THE OF

A Study of Mark’s Gospel Part II The Gospel of the King

A Study of Mark’s Gospel Part II

Based on Exalting in Mark, by Dr. Daniel L. Akin

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2 Table of Contents

Mark Scripture Memory Challenge 5 Week 15: Do You Have Ears That Hear? 9 Week 16: What a Lamp and Seeds Teach Us About the Kingdom 15 Week 17: The One Who Can Control the Storm 21 Week 18: Can the Demonized be Delivered? 25 Week 19: Jesus is the Great Physician 29 Week 20: A Prophet Without Honor 33 Week 21: What Do You Get for Faithful Service? 37 Week 22: The Feeding of the 5,000* 45 Week 23: The One Who Walks on Water and Heals the Hurting 51 Week 24: The Deadly Lure of Legalism, Part 1 57 Week 25: The Deadly Lure of Legalism, Part 2 63 Week 26: The Savior Who Cannot Be Hidden 69 Week 27: The Savior Who Does All Things Well 75 Week 28: The Feeding of 4,000 and the Demand for a Sign 79 Week 29: Sometimes We Just Don’t Get It! 85 Week 30: Following and Serving the King 91 Week 31: The Turn: From Identity to Purpose 97

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4 Mark Scripture Memory Challenge

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into , proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel.” - :14-15

17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become .” - Mark 1:17

16 And the scribes of the , when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” - :16-17

32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” 33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” - :32-35

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” - :35-41

6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ 8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” - :6-8

5 15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” - Mark 7:15

34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? - :34-37

21 And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” - :21-24

31 … he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” - Mark 9:31

42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. 43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, - Mark 9:42-47

28 Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” 29 Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. - :28-30

6 42 And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. 43 But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” - Mark 10:42-44

42 And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. 43 But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” - :42-45

24 “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And then he will send out the and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. - :24-27

22 And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” 23 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. 24 And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. 25 Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” - :22-25

25 And it was the third hour when they crucified him. 26 And the inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” 27 And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. 29 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!” 31 So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” - :25-32

7 1 When the Sabbath was past, , Mary the mother of James, and bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” 4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. 5 And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. 6 And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of , who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” - :1-7

8 Week 15: Do You Have Ears That Hear?

Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” 9 And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” 10 And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, 12 so that “ ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’ ” 13 And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. 17 And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. 20 But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” - Mark 4:1-20

After a year + of plainly preaching and teaching (remember that teaching was the heart of Jesus’ ministry – not -working), and being largely rejected, Jesus now begins to teach in parables. So central is this method to Jesus’ ministry that Mark 4:33-34 records: 33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34 He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything. As Jesus will soon make plain to his disciples, the use of parables was very strategic and intentional. Remember what Jesus said about the soils? Remember how and why he quoted Isaiah 6:9-10? Remember that the parables are part of Jesus’ concealing and hardening ministry as well as part of his revealing and saving ministry. Matthew Henry says parables make the things of God “more plain and easy” to those willing to be taught, and “at the same time more difficult and obscure to those who [are] willfully ignorant.”

