If you would take your Bibles with me and turn to Mark chapter 3; that’s page 838 in the Bibles located in the pew in front of you. Mark chapter 3. We’re continuing tonight in our series on the gospel of Mark. We come to this passage at the end of chapter 3 tonight.
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis popularized the argument that you can’t read the gospel accounts of Jesus and say that He was just a good, moral teacher and example. You can’t do it because He’s either much more than that or He’s not anything like that at all. Lewis says that for someone to make the claims that Jesus makes in the gospels, the claims that He makes about Himself, that if they’re not true, then He’s either crazy or a liar, but if they’re true, then He is who He says He is. So, you come to a trilemma. You either reject Him as a lunatic or a liar, or you accept Him as Lord. Lunatic, liar or Lord.
Well that’s basically our passage from Mark chapter 3 tonight because we find in these verses that Jesus’ family think that He’s lost His mind. And we find that the scribes who came from Jerusalem, they think that He is evil, that He is a deceiver. But Jesus says that for those who truly know Him, they trust and obey because He’s Lord. But what I want us to see from this passage is that the opposition that Jesus faced is often the opposition that we face in the Christian life. There are social and spiritual consequences to following Jesus. There’s peer pressure and there’s the appeal of the predictable. Think about all the things that we oftentimes worry about – How do we fit in? How do we keep up? How can we keep things on the surface, at a superficial level? And then what does Jesus say is the one thing that we should really be worried about? It’s doing the will of God. It’s doing that which pleases Him. Because there are plenty of distractions, there are plenty of distractions in the Christian life, but what He calls us to is actually something quite simple.
And that’s what I want us to see in these verses tonight. I want us to see, number one, means of distraction – peer pressure, predictability, etc. Means of distraction. And then secondly, man’s chief end – glorifying God above everything else. And so before we look to these verses, let’s pray and ask God’s help and blessing on our study tonight. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we confess that we gather together, we open our Bibles, we come before Your Scripture this evening, and there are many things that may distract us, there are many things that might have distracted us throughout this day, and we ask that You would bring us to a place of clarity, to give us ears to hear, we would come to a place of understanding, that Your Spirit would work in all of our hearts. Open our ears, our minds, to understand Your Word, to apply it to our lives, and that You would help us to do the will of God. And we pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Mark chapter 3, starting in verse 20:
“Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind.’
And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebul,’ and ‘by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.’ And he called them to him and said to them in parables, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.
Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ – for they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’
And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.’ And he answered them, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
First, means of distraction. Surely it is a cautionary tale, an object lesson, that in these verses the two groups that set themselves in opposition to Jesus and His ministry are one, His family or friends, and then secondly, the scribes from Jerusalem. In other words, those who missed Jesus, those who missed who Jesus is and what He had come to do, were those who knew Him, they were those who were the most familiar with Him, and they were those who knew their Bible; they were those who were the most familiar with Scripture. Verse 21 says that when Jesus had returned home, the crowd crowded around Him and that His family tried to grab Him and they were saying, “He is out of His mind. He is beside Himself.” The word is literally “those around Him.” In light of the verses at the end of this chapter about His mother and His brothers that were seeking Him, that word, “those around Him,” could very well mean His family. But it could also mean those who grew up around Him; it could mean His friends, His neighbors. Traditionally it has been understood that what this means is that Jesus’ people back home, back home in Nazareth, they have heard the reports about these rowdy scenes in Capernaum and they decide that it’s time to take Jesus in hand for His own sake and for His family’s reputation on the assumption that He’s lost it. They knew Jesus. They knew where He was from. They knew what He was like. They knew all the basic facts about His life and they say He’s out of His mind.
But the others, the scribes, the others, they know the Scriptures, and their reaction is similar – isn’t it? Their reaction is similar to Jesus’ family and friends. The scribes, they had come down from Jerusalem and they did not have a category for who Jesus was. The scribes, they were the experts, you see. They were meticulous. Remember what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5 in the sermon on the mount how not an iota, not a dot will pass away from the law until all is accomplished? Well that’s scribe talk. That’s like saying that there is no “i” that will go undotted, there’s no “t” that will go uncrossed. Not even the smallest marks in writing the alphabet will go overlooked.
