…and he called those he wanted...

Series: …AND… | The Movement of God and His People through Mark
Title: Week 7 “…and he called those he wanted...”
Text: Mark 3:7-35

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So let's dive into our text this morning. And before we get back to Mark, I want us to start thinking about this desire that lives in all of us to be an insider, to be in with the cool kids, if you will. And so the uh C.S. Lewis, uh famous Christian author, he has this famous essay called The Inner Ring. And in it, he he describes this terrible urge that we all have to be in with the cool kids or the successful people or the people who matter. And he warns us in this essay, we'll quote up on the screen here, how dangerous this desire can be. He writes, of all the passions, the passions for the inner ring is the most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things. And even as I was going and thinking through my own resignation, not that I've been tempted to do bad things to stay as an elder, but just that temptation to stay on the inner ring, um, to just be that whisper of if I'm not there, if I'm not in the room when decisions happen, do I still matter? If I'm not in the know, am I an insider? So it was interesting how those things lined up uh this week for me. Uh, but it's terrifying how quickly our identity gets wrapped up in our access to people, to knowledge, to whatever it is going to be. And we start to think if we just had that job title or that relationship or that number of followers, now modern culture, I'd be an insider. I'd be safe, I'd be somebody. And so we live in this culture that's really obsessed with access. It's access, uh, it's obsessed with validation. What do you think social media is all about? It's about validation of who you are, of your ideas, of your lifestyle. So, with that desire in the back of our mind, that desire to be an insider, I want us to go back into Mark three. We're gonna see how Jesus just turns this whole idea of what it means to be an insider on its head. Um, because those who are in with Jesus are not by any means those who we would expect to be. We've been moving really quickly through Mark. It's kind of the whole purpose of this sermon series and how Mark is laid out this, and and immediately, and immediately, and immediately. That's why we do like kind of three stories in one today, because there's a pacing to Mark that we don't want to miss by slowing down, uh, because Jesus is on the move. And he's been being pursued by the crowds, he's being hunted by the religious leaders. And today we're gonna see three groups collide. We're gonna see these desperate crowds that are coming towards him. Uh, we're gonna see the hostile teachers of the law, the religious leaders, and then we're gonna see his confused family come in at the very end. Uh, and in the middle of all this chaos of these competing groups, Jesus just stops to draw this line in the sand around what it means to be in with him. It's gonna force us to ask some hard questions. You know, does being religious or good make you an insider with God? Does just having need and problems that you're trusting Jesus to fix make you an insider? So, what does it actually look like to belong with him and to be with him? And I want us to see, as I usually do, I'll just give the answer away now so the rest of you can check out for the rest of the sermon. But that true closeness to Jesus, the true inner ring, if you will, is not found in the excitement of the crowd, the pedigree of religion, or the biology of family, but in the unearned affection of the king. And as we look at this text, I want us to take some time, be introspective, and ask ourselves some questions. We'll put these questions up on the screen, maybe. I don't know. It's a tech morning. There we go. Text working great. On what basis do you think you belong to God? Is it your desperation? Do you think you're in just because you need help? Is it your performance? Do you think you're in because of your religious resume? Is it your heritage? Do you think you're in just because of your family background? Or is it simply his voice that calls you in? Jesus is going to meet us wherever we're at in those questions. So it's okay to be in any single one of those groups or all of them at times. And let's dive into this text and see how he's going to meet us there and pray for us. Hmm, Jesus, thank you that you are in control uh this morning, that you are good. Um, that as we gather this morning, we gather under your protection and your authority uh to honor you. And so, Spirit, I ask that as we go through your word, um, that you will meet us, meet us where we're at. Uh, just show us the truth of your affection and your love for us. Amen. Amen. So, back in verse seven, we see Jesus redrawing with his disciples to the lake. A large crowd from Galilee follows him, and they heard about everything he was doing. Jesus has been doing all these miracles and great things. So many people are coming from all over the place. We see Judea, Jerusalem, uh, and the regions all across Tyrian side. And so, like, people are traveling. There's no social media, the word of mouth is just spreading as people go from city to city. Like, how do I come and get a piece of this healer, this teacher that is Jesus? Uh, and so Jesus sees this crowd coming. He's got to get some to get a boat ready for him to keep the people from crowding into him. Because he's healed so many that those that still need to be healed are still pushing up forward. They're pushing forward. They just want to touch him, just want to be close to him. So this scene is a mosh pit, right? Like that's kind of a description. This isn't like a chaos, like a nice, orderly. We just we went to Japan in the summer. Everything is chaos there, but it's so ordered. They're all in nice lines walking this way or that