9 Dr. David Lanier writes concerning this passage: Appearing in :1–23, Mark 4:1–20, and Luke 8:1–15, this parable is one of the most important Jesus told. As he subsequently explained, it focuses on the results seen when the sower’s seed (“the word”) lands in various heart conditions. Seeds on the path are devoured by birds (“the evil one”); seeds sprouting in rocky soil are withered by the sun (“tribulation/persecution”); seeds sprouting among thorns are choked out (“cares of the world”); but seeds in good soil produce manifold crops. Importantly, Jesus describes the last category of seed as “the one who hears the word and understands” (Matt. 13:23). Jesus tells the parable publicly to a crowd, but privately to his disciples (Matt. 13:10). And he offers an explanation that has baffled readers for generations. The three evangelists (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) give slightly different renderings but agree on two key things: • At stake in parables is the “secret/mystery” of the ______. Enclosed in each parable—some more directly than others—is something about Jesus’s proclamation and inauguration of the kingdom. • Parables play a surprising role. When Jesus gives his reason for speaking in parables, he does not say, “So that even children can understand,” let alone, “Because people like entertaining stories.” Rather, he offers almost the opposite reason. There are slight differences between Matthew and Mark/Luke. Matthew reads “because seeing they do not see,” while Mark and Luke read “so that seeing they may not see.” Though at this stage Matthew is somewhat less harsh than the others, his lengthier account concludes (with Mark) that parables produce such results “lest” or so that the hearer will not turn and be forgiven. In other words, Jesus speaks in parables so that some will “hear” his teaching and “see” the coming kingdom but not truly “hear and see” (and consequently, not respond with repentance and faith). One immediately uncovers the tension here: Is Jesus saying his preaching is designed for failure to produce results? Is he intentionally being obscurantist to turn people away? The key to unlocking Jesus’s words is staring right at us in the text. Explicitly in Matthew and implicitly in Mark/Luke, Jesus reveals he is fulfilling Isaiah’s words. During Isaiah’s famous commissioning, God charges him: Go, and say to this people: “Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.” Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. (Isa. 6:9–10) While the three evangelists render this command in slightly different ways, all capture the basic sense. Jesus’s harsh “lest” is rooted in Isaiah’s prophecy. Isaiah sees a vision of the Lord and is charged to preach to the nation. His life is spent proclaiming impending judgment for many and restoration for a remnant. God tells him at the outset, however, his preaching will sometimes produce the opposite of what Isaiah may desire: it will make some more dull and unresponsive, not less. While Isaiah’s ministry stirred up faith in some, it further hardened others who were already straying from God. Almost shockingly, the Lord tells Isaiah his prophetic ministry is designed, in God’s mysterious plan, to produce division in the nation between the repentant and unrepentant. When Jesus, then, takes Isaiah’s commission on his own lips, he’s revealing that his ministry will produce the same result.

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We often call this the “parable of the sower”, but it is really the “parable of the seeds”. The sower is not discussed much other than the fact that he – like a faithful farmer – is consistently sowing seed in order to get a harvest. The focus of the parable is on the soils. What do these soils represent?

The parable, ultimately then, is about ______. Our hearts dictate how we hear! Why is there such a wide variety of responses to the Christ? Why do people who hear the same message and witness the same respond so differently? This parable answers that.

How did Jesus’ parables give His disciples more understanding without giving any benefit to those who rejected Him?

Give current examples of cases where those who already understand the gospel gain more understanding while those who have rejected Jesus remain in the dark.

Was it unfair of Jesus to obscure His teaching from those who rejected Him by using parables?

Whose fault was it ultimately that they did not understand?

Is one kind of soil prevalent in our culture?

As with the “path”, is Satan also responsible for the failure of the other kinds of unfruitful soil?

What part do we play in being good soil for God’s Word?