That was the work of the scribes. It was to copy the law. It was to copy the Scripture with the most exact precision and attention to detail. They were the authorities. They were the authorities on the text. They knew the Bible. They knew the covenant promises. They knew their theology. They even knew the Gospel going back to the very beginning pages of the Bible in the book of Genesis.. They knew about the conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And what do they say? They say, verse 30, “He has an unclean spirit.” They say, basically, that Jesus is of the seed of the serpent. Do you see the danger? Do you see the danger in this passage? There’s a danger of familiarity with Jesus. There’s a danger of familiarity with the Bible even and missing who Jesus is altogether.
There was a segment on one of the late night shows a few years ago. It was right before the All-Star game in New York City. And one of the Mets’ pitchers was going to be the starting pitcher for that game. And so what this late night show had him do, this starting pitcher, was to go out into the streets of New York and to interview people. He was in street clothes, and he was interviewing them and asking them questions about the Mets. And there were all kind of reactions and responses to him, but there was one guy that he came up to, and he was wearing this player’s jersey. And he said that this person was his favorite player on the Mets’ team and he had no idea who he was talking to!
You see, it’s possible, it’s possible to grow up in a Christian home, it’s possible to go to a Christian school, it’s possible even to be known and recognized as a respectable and good Christian and still not know Christ. I remember having a conversation with an elder some time ago who told me that he was an elder in the church before he really became a Christian. Gilbert Tennent, back in 1740, preached a sermon on the danger of an unconverted ministry. And in it he said that, “Some men, by the influence of a good education and the hopes of a good reputation, may have the edge of their natural enmity against Christ dulled and then enter into the ministry, but that it is only the saving grace of God that can give us a true love for Christ and His ministry.”
And so these verses are a sobering warning to us. They are a warning to us to not go on just filling our minds, not go on just filling our time with things that are associated with Jesus, but to give ourselves to Him – to rest, to receive and to rest upon Him alone for salvation in the grace of God that is offered to us in Jesus and in Jesus alone. Our pastor during our young adult years has said that during his own young adult years that what he found was that before he came to believe in Christ he was trying to co-opt Jesus into his existing life. He was trying to live life the way he wanted to live it and still be respectable and have Jesus in his orbit or his network, so to speak. But it doesn’t work that way. And there’s only one way to really know and follow Jesus.
And we see something in these verses of the tension, of the disruption that comes when we truly encounter Him because Jesus is disruptive. He’s disruptive both socially and spiritually. By the way, isn’t that what we are oftentimes worried about? Isn’t that what we are often scared of? Let’s be honest, one of the last things that we would want someone in our social circle to say about us is, “He is out of his mind,” or, “She is out of her mind.” But that’s what they say about Jesus. What do you think it was that made them say that? Was it because maybe he left behind a good, honest craft? He left behind a good, respectable way to make a living in order to become an itinerant teacher and preacher? “Isn’t this the carpenter?” they’ll say in Mark chapter 6. “Doesn’t He appreciate His training, all those years that He spent as an apprentice? Does He not appreciate how carpenter work has something to show for itself? There’s a table, there’s a shelf, there’s a completed project – what could He possibly have to show from a parable?”
Or maybe they thought He’d gotten too big for His breaches. “What did He mean by saying things like, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand’? Or, ‘Come, follow Me’? Or, ‘Your sins are forgiven’? Who did He think He was? Did He not remember He was from Nazareth? Didn’t He remember His humble beginnings? His nothing and nowhere upbringing? That’s who Jesus was!” Whatever it was, whatever it was, Jesus was out of step with His people and they tried to exert some pressure, some influence to get Him back in line, which is exactly the same thing that oftentimes works for us or works with us.
I remember hearing a preacher say one time that we oftentimes fall into the trap of thinking that if we just do it right, if we say it the right way, then, then we can be a Christian in a way that is completely socially acceptable. But we forget, don’t we, we forget that the word “Christian” itself was initially a derogatory term. Maybe you’ve heard me say it before, I have a general rule, it’s a rule of thumb, that anyone who has been to seminary is a nerd. It takes one to know one! But it helps just knowing that from the start. We’re not cool! And yet isn’t that such a persistent distraction and temptation in the Christian life – the desire to be cool, the desire to fit in socially. And yet it’s dangerous and it pulls us in different directions. It waters down our profession of faith. It makes man and the immediate our masters. And how many of our thoughts, how many of our choices are dictated by what’s acceptable among our peers? And what if, what if instead following Christ wholeheartedly meant them saying about us, “He’s out of his mind. She’s out of her mind”? Is it worth it?