way. Um, no one's bumping into each other. That is not this. This is Disneyland when Mickey Mouse comes out and everybody needs to get there and get their picture with their kid. There's just this chaotic energy, and even more so because there's a desperation, right? They're sick and they want to be healed. This could change their entire life. If they could just get to Jesus, if they just touch him. So the crowds here, they view the inner ring or being in with Jesus as something physical. If they can just breach the perimeter, I will be safe. So I love to put myself in biblical stories. And my gut reaction here was we can't just be consumers. We can't just go after Jesus to get what we want. But as I chewed on this more, I wanted to put myself in the shoes of the crowd, if you will. It's really helpful to put yourself in the different characters throughout the Bible because you'll learn something different from those different perspectives. Just don't put yourself in Jesus' picture's shoes. Like that's what we want to do. We all want to be the hero. You're never the hero in the Bible stories. You're always the disciple or the crowd or the Pharisees or somebody else. So what's going on with the crowd? Why are they pushing? It's because this pain, right? There's a deep, deep need in them. Social stigma, they don't have hope. They'd heard Jesus is, he's this healer. He's a great healer. Maybe they knew a friend whose life was changed by being close to Jesus. So of course they came. If you were in chronic pain, you would push through a crowd to get to the healer. And God cares about that pain. Uh, in some ways, you look at the story, and Jesus is like running away. It's like getting in the boat and leaving. But that totally denies that he had healed them. He had been healing them and he will continue to heal them. He doesn't despise their need. He cares about your pain, and he also wants more for you than just pain relief. That's not everything he has for you. So the danger of the crowd is not just coming for help, it's actually leaving too soon. The crowd is settling for the appetizer, just having that immediate need met. When the whole meal is being offered, they think if they just get the miracle, they'd be satisfied. But Jesus wants to give them the kingdom. He wants to give them a whole new life. So if you only come to Jesus for the miracle, what happens when it's delayed? What happens when you get it? We so often then fizzle out, trickle away. We leave. That's the heartbreak of the crowds. They came for the clinic, but then they leave before they ever meet the physician. And so Mark is showing us here that that desperation to be healed or have a need met might actually get you to the edge of the ring, but it doesn't get you to the inner ring. It doesn't get you to Jesus. And we so often miss out on that greater gift of just being with him. So many of us today are still like these crowds. There's so much need. You can think of your own life, of your family, of your neighbors, of your coworkers, of your friends. There is great need in there. And then we come to Jesus with that need. And sometimes it's so specific that we get fixated on if only this will happen, then my life will be good. Our world will become whole. It'll be made right. Things will be just perfect then. Jesus wants us to know that when you're in that space, being with him is actually greater than be having our need met. And that's not to say that he won't meet our needs. What did he do? He healed the crowds. That is part of it, but that is not all of it. He's offering so much more. He doesn't want our short-sightedness to miss out on that. He wants to invite us to be with him. We're going to pack that more as we go through the story. Um, so put a little pin in it for now. And then as Mark does, like he kind of bounces back and forth all over. Um, he's almost like a kid with ADD, right? Like he's just like crowds, demons, mountain, family, Pharisees. He's just all over the place, right? So we're gonna pop in and out of these stories and time altogether at the end. In verse 11, though, there's this line says, Whenever the impure spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, You are the son of God. So the crowds are there in the middle of these crowds, and as Jesus is moving from place to place, impure spirits see him. And what do they do? They cry out, they fall down, an act of worship almost, of reverence, and they cry out, You are the son of God. There's a terrifying thought here, right? Um, humbling thought, but also terrifying. The demons had better theology than the disciples and the crowd. They know exactly who Jesus is. They have the right idea, they have the best theology, if you will, but they are the ultimate outsiders. So the point here, in the midst of all this, as Mark is going through what it means to be in with Jesus, is that you can know all the passwords, if you will, all the doctrine, all the theology, all the facts to get into the inner ring, or at least how you think you would get into the inner ring, and still be locked out. The demons have the right information, but they're still enemies. The disciples, as we'll see shortly, don't know the passwords. They don't have all the right information yet, but they are invited in. And so this little side note about the demons here is just to highlight that we need to see that saving faith isn't just knowing the facts with the demons or needing a favor like the crowds, it is surrendering to the king. And over my time at West Village, I've met a lot of different people, and I've met a lot of them that have this idea that um having the right ideas is more important than having the right relationship with Jesus. Matt, if you just believed how I would believe, or if West Village would just believe exactly how I believed, um then I could be here. Then life would be good. Then that