11 While this message is about the Gospel, God’s grace, and our hearts – and ultimately about who is saved and who is not (see :1-8), we also can have some of the same dilemmas that affect our hearing. We too can grow hardened, become superficial, and be conflicted in what we want most. So how we can do our part in becoming good hearers? Here are some thoughts I borrowed heavily from John Piper (with a few adjustments and additions to fit our context). 1. Pray that God would give you the good and honest heart described in verse 15. There are many things we can do with our wills - and must do. But our wills are governed by our hearts and what our hearts love. So we must have a new heart if we are to do what we ought to do, and do it with joy the way God commands us to (Psalm 100:2). And the teaches that this new heart is a work of God. Ezekiel 36:26, "I will give you a new heart." 24:7, "I will give them a heart to know Me." So we should ask God for it. "O Lord, give me a heart for you. Give me a good and honest heart. Give me a soft and receptive heart. Give me a humble and meek heart. Give me a fruitful heart. Give me a heart for you." 2. Meditate on the Word of God. Read portions of your Bible with a view to stirring up hunger for God. How many of you have heard of the word "appetizer"? Most everybody. But how about the word "appetize"? An appetizer is that which appetizes. To appetize is to awaken appetite. And that is what an appetizer is for. So, if the sermon is the meal, the appetizer is the portion of the Word that you meditate on Saturday night and Sunday morning. This is crucial. You need to cultivate spiritual taste before you come if you want to enjoy and benefit most from the meal of the Spirit. Knowing the texts that are to come, spend some time reading over them, thinking about them, committing some to memory and preparing yourself to feast on the word. 3. Purify your mind by turning away from worldly entertainment. James 1:21: "Put aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls." How do you receive the implanted word? By putting aside all filthiness and wickedness. This is what makes the word "unreceivable." Consider carefully what you are watching on TV, seeing at the movies, viewing on your computer, etc. Nothing is neutral, and if we are filling our eyes and minds with filth, we will have little capacity to receive the Word. If you really want to hear the Word of God the way he means to be heard in truth and joy and power, turn off the television and read something true and great and beautiful and pure and honorable and excellent and worthy of praise (see Philippians 4:8). Then watch your heart unshrivel and begin to hunger for the word of God. 4. Trust in the truth that you already have. In our text, the second soil failed to hear the way it should because it had no root. What is the root that we need in hearing the word of God? Jeremiah 17:7-8 says, "Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD and whose trust is the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream." The root that nourishes fruitful hearing is the root of faith. Hearing begets faith and faith begets better hearing. Trusting in the truth you already have is the best way to prepare yourself to receive more. 5. Get a good night's rest on Saturday night. aware that some of you work all night on Saturday, get off at 7 AM and shower and grab a bite to eat and come straight to church. Bless you. God has special graces for you and you must seek his special help. Trust him. He will help you. But I am talking to the rest of us who make our own choices about when to go to bed. My counsel is: decide when you must get up to have time to eat, get dressed, pray and meditate on the Word, prepare the family, and travel to church; and then compute backward eight hours (or whatever you know you need) and be sure that you are in bed 15 minutes before that. Read your Bible in bed and fall asleep with the Word of God on your lips and in your mind.

12 Without sufficient sleep, we are not alert; our minds are dull, our emotions are flat and unenergetic, our proneness to depression is higher, and our fuses are short. "Take heed how you hear" means get a good night's rest before you hear the Word of God. 6. Forebear one another without grumbling and criticism. Psalm 106:25 says, "They grumbled in their tents; they did not listen to the voice of the LORD." Saturday night's and Sunday morning's grumbling and controversy and quarreling can ruin a worship service for a family. My suggestion is this: When there is something you are angry about or some conflict that you genuinely think needs to be talked about, forebear, and put if off till later on Sunday after worship. Don't dive in Saturday night or Sunday morning. And when you come to worship, don't come as hypocrites pretending there are no problems. We've all got problems. Come saying: Lord, show me the log in my eye. Humble me and cleanse me and show me so much of yourself that I know how to deal with this in a more Christlike way than I feel now. You may be surprised how many of your crises get changed in the light of God's Word and worship. 7. Come in a spirit of meek teachability. James says "In meekness receive the implanted word" (1:21). If we come with a chip on our shoulder that there is nothing we can learn or no benefit we can get, we will prove ourselves infallible on both counts. But if we humble ourselves before the Word of God, we will hear and grow and bear fruit. 8. As the service begins, focus your mind's attention and heart's affection on God. Let our pre-service time be abuzz with greetings. But as the call to worship comes, let this room reverberate with the electric power of passion for God's glory. Pray, meditate on the text to be preached, ponder the words to the songs. Go hard after God. 9. When the worship service begins, think earnestly about what is sung and prayed and preached. Paul says to the Corinthians, "Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature" (1 Corinthians 14:20). And he says to Timothy, "Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything" (2 Timothy 2:7). Anything worth hearing is worth thinking about. If a message does not require the engagement of your mind, it is probably not going to take you anywhere beyond where you are now. But that would probably not be biblical preaching. If you would take heed how you hear, think about what you hear. 10. Desire the truth of God's Word more than you desire riches or food. As you sit quietly and pray and meditate on the text and the songs, remind yourself of what Psalm 19:10- 11 says about the words of God: "More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward." So because the Word of God is greater than all riches and sweeter than all honey, take heed how you hear. Desire it more than you desire all these things. As Proverbs 2:3-5 says, "If you cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures; then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God."