And what about the concern for the spiritual disruption that Jesus causes in these verses? You see, the scribes, they recognized what Jesus was doing. They recognized that He was doing something out of the ordinary. And there’s a story, we’re going to come to it in a few weeks about how there’s this man who was demon-possessed, he lived out among the tombs, he broke off the shackles that he was chained with, he shouted and he cut himself with stones, and then Jesus healed him and he was put back in his right mind. And it terrified people. It terrified them. And they saw that these kinds of things were happening, and the scribes, they didn’t have a category for it; they couldn’t explain it. They say, “Well,” verse 22, “He’s possessed by Beelzebul,” or, “By the prince of demons He casts out demons.”
And what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to discredit Jesus. They’re literally trying to demonize Him. And they were so disturbed that Jesus was doing things that were supernatural, they said, “It must be demonic!” But it wasn’t. It wasn’t demonic. It was Jesus exerting His authority over the spiritual realm. It was not a matter of Satan casting out Satan or a kingdom divided against itself. No, it was actually Jesus entering into a strongman’s house, binding the strongman, so that He may plunder the strongman’s house. That’s what Jesus was doing. Jesus was spiritually unsettling and He was going about overthrowing evil, He was going about reestablishing law and order, and it was scary.
I heard someone say, someone in their late 70s, say the other day that he had been to his doctor for his check-up that day, his annual check-up. He said he got a good report and the doctor even told him that his weight was good; he might could stand to lose a few pounds, but he said, “I don’t want to!” He said, “That would mean I would have to change some things that I don’t want to change.” And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But it’s a different story, isn’t it, it’s a different story when it comes to spiritual matters. Are we following Jesus in such a way that we listen to God’s Word and expect, that we expect coming to God’s Word the conviction of sin? I wonder if we would be comfortable in our Sunday school classes or Bible study groups, even the Session or the Diaconate, if people really started confessing their sins to one another? Or what about if a revival came. Would we really be okay if we saw something of a revival among us, like to the point that it started to gather people that are different from us or maybe altering the way we sing or the way we worship in some way? Or that it shook up our relationships in the way that we spend our time and the way we spend our money? In other words, how much do we expect or prefer the predictable when it comes to our spiritual lives? So often, that’s what we worry about – peer pressure and the predictable; social acceptance and the spiritual status quo.
But Jesus doesn’t let us stay so comfortable, does He? Instead, what does He call for? He calls for a transformed life. He calls for a life of duty and service, and we’re going to see that in verses 31 to 34. But before we get there, let me just highlight one other thing that Christians sometimes worry about, something that can even be a distraction for us. And that’s what Jesus says in verses 28 and 29. If you look there, Jesus says, “Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” Now that is serious – never forgiveness, an eternal sin. It’s a – it should be – a terrifying prospect. And these are certainly challenging words for us to interpret. These are some of the difficult sayings of Jesus, to be sure. But it is not something for a believer in Jesus to fear. And what Jesus is naming here is an outright, hardened opposition to Him with an attempt to consign Him to damnation.
You see, what Jesus is doing in His ministry, Jesus is displaying the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit throughout His life and ministry and in His death and resurrection, but they say that He has an unclean spirit. They say that the work of the Holy Spirit is demonic, that it’s Satanic, and they will not stop until Jesus is destroyed. You could put it this way, as we think about the resurrection – the resurrection is by the power of the Holy Spirit. Do you think that if you say that the resurrection is the power of the devil and reject Jesus because of it, do you think that His death and His resurrection can have any saving power for you? Of course not. But anyone, anyone who would be concerned with the possibility of committing this sin, anyone who has a sensitivity to the warning of these verses, has not committed this sin. And we could spend all of our time investigating blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, we could get caught up in theological speculation and controversy, we could even torture our consciences and obsess over something we might have said or done or thought in the past, but that’s really not the thing that Jesus wants us to worry about.
Because what He points us to, what we should instead be concerned about, is man’s chief end. There are all these means of distraction. Secondly, man’s chief end. What is man’s chief end? What is man’s primary calling? You know it – it’s to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Jesus says in these verses that the top priority for His disciples, for those whom He has called, for those who are His people, is to do that which is pleasing to God. And you see, His mother and His brothers, they were looking for Him. Verse 32 says, “The crowd said to Him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.’ But Jesus says, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers? Let me tell you who they are. Here are my mother and my brothers.’” Verse 35, “Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” You see, Jesus is looking around, presumably at those who were sitting nearest to Him, those who have left something behind to follow Him, who have shown an allegiance to Him and to the kingdom, and He says, “This is what it means. This is what it means to be family in the kingdom of God. This is what it means to be a member of the household of God – it is to do the will of God. It is to walk actively in faith and repentance and obedience to God.”