person's life would be turned around because look at their theology's messed up. That's why their life's messed up. That's not what's going on here at all. Right relationship with Jesus is so much more important. And those other things will sort themselves out. But if the pri the order is very important. So this whole section of Mark should be a massive wake-up call for you. If you so highly value rightness and intelligence. Um because the demons were really smart, the teachers of the law were really smart. What happens with them? We'll see at the end. They're on the outside looking in. Right relationship trumps right ideas. The next section, as Jesus keeps going, we'll unpack this for us. So we'll read a little bit here. Um, Mark 3, 13. So Jesus went up on the mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve that they might be with him, and he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. The twelve he appointed were. They didn't have a lot of showers back then. Fish get stinky. Like these are like just hard-working blue-collar peasants, in some ways, fishermen. He calls them. He's got Levi, a tax collector. We've gone through this in weeks past. That's basically a traitor to the Jewish people. He's enforcing Rome's decrees on this people that are being oppressed. So if this traitor, and then we have Simon, he's described as a zealot, um, basically a terrorist back then, these zealots would actually try and murder the tax collectors. So in Jesus' group, he's got someone, Simon, who very might likely have been trying to kill Levi in other places. And so it's this hodgepodge team that no one would have picked first. So why them? He didn't pick them because they were qualified, he picked them simply because he wanted them. He wanted them. He wants us. Because this is what defines Jesus' inner ring. It's not an achievement club, it's this chosen family. Chosen family. There's lots of theological terms for this, but the easiest way to think about it is this is unearned affection. They did absolutely nothing to deserve this. And so if you are with Jesus today, if you're a Christian today, it's not because you cracked the code. It's because, for reasons known only to him, he set his affection on you. He chose you. Uh, there's an old uh old David Crowder song. It's actually a cover of an even older song called How He Loves, and it's been popping up in my playlist a bunch lately. And it starts with this line says, He is jealous for me. He is jealous for me. Think about that. The king of the universe is jealous for you. He guards, he's so protective of that inner ring, not to keep you out, but to keep you close. I want us to feel the weight of that love. Not a heavy weight, but like a nice, cozy, weighted blanket. There's peace, there's security, there's comfort there. Jesus so strongly wants to be with you that he has this holy jealousy when you choose something that's not him. He's jealous for you. So does that make you feel humble? Sound like the walls come down. Because it starts to destroy any ability that we have to say, I'm in the inner ring because I'm better than you, I'm in the inner ring because I deserved it. Jesus' love is purely a gift, and that should bring us great joy, some relief. And so I pray that if you only hear one thing this morning, it's that Jesus set his affection on you, he chose you. And chew on that. It's gonna do weird things in your heart as you spend more time thinking about that. As it moves from up here as something that you acknowledge theologically. Yeah, totally, I get it. Jesus chose me. He chose everybody in this room. I'm not that special. Let it sink in. Let it go into your heart and understand that no, it doesn't matter what you did. He still chose you. But why? Why did he choose us? Uh, if we keep going on in verse 14, um, he says it says, He appointed the twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach. We so often miss the order here. To be with him comes before to be sent out. You know, the crowd wanted the power without the presence, they wanted the benefits of the inner ring without the king. But Jesus' disciples prioritize his presence. They prioritize being with him because he chose them. He wants to be with them and they want to be with him. And so for us, as we look at this passage, we need to start thinking through where do we prioritize being with Jesus instead of just working for Jesus? If you've skipped the with him part, you need to stop trying to work for the boss and start sitting with the king. And I know at West Village, we so often and we're proud of, and it's accurate and biblical, like go out and be on mission. We're called to be missionaries. That is part of our DNA. It's part of who we are. Not just because we made it up, but because we see it all throughout the scripture. See it in the Great Commission. We'll see it later on in this verse. And this is right and good. Jesus calls us to be missionaries. We don't want to give up that call. But just like the disciples, we need to get the order right. We need to spend time with Jesus so that our hearts are prepared to go out and tell people about him. And so, what does this look like in your life, in my life? It means reading the Bible for pleasure, not just because it's the right thing to do. Longing to sit with Jesus and hear from him as you look at the word and read his word. It means allowing your thoughts to be turned to this conversational prayer with Jesus throughout the day. This recognition, he's always there. You can't hide. Nice try. Uh, he is sitting with you and so yearns for to listen to you. He wants us to pray to him because he wants us to be with him. Means valuing our quiet time with Jesus is an essential part of your week. When you go without, you start to have a yearning for it. So, how do you start? Those are all kind of big, grand ideals. For some of us, they