Here is Dr. Lanier’s summary: “In short, the theology behind the Parable of the Sower … is that the Lord’s sovereignty in salvation proceeds in a sometimes puzzling but self-glorifying way. The seed of the gospel is freely and lovingly scattered to any and everyone. But the soil is what matters, and God alone can prepare it to receive the seed and yield the manifold crop of repentance and forgiveness. This frees the preacher to sow the seed faithfully, and then watch God work to change sinful hearts according to his sovereign will."

13 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: Jesus calls His followers to ______, ______to, and ______the gospel, while sin, the cares of this world, and opposition hinder kingdom growth.

We must spread the ______so that people might hear the ______.

______are the most striking feature of the teaching . 1) Parables provide insight into the nature, coming, growth, and consummation of the ______. ( 1:15). 2) Parables are by design ______and ______. 3) Parables are used to stimulate ______and cause the hearer to contemplate what they are ______. 4) Parables use ______objects, events, and circumstances to illustrate ______truth, usually with a new twist. 5) Parables ______more truth to those with ______ears, and they ______truth from others. This is critical to understanding 4:10-12. 6) Parables make up ____ percent of Jesus’ teaching in the . 7) Parables usually, but not always, focus on a ______truth. 8) Parables in the Gospels ultimately draw attention to Jesus as God’s ______and call us to make a personal decision concerning Him.

If we do not ______the Word, we will not benefit.

What did Jesus mean when he quoted Isaiah 6:9-10?

The ______of the Gospel depends on the hearer’s ______. The soil of some hearts is ______. (4:4, 14-15) The soil of some hearts is ______. (4:5-6, 16-17) The soil of some hearts is ______. (4:7, 18-19) The soil of some hearts is ______. (4:8, 20)

14 Week 16: What a Lamp & Seeds Teach Us About the Kingdom

21 And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? 22 For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. 23 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” 24 And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. 25 For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” 26 And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” 30 And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” 33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34 He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything. - Mark 4:21-34

Dr. John MacArthur calls this passage the “Magna Carta” of evangelism in the . It speaks to the light of the Gospel, the message of the kingdom, our responsibility as sowers of seed, God’s unique work in human hearts and human responsibility. Here’s what we know: The Gospel of Jesus cannot be hidden. Jesus makes Himself known through the declaration of the Word of God. Romans 10:17 tells us, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” We also have seen the promise of the certainty of the Kingdom of God – it will grow and it will be large. Revelation 7:9-10 declares the same. We’ve learned that we are not responsible for or capable of changing the human heart. That work is beyond us. We can sow seeds, but only God can plow/prepare hearts. In this passage, we are further taught on God’s sovereignty in the process of human salvation and our responsibility in light of that. MacArthur says, “Our Lord spoke about the kingdom of God, and by that He meant the sphere of salvation over which He reigns, the – the domain of His Lordship over believers. What is it like? It’s like seed that sprouts and grows and the farmer does not know how it happens. And he’s the expert, by the way. He is the agricultural expert. The wonder of the gospel is this, you sow the gospel and you go to sleep and it grows. We have no control over that. We don’t know how that happens any more than the farmer knows how that seed, which is dead, or dormant in the ground, produces abundant life. The most erudite botanist and biologist and agriculturalist cannot explain the forces of life.