Think about what Micah says. What does Micah say in Micah chapter 6 verse 8? “He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? But to do justice and to love kindness and to talk humbly with your God.” And that’s the difference. That’s the difference between the three groups in these verses, the difference between thinking of Jesus as a lunatic or a liar or recognizing Him as Lord, because Lord is a term of submission, of devotion. You obey the one you call Lord. And here we find that Jesus has come to claim His Lordship, His Lordship over the forces of evil. He came to bring the rule of Satan to an end. He came to bind the strongman and to plunder his house. Paul tells us in Colossians chapter 2 that at the cross, at His death and resurrection, Jesus gained victory over all demonic rulers and authorities. Paul writes, “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them.” It is, you see, His Lordship over the spiritual realm and His Lordship over us.
Whom do you serve? How do you make your decisions? On what basis do you order your actions, your relationships? As a matter of fact, that may actually be another distraction for us in the Christian life. And that’s the aspect of authority. Nobody wants to put themselves under authority. Everyone wants to do their own thing, to call their own shots. But one writer some years ago talked about the discipline of simplicity and said that simplicity is an inward reality that results in an outward lifestyle. But that we live in this world that is fractured and fragmented. We are trapped in a maze of competing attachments. He says that one moment we make decisions on the basis of sound reason and then the next moment out of fear of what others will think of us. Or maybe it’s on the basis of impulse and emotion, of what feels good, of what’s best for the bottom line, of what the status says or what may get me ahead or what may get my children ahead of their peers. What do we find? It’s also self-focused and isolating. And yet Jesus calls us to something better. He calls us to a new family and He gives us a new identity. And what’s it marked by? It’s marked by knowing Him, being near Him, and obeying God’s will.
I’ve told you before about being with our group in Cajamarca, Peru with Alanzo and Esther Ramirez a few years ago. And Alanzo does this funny thing when he’s translating. He was translating for Esther on the last day of our trip there, and sometimes his wife, Esther, will go back and forth between Spanish and English when she’s talking to us, and so Alanzo will translate her Spanish into English, but when she shifts into English, she’ll translate her English into Spanish and it gets a good laugh from us! But I can’t remember if she was speaking in Spanish or in English, but she was giving us some parting words and she was directing them especially to the young people in our group. We were gathered around the table, around the lunch table at their house. It was very much family. And there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. But she said this, she said two things. Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths.” And the second is Ecclesiastes 12:13, “This is the end of the matter. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” That’s it. Fear God and keep His commandments.
That’s what Jesus is calling us to here. “Who are my mother and my brothers? Look around. Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” And doesn’t that in some ways give us new eyes to think about this day that in many ways has been about a day of gathering together with family and celebrating together with family? And to recognize that Jesus gives us new definitions and new boundaries of who our family is. And if I could leave us with one word, I would say maybe from this passage the word “vulnerability.” Jesus is calling us to a vulnerability. As we come together as His people, as we come together as His disciples in a place that is oftentimes very connected socially and familially and it can be hard, difficult at times, to break in and to feel like we belong, but it calls for us to be vulnerable and to look at these people as our family, as the household of God. There’s a vulnerability that’s called for as we come together, that we would be vulnerable ourselves to enter into a family. But another vulnerability, and it’s the vulnerability of the Lordship of Jesus and that Jesus calls us to change. That we would hold what we know and how we live loosely and be ready to examine ourselves and our hearts and our actions and to change, because it’s worth it.
So don’t fall for the distractions. Don’t fall for the distractions of peer pressure, predictability, or autonomy or the lies of the devil. Man’s chief end, you see, man’s chief end, the calling of Christ’s disciples, of His family, is to do, to do the will of God. So let that be what we seek after as we follow our Lord Jesus this week and throughout our lives. Let’s pray and let’s ask His help as we do so.
Our Father, we come before You at the close of this Lord’s Day. We give You thanks for those places that we come to in Your Word that are difficult, that are in some ways mysterious and challenge us, that You humble us before Your Word and call us to faith in the difficult places. And we also give You thanks for those places in Your Word that are crystal clear. And we give You thanks for the calling that You have put upon us tonight to do the will of our Father, to do the will of God. And so we ask that You would give us a hunger, a thirst for Your Word, that we would know it, that we would hide it in our hearts, that we would not sin against You, but that we would do all things to glorify You and to find joy, to enjoy You forever. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.