seem far away. For others, they're just habits of our lives. This is what I tell people often. How do you start this journey in prayer? Pray that Jesus will give you the desire to pray. How do you start the journey of reading the word more, of being in the Bible more? Just pray that Jesus will give you the desire to read the Bible. Pray. Ask him to give him the desire to be with him if your hearts are distracted and want to wander. And trust that when you don't, that when you go back to YouTube shorts or Facebook or Instagram instead of reading your Bible, he will still be there with you. He's not going to shame you. You can still go back to him. You can still ask again for that renewed desire. Just do it. Be faithful in that ask. I know this has been something that's been out for like the past four years of my life. It started with, God, give me the desire to pray. Prayed that for like a year. And then it just started to become a habit. Man, I want to go spend time with Jesus. I want to go on a prayer walk. I need that. I'm going to skip something else to go do that because it's really important to me. Over the past two years, it's been, God, give me the desire to read your word. I know how to wake up and do habits and set reminders in my phone and use the Bible app to nag me. I know how to do all those things. We all know how to do those things. They can be helpful for some of us. But for me, I wanted that desire. So I find it's just slowly starting to bubble up in me. Put my phone down, pick up the word, go to it and find it filling. So start that prayer. If that's the first step that you need. Because when our hearts get filled up with our time with Jesus, then we can go out. Then we can go be missionaries. That's what we see in the disciples here. Let's keep going. Um, so we get to the last section here, um, Mark 20 to 35. Uh, Jesus enters the house again. The crowd gathered. Uh and he, he and disciples, they aren't even able to eat. So Jesus' family, they hear about this like a good mom. She goes, I gotta go take care of my son. She starts marching towards the house and says, I'm gonna take charge of him because he's kind of getting crazy. You think Jesus' mom is saying he's out of his mind. There's some comedy here, guys. It's okay to laugh at it. Um, and then the teachers of the law came down from Jerusalem and they start to accuse Jesus of some very serious accusations. It says, He is possessed by Beelzebub, by the prince of demons, he is driving out demons. Uh, so Jesus goes through. I won't read all this just for the sake of time. Um, but he speaks in parables, talking about how could I be um serving the prince of demons when I'm locking up, when I'm kicking out other demons? I must have locked up the prince, I must have locked up the strong man. Um, because if Satan's house was divided, it doesn't make any sense. He goes on and on. And he gets to this really harsh critique accusation against the Pharisees that they have. Blasphemed against the Holy Spirit. It says, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. They're guilty of an internal sin. Um, there's it's weighty. It's almost, we'll get to it in a sec. Uh, and then Jesus' mothers and brother arrive. They're still standing outside, looking in at Jesus and disciples. And Jesus says something. The first time I read this, years and years ago, I'm like, man, he was a jerk to his family. It's like, who are my mothers and my brothers? Um, and he looks at everybody sort of sitting around him and says, Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. So in this section, Mark does something that scholars call like the Markian sandwich. He has kind of two different stories. The bread of the story is these two stories about his family. And the meat, we have uh the story about the Pharisees and the unforgivable sin. Uh, and in literary Mark stuff, uh, the middle, the meat explains the bread, if you will. Uh it's a literary technique uh that he uses often. And so we're gonna look at it like that. These aren't just disconnected things that are actually all connected together, and they're connected into some of the broader points that this whole passage has been making. Um, because he's using these two groups who think they belong in the inner ring, who think they are the insiders, to show us what it really takes to be there. So we'll start with the meat, actually, before we get back to the family. So teachers of the law come down. So these are the religious elites. You know, if anybody should be on the inner ring with God, it's the guys with the PhD in the Bible, right? You'd think like they know best. They know what's going on, but instead they say he has Beelzebub. They're saying he is working with the devil. Why would they do this? Why are they so threatened by Jesus? Now there's another quote from that same essay by C.S. Lewis, and he writes, the invisible line, referring to the inner circle, would have no meaning unless most people who were on the wrong, unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident, it is the essence. The connection there is that the teachers needed Jesus to be an outsider so they could feel like insiders. If Jesus is the Son of God, then their inner ring that they've defined and made really important is worthless. So instead, they just lock the door, they hunker down, they look at the light of God, they look at these miracles and this good news, and they call it darkness. They call it evil, they call it demonic. So Jesus hits back with them in that parable. In verse 27, he says, No one can enter a strong man's house without first tying him up. He's nailing home this point that he is in control and he is more powerful, and that even the call he just did for the disciples to be in with him, he needed to lock up this strong man so that they could no longer be captives. He's saying, I'm not working for Satan, I'm