15 The only human act, our Lord is saying, is to sow and go to sleep while the crop mysteriously grows. All the work of forces completely separated from the farmer, even the best farmer. This is the language of the apostle Paul, some sow, some water, and God does what? Gives the increase. This is also bound up in those very familiar words in the , “To as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the sons of God, even to those who believe on His name who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Spiritual, birth, spiritual life, seed that grows is a divine miracle.” So, we sow and we sleep. That is, we do our part in obedience to the and for the glory of God’s name, and we trust God to do what is His part alone. We trust that God is at work it both the means – sharing the gospel faithfully – and the end – many choosing to be followers of Christ. 4 key words come to mind describing our part in the divine plan of God: HUMILITY – no adjectives describe the sower … anyone can do this because ultimately it’s not about us. OBEDIENCE – we have the LIGHT … what will we do with it? DILIGENCE – Usefulness is proportional to faithfulness … more seed sown = more harvest! CONFIDENCE – This happens in a way we “know not how”, but it happens … the Greek word we translate “by itself” is “automatos”.

David Garland summarizes the entire passage: The Parable of the Lamp (4:21–23) God’s means of making the kingdom manifest through hiding it may mystify those who prefer that God do things in ways that match human methods and expectations. The parable of the lamp affirms that God’s purpose is not to shroud the light in darkness but to make it manifest to all. The Greek text reads literally, “Does the lamp come?” and may allude to Jesus as the lamp who “comes” (compare :5). For the present, secrecy abounds, not because there is anything wrong with the lamp, but because God intends it. Paradoxically, what is hidden becomes plain by the process of concealing it. In other words, God’s glory is revealed indirectly in disarming ways through riddling parables, weakness, suffering, and death. The mystery of the relationship of Jesus to God’s reign will become clearer after his death on the cross and his resurrection—after his earthly ministry—but even then it will go unrecognized by those who grope in their own darkness. Many will remain clueless until the end because their eyes have been blinded by the dazzle of this world’s fond hopes and because their ears have been deafened by the din of this present evil age. The Parable of the Measure (4:24–25) The parable of the measure refers to the ways people respond to the light. The economic axiom that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer also holds true for the spiritual life. Those who do not hear well will become the have-nots who lose everything they might have as they become mired deeper in a slough of indifference and ignorance. Those who hear well will get more explanation of God’s purposes and will have a superabundance of understanding. The parable contains both a warning and a promise and exhorts the readers to take care how they listen and respond to the word and the light. One has access to the truth and must be careful not to turn a deaf ear to it. The one who snubs it has everything to lose; the one who risks faith in what now lies hidden has everything to gain.

16 The Parable of the Seed Cast on the Earth (4:26–29) In the parable of the seed sown on the earth Jesus again compares the things of God to the everyday world of a farmer. The farmer casts his seed and then goes about his everyday routine of life: He sleeps; he rises, night and day.6 Meanwhile, the seed sprouts and grows long—“he does not know how” (lit., “while he is unknowing,” 4:27b). That the farmer has no idea how it grows implies that he is not the cause of the growth and is ignorant of the process. The seed holds within itself the secret of its growth, and the earth is said to produce “all by itself” (automate, 4:28a). This word would be better rendered “without visible cause,” “incomprehensibly,” or even “effected by God,” because pious Jews considered the growth of plants to be the wondrous work of God, not simply the result of a law of nature. … The parable begins with the sowing and ends with the harvest. A farmer is confident that there will be a harvest simply because the seed has been sown and will germinate in the soil and find the sun. … The seed planted in the earth carries its own future in its bosom, and its growth to maturity is irresistible and certain. This certitude could encourage downcast disciples who may have been dismayed by apparent rejections and failures. … As the harvest is God-given - the earth produces of itself, the farmer does not know how — so it is with the kingdom of God. The growth of plants cannot be forced. All the farmer can do is leave everything to God while continuing his daily routine, waiting patiently until the grain is ready to be harvested. The seed has been sown by God’s agent, and now listeners can only wait for God to do what God is sure to do (see Lam. 3:26). A similar idea is expressed in prose in James 5:7–8. … The parable underlines the fact that the earth reproduces of itself, and the germination of the seed and its transforming growth is unrelated to the farmer’s ability, activity, or wisdom. The growth leading to the harvest comes from God and takes place because of the seed’s inherent power, independent of human resources, aid, or force. … it does not matter that the kingdom is hidden to so many; something is taking place underground that will become fully visible in due course. When the field is fully ripe it cannot be overlooked. The Parable of the Mustard Seed (4:30–32) The next parable uses the imagery of the annual mustard bush that was cultivated in the field and grown for its leaves as well as its grains. The smallness of its seeds was proverbial (see Matt. 17:20), but Jesus does not compare the kingdom of God to a mustard seed but to what happens to a mustard seed. As God transforms a tiny speck of mustard seed into a six-to-ten-foot-high shrub (Mark 4:32; in Matthew and Luke it becomes a tree), what God will accomplish through the death and will be just as extraordinary. The tiniest of seeds grows into the greatest of shrubs, and how this happens is veiled in mystery. The same thing, Jesus implies, is true of the kingdom of God. During the sowing stage, the beginning of the gospel (1:1), one must make a leap of faith that what Jesus says about himself and God’s kingdom is true. The kingdom of God is already present in the work of Jesus but remains concealed and modest. Many would never guess that this inconspicuous presence manifests God’s power and dominion that will reach out to all the nations. Religious professionals misjudged it. Even Jesus’ own family missed it. The final stage will reveal a dramatic change from the beginning, but by then it will be too late for those who were unable to see what God was doing all along.1

