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Mark 3:20-35 July 5, 2015 “IS THE ACCUSATION CORRECT?” MARK 3:20-35 JULY 5, 2015 And He came home, and the crowd gathered again, to such an extent that they could not even eat a meal. When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.” The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.” And He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished! But no one can enter the strong man’s house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house. “Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.” (Mark 3:20-30NASB) As we get into our text this morning there is a couple of things that is important for us to know. First, at this point in time, Jesus is well into His ministry. Since chapter one of Mark to this point in chapter three, Jesus has been on a traveling ministry for well over a year. It is during this time that He healed the sick, demonstrated His power and authority over demons, cleaned the Temple, and performed many other miracles. The second thing the text says, He came home. Jesus is back in Capernaum. It is important to understand He is in His home town base because those who came to accuse Him has traveled all the way from Jerusalem, approximately 85 miles. I think it is important because it is in His home town that these Scribes make the accusation that Jesus is possessed by Beelzebul the “ruler of demons.” What an incredible accusation to make. Yet there still are many who make accusations about Jesus today. Many of you will be familiar with the name C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis, the great writer, the great thinker, the great Christian apologist has written many, many things that many of us are very, very familiar with. And in his effort at apologetics, he came up with a paradigm that has probably become somewhat well known, maybe it's more widely known even then its author. Lewis was concerned that there were too many people who were saying about Jesus that He was a good teacher, that He was a noble, moral leader, that He was a religious revolutionary that He was a man of immense compassion and great wisdom, and there were many people in his time, as there always have been and there certainly are today, who want to throw all kinds of laurels at Jesus and all kinds of accolades and paint Him as this nice and noble and compassionate and kind insightful exceptional teacher. C.S. Lewis was convinced that that is one option that is not possible...that is not possible. That is not a possible consideration of Jesus, he said. He could not be a good man, He could not be a moral man, He could not be a religious teacher, He could not be a trustworthy leader, He could not be wise, He could not be a spiritual mentor only because of one very important matter and it is this, He claimed to be God. And as soon as He claimed to be God, He eliminated Himself from that category because good people, wise people, sensible people don't think they're God and they don't want you to think they're God. Jesus has even been deemed by many people as very humble, meek and mild. Which is another sermon for another day. C.S. Lewis then said, "One of three things is true," He is either a lunatic on the level of somebody who thinks He's a poached egg, or He is a liar at such a calculated and clever and extreme level as to probably be unequaled as a purveyor of deception, or He is Lord.” So those are the options. So if you came to church today and you think you have an acceptable view of Jesus, and you're here to give Him some honor as a good teacher, as a great religious leader, as a righteous man, you don't have that option. You've got to join one of these three categories. Now the New Testament is written clearly to make it obvious to any reader that Jesus is not a lunatic. Lunatics don't heal sick people, raise dead people and dominate demons. Lunatics don't speak the way Jesus spoke, think the way He thought. Lunatics don't act the way He acted. Lunatics don't attract women and children. Lunatics aren't marked by kindness and mercy and compassion. Nor is Jesus a liar. Nor is He the cleverest of all deceivers because liars don't raise dead people either. Frauds don't heal sick people, don't banish disease from a nation for a duration of three years. Frauds don't dominate the world of demons either, and neither do frauds die and having been buried come out of the grave. So really we're left with one alternative with regard to Jesus, unless you want to join those who think He's a lunatic, or those who think He's the greatest liar of all time. You're left with one option and that is the option that He is who He claimed to be. Let take a look at this first accusation. I. A Lunatic. When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.” I guess that could be a possibility. I'm always amazed that lunatics like to say they're God and they like to say they're Jesus. I don't think I've ever heard about one say he's Buddha. I don't think I've ever heard a lunatic claim to be Mohammed, or Baal, or some other god. But they all want to be Jesus. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out why cause that's the one name that Satan wants to corrupt. Could Jesus just have been a lunatic? I guess that is a possibility. Just like the guy in the mental institution lying in bed saying, "I'm Napoleon, I'm Napoleon, I'm Napoleon." The guy in the next bed says, "Who told you that?" He said, "God did." The guy quickly turned and said, "Oh no I didn't." Was Jesus somebody on the level of a man who thinks he's a poached egg, whose irrational? Not hardly. His mind was the most pure, perfect, His articulations were the most profound. No one ever spoke like He spoke. As a matter of fact many times we read, “And He taught with authority.” Yet they were saying He had lost His senses. What evidence in His 30 years of growing up in the family was there that He was a madman that He was irrational, illogical, insane, detached from reality? None. Was Jesus a lunatic? The closer one looks at the life of Jesus the more difficult it is to find abnormality and imbalance as found in a deranged person. Here we find meekness without weakness, holiness without hypocrisy, power without pride and arrogance, suffering without self- pity, success without self-seeking, love that knows no limit even in the face of death. So if we say that Jesus wasn’t a lunatic, could He have been . II. A liar And He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished! Now, I know in this passage Jesus doesn’t come out and state that He is God, and He does a good job explaining that satan divided against himself cannot endure or stand, but what does the Bible teach us? The claims from Jesus Himself are many and varied. He said that He existed before Abraham (John 8:58), and that He was equal with the Father (John 5:17, 18). Jesus claimed the ability to forgive sins (Mark 2:5–7), which the Bible teaches was something that God alone could do (Isaiah 43:25). The New Testament equated Jesus as the creator of the universe (John 1:3), and that He is the one who holds everything together (Colossians 1:17). The apostle Paul says that God was manifest in the flesh (I Timothy 3:16, KJV), and John the evangelist says that “the Word was God” (John 1:1). The united testimony of Jesus and the writers of the New Testament is that He was more than mere man; He was God. So if He isn’t a lunatic, and He isn’t a liar, then there is only one thing Jesus can be and that is He is.
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