binding him so I can break you out of his prison and bring you into my family. It's really powerful imagery. But these words of the teachers of the law are so insanely offensive to Jesus. So he accuses them of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, of committing this unforgivable sin. And this sin isn't simply a slip-up, they didn't just stumble into this. It's the sin of someone who stands at the door of the inner ring, they see Jesus inside, they know these guys understand the scripture, they know what it points to, they know who it promises, and they lock the door from the outside because they hate him. He wants them to come in, and yet they lock themselves out. This is the sin of self-exclusion. Something unique to those that have a deep understanding of Jesus. They have proof that he is God and yet they still call him the devil. And so if the idea of the unforgivable sin worries you, uh the fact that you're worried means your heart is not in that place. Uh, we don't need to, we could probably whole sermons that have been preached on this. Um, but the heart of it is that stuck in your head, if you're fixated on that right now, you're really worried that I have I done that? You haven't. The worry is the sign that you don't need to worry. So the teachers of the law were so prideful at protecting their own inner ring that they missed the invitation to be with Jesus and the true inner ring. What we can ask ourselves as we look at the teachers of the law is where does our pride stop us from being with Jesus? Where does our pride stop us from being with Jesus? Yeah, Lord, save us from our pride so often gets in the way of meeting with you. So we see the meat. We see those that pridefully define their own inner ring and remain on the outside. They miss the invitation. And then we see the bread of the sandwich, if you will, the family. The family sets out in the first half of the story. They hear Jesus is not eating, not taking care of himself, crowded out. Um, and now at the end, in verse 31 to 35, uh, the sandwich closes. The family arrives, and Jesus, mother, and brothers arrive, standing outside. Notice that. They're still standing outside. They think they have the backstage pass to the inner ring because of their blood. They say, you know, people are like, hey, Jesus, tell your mom's here. Stop what you're doing. Come give your mom a hug. And he does something so shocking, right? He ignores the biology. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him. He looks at that circle, the inner ring, and who's in it? It's that same group from before, that ragtape group of fishermen, those that used to be demon-possessed, tax collectors, terrorists, and sinners. He says, Here are my mother and my brothers. Do you see the flip? The outsiders are now the religious experts, teachers of the law, this biological family, they're all stuck standing outside looking in. And the insiders, those that are with Jesus, this broken circle of sinners. I brought nothing to the table, and yet he chose. So Jesus says, Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. He's saying to them, proximity and knowledge and need don't get you into the inner circle. Submission to his call is what lets you in. I'm gonna start wrapping up here. So, band, wherever you're at, start moseying, moseying on up here. So if we're honest, Mark leaves us with this humble reality. Naturally, we are all born outsiders. We're born that way. We might have grown up in a Christian home like Jesus' brothers, thinking our heritage puts us in the inner ring. We might know our Bibles like the teachers of the law, thinking our intellect puts us in the inner ring. We might even be desperate like the crowds, thinking our need gets us there. Yet all of them ended up standing outside. So if we try to leverage our background or intelligence or our suffering to put God in our debt, we will find ourselves knocking at the door that we have refused to walk through. And the good news of the gospel is that the way in is not pushing or arguing or performing, it's through surrendering. You cannot force your way in. You have to be called into it. Because Jesus binds the strong man not to set you free to run away, but to set you free to come home. And the true family of God is not made up of those who stand tall on their own merits, on what they've done or their achievements, but of those who are willing to sit down at his feet. To be an insider, you must stop trying to be the boss of your life and simply take your place in the circle of those who listen to him. So I leave you with this invitation. Jesus looks at you today, each and every one of you, sitting in this seat, regardless of your past, your mess, your insecurities, and he extends a hand. He's not asking for your resume, he's asking for your trust. So stop standing outside, analyzing him like a teacher, or demanding of things from him like a crowd, and come in and take your seat. If you trust him, you are not a guest, you're not an employee, you're his brother, his sister, his mother. You're in the inner ring, not because you are good, but because you are loved. And let that unarned affection melt your pride, dissolve your fear, and keep you sitting at his feet. And pray for us and we can respond. Jesus, thank you that you're jealous for us. Thank you that you love us. We did nothing to deserve it. And Spirit, I pray that each of us, as we sit in this room, we look for excuses of why we aren't lovable, we'll know that you chose us exactly how we are, right now, in this moment. May that resound deeply into our hearts. May that truth set us free and allow us to go from this place changed by you. Allow it to build this desire in us to want to spend more time with you, to trust you more, and to sit at your feet. We need your help with that spirit. We are weak, we are broken. Thank you for loving us. Amen.