1 David E. Garland, Mark, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), 175–180.

17 When we are told that Jesus is the , what is our responsibility?

Have you found that in the seasons of your life when you were actively responding to God’s Word, these were the times when you grew the most?

What makes some seasons in your life spiritually unproductive and stale?

How can you avoid such times?

How does the parable of the seeds emphasize God’s sovereignty?

Why is it reassuring to know that God intends the kingdom to grow automatically as well as slowly but surely?

How is the parable of the mustard seed encouraging for those who work and pray for the expansion of the kingdom of God?

Jesus explained the parables to His disciples. In what way do Christians today actually have an advantage over those disciples?

18 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: The kingdom of God is guaranteed to grow by the power of God until it encompasses people from every nation.

The light of Jesus will not be ______(4:21-25). If you hide it, you ______it (4:21-23). If you hide it, you will ______it (4:24-25).

______will see to it that His Kingdom grows. (4:26-29). There is a ______to the growth of the kingdom (4:26-27). The ______is not important; the ______is the focus. The man is passive because the power for the seed to sprout and grow is not in him. The seed has within itself the power of its own germination. James, the half-brother of Jesus, wrote in James 1:21, “Humbly receive the implanted word, which is able to save you.” There is a ______to the growth of the kingdom (4:28-29). The Greek word automate’ is fronted here for emphasis. It literally reads, “Automatically the earth bears fruit.” Once the process has begun, it is destined to be completed: blade, ear, grain, harvest. The process that brings about the fullness of the kingdom of God is not spectacular, but it is certain. Even now it is present and growing, whether or not you see it.

God’s Kingdom may begin ______, but it will grow ______(4:30-34). God’s kingdom program will experience ______results (4:30-32). God’s kingdom program requires ______(4:33-34). For the tenth time in chapter 4, the importance of hearing is noted. “As they were able to understand” implies that the parables either enlighten or obscure, depending on one’s ability to hear and respond. He purposely chose this teaching method, knowing what would happen. However, to those who drew close to Jesus as His disciples, He explained everything. Draw close to Jesus and you get more of Him and His Father; draw back from Jesus and you lose both Him and the Father ( 2 John 9).

Yes, the kingdom starts small, but it will grow large. And the biggest and best of this growth is yet to come! If you doubt that, listen to Revelation 7:9-10: After this I looked, and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were robed in white with palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!

19

20 Week 17: The One Who Can Control the Storm

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” - Mark 4:35-41

On our most recent trip to the Holy Land, we got to experience a boat right on the . The “sea” of Galilee is in reality a lake, mostly surround by a ridge of hills or low mountains. The slopes of the Golan Heights on the east and Mount Arbel on the west drop sharply down to the water. The Sea is nearly 700 feet below sea level. It is nearly eight miles wide at its widest point, and more than 12 miles long from north to south. At its deepest, it has a depth of about 200 feet. Much of the sea's beauty comes from being nestled among the hills, green in the spring, brown during the dry season, which contrast with the deep blue of the water. The sea's location makes it subject to sudden and violent storms as the wind comes over the eastern mountains and drops suddenly onto the sea. Storms are especially likely when an east wind blows cool air over the warm air that covers the sea. The cold air (being heavier) drops as the warm air rises. This sudden change can produce surprisingly furious storms in a short time. On the day we were scheduled to go out, the weather wasn’t being too cooperative. It was windy and rainy and we were not even certain we’d be allowed to go. After waiting a little while – and thanks to a patient captain – we finally boarded. My plan was to teach on this passage once we got out a bit from the shore. But with the wind blowing so hard, I wasn't sure I could stand without falling, nor could the people hear me well because of the sound of the wind going through the microphone. But I pressed on any way and began to read this passage. Then, something really neat happened – the wind died down and the waves grew calm. I’m pretty sure everyone in our group was amazed. Of course, we were not in a violent storm as sometimes happens there. But what we did experience was enough to cause us to see this text with fresh eyes. Imagine the awe of seeing nature itself – in all its threatening, violent fury – immediately yield to the voice of Jesus the King! The one who through all things were made (:3) now speaks directly to His creation and it obeys His will! If Jesus can command creation – and He can – what is outside of His authority and power? If Jesus can stop a storm in its tracks, can He not intercede in my life according to His will, for His glory, and for my good? When I am hurting, afraid, or alone, can I not also call on Him who made me, loves me, saved me, and calls me his own, expecting Him to respond? And what does this passage tell me about the storms in my life? Should I be shocked and disappointed in God when they come? Or, like the disciples learned, should I realize that God does allow these frightening, out of control, maybe even life-threatening events to come?

21 And when they do come, perhaps the same question is being asked of us: Why are you afraid? Do you not yet know who is the boat with you? Do you not yet know my power? My wisdom? My goodness? My love? Do you trust Me? It’s certainly understandable to me why they were in fearful panic during the storm. Some might suggest that – as fisherman familiar with these waters – they should not have felt such fear. I think the opposite is true. Only a novice or a fool would not grow to respect and even fear the nature he works in every day. The seasoned pilot knows the force of the wind. The veteran sailor knows the power of the waves. No; their fear was justified. What is somewhat mystifying however is their fear after the storm was calmed. And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” This is the reverential fear of an encounter with the awesome power of the Divine!

I love the poetic way Tim Keller explains: Why were they more terrified in the calm than they were in the storm? Because Jesus was as unmanageable as the storm itself. The storm had immense power—they couldn’t control it. Jesus had infinitely more power, so they had even less control over him. But there’s a huge difference. A storm doesn’t love you. Nature is going to wear you down, destroy you. If you live a long time, eventually your body will give out and you’ll die. And maybe it will happen sooner—through an earthquake, a fire, or some other disaster. Nature is violent and overwhelming—it’s unmanageable power, and it’s going to get you sooner or later. You may say, that’s true, but if I go to Jesus, he’s not under my control either. He lets things happen that I don’t understand. He doesn’t do things according to my plan, or in a way that makes sense to me. But if Jesus is God, then he’s got to be great enough to have some reasons to let you go through things you can’t understand. His power is unbounded, but so are his wisdom and his love. Nature is indifferent to you, but Jesus is filled with untamable love for you. If the disciples had really known that Jesus loved them, if they had really understood that he is both powerful and loving, they would not have been scared. Their premise, that if Jesus loved them he wouldn’t let bad things happen to them, was wrong. He can love somebody and still let bad things happen to them, because he is God—because he knows better than they do. If you have a God great enough and powerful enough to be mad at because he doesn’t stop your suffering, you also have a God who’s great enough and powerful enough to have reasons that you can’t understand. You can’t have it both ways. My teacher Elisabeth Elliot put it beautifully in two brief sentences: “God is God, and since he is God, he is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere else but in his will, and that will is necessarily infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.” If you’re at the mercy of the storm, its power is unmanageable and it doesn’t love you. The only place you’re safe is in the will of God. But because he’s God and you’re not, the will of God is necessarily, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond your largest notions of what he is up to. Is he safe? “Of course he’s not safe. Who said anything about being safe? But he’s good. He’s the King” (from C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, p. 81.”2

2 Timothy Keller, Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013), 57–59.

22 How is it comforting to know that Jesus, in His sovereignty, led the disciples into this predicament?

How should the disciples have reacted to the fact that the Son of God was sleeping soundly in their boat during the storm?

How does this help us as we face our own mortality?

Can you think of a time when you questioned God’s love or justice?

Are you encouraged to see that the disciples who were with Jesus when He was on the earth were slow to fully understand who He was?

On the other hand, do you see why we do not have an excuse to be as unperceptive as they were?

What about Christ amazes you the most?

How is the lesson “Jesus calms the storms of your life” an inadequate interpretation of this episode?

What is the greater lesson?

23 Lesson Outline Main Idea: Jesus’ authority over the wind and the sea demonstrate His identity as God and as the One we can trust.

God is working in the ______of our lives. (4:35-37) We should not be alarmed by surprises in our lives. They are divinely ordained moments whereby God is working in the everyday circumstances of our lives to reveal who He is, who we are, and who we need! Trials and tribulations, difficulties and desperate moments are when God does His greatest work in our lives. When He brings us to the end of ourselves, we are driven to Him and Him alone as Savior and Rescuer. If He does not act, we will not be saved. Would you really want it any other way?

Jesus is ______, aside from ______. (4:38) The Bible affirms, and the church has always believed, that Jesus is both fully God and fully man, two natures united in one person. He is 100 percent divine and 100 percent human in the one person, the God man. The only qualification related to His humanity is that He is without sin. He had no sin nature, and He never committed a single sin—not one. 2 Cor. 5:21 Heb. 4:15

We ______when we lose ______in the one we should ______. (4:38) “God is too wise to err, too good to be unkind; leave off doubting Him, and begin to trust Him, for in so doing, you will put a crown on His head” (Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Sermons , 3:1857).

Jesus has ______over ______because He is God. (4:39)

Trials and difficulties come for the benefit of our ______. (4:40)

The ______of Jesus is an issue we all must settle. (4:41) “Who then is this?”

24 Week 18: Can the Demonized Be Delivered?

1 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6 And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8 For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12 and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea. 14 The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16 And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 17 And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled. - :1-20

Why do you suppose there is so much demonic activity in the Gospels? Is it possible that the people mentioned as being “demon-possessed” are actually mentally ill and their issue is psychological and not spiritual? Perhaps they have schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder or something similar? That is certainly the majority secular view. But does it fit with what we see in the Gospels? No. Not at all. The Gospels depict Jesus as the coming Messiah (King) who enters into the spiritual battlefield of an arena dominated (1John 5:19) by the “ruler of this world” (:30) who will one day be “cast out” (:31), and ultimately judged (:11). One clear mark of his dominion is his power over the souls of some whom he possesses. It is no wonder that as Jesus the Messiah arrives on the scene that these unwilling servants of Satan would arise to contest and oppose Him.

25 In His classic, Satan Cast Out, Frederick S. Leahy writes, In the examples of demon-possession recorded in the New Testament, we have abundant evidence of the absolute authority of Christ over Satan and his underlings. He provided certain information about the demons, and regarded deliverance from possession as part of His ministry and a sign of His kingdom. “If I with the finger of God cast out demons, no doubt the kingdom of God us come upon you.” In other words, where Satan’s tyranny is destroyed, there of necessity the kingdom of God begins.”3 And so we see the regular episodes of spiritual battle ensuing as the kingdom of God takes hold and expels the kingdom of darