he told them. Mark adds, because they were saying, He's possessed by an evil spirit. I've heard a lot of attempts to say this doesn't mean what Jesus plainly said, and that is that these men deliberately attributed Jesus' authority and power, which was a result of being full of the Holy Spirit, to being in league with the devil. And Jesus said, You won't be forgiven for that.

I've had many people ask me over the years if this sin or that sin is unforgivable, like murder or child predation or even blasphemy against God or against Jesus. Those are all very serious sins and may have serious consequences. But there was only one thing Jesus said was unforgivable, and that is what these religious leaders were doing. They were turning people away from Jesus by attributing the power of the Holy Spirit to the devil. The last scene in chapter 3 is where we finally come to what I think is the biggest idea in this section. It says there, Once Jesus entered again into the house and the crowds began to gather again, the demands were so great, he and his disciples couldn't even eat a meal together.

And get this, when his family heard what was happening in Capernaum, referring to all the uproar around Jesus, they came and tried to take him away, determining he must be out of his mind. This was Jesus' mother Mary and some of his brothers. Does that surprise you? This is the one appearance of Mary in the Gospel of Mark, and she has come intending to take custody of Jesus like he's a little kid, halt his public ministry, and take him home to Nazareth because she's heard things around him were getting crazy. She's hearing reports about him and his activities that frightened her. Mark tells us when they arrived in Nazareth and asked where Jesus was, they were pointed to the house where he was staying, which was, as usual, crammed full of people.

Being unable to enter, they sent word for Jesus to come out and meet with them. One person told another, who told another, who told another. Jesus finally gets the message: Your mother and brothers are outside, and they're asking for you. They want you to come out to them. I can see Jesus smile, slowly shook his head for a moment, thought and said, Who is my mother, and who are my brothers and sisters? Behold, these are my mother, my brothers, and my sisters, those who do the will of God.

What could he mean by that except that he felt that at this point he had a spiritual family, and they were more supportive of him, more understanding of him and what he was doing than his own natural family. I'm sure they were all well-intentioned, but Jesus' mother and brothers were out of tune with his divine mission. He had conflict after conflict after conflict. The demands on him were crazy. The hectic pace was overwhelming, and now his own family is trying to derail him. Boy, to realize your own family is not on board, is not behind you, that had to hurt Jesus.

That had to be discouraging. But that's what he was thinking, and that's what he was expressing, I think, at a later point when he said, A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and among his own relatives. I certainly hesitate to compare myself to Jesus. I'm sure you do too. But have you ever had the same feeling? For heaven's sakes, the people who should be most on my side, be most encouraging to me, are anything but.

Maybe your own family has ridiculed your faith or thought, as in Jesus' case, that you've gone off the deep end. You're becoming too much of a religious fanatic. Well, listen, a servant is not greater than his Lord. If that could happen to Jesus, it could certainly happen to us. That's why we need what Jesus was creating at that time. We need a spiritual family, people who are really with you, as Mark put it.

And I mean beyond your local church where you spend an hour or two a week. I mean people who are really with you, who understand you, who are available when you need them, who you know have your back. I can't tell you how much this has meant to me during my hardest times. As Jesus pointed to those in the room that day, those who were really with him, and said, These are my mother and my sisters and my brothers. Who do you have in your life that you know you can count on, that you know support you and believe in you? Good churches usually do their best to facilitate that with small groups, but you may need to do more than that to do what Jesus did.

He chose individuals he wanted to be with. He chose people who he knew would be a good support system. If you meet another believer who you feel a deep connection with and you intentionally want to grow a relationship with them, work on that. Like David and Jonathan, we read about in the Old Testament, who actually made a covenant of friendship, it says. When times get difficult for us, when life gets hard, having a spiritual family who see that, who step in, who you can turn to for understanding and support, man, that's invaluable. Jesus surrounded himself with a spiritual family, and if Jesus needed it, then certainly we do too.

This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. A chapter that inspires us to stand firm in faith despite opposition, and this chapter inspired me to take a very hard look at who is in my spiritual family. And I count myself blessed to have more than I could ever deserve. And I challenge you to look closely at your inner circle and ask yourself, would they come to town and try to take you home, or would they support your faith and your actions? Despite all the conflicts and accusations, Jesus declared who his true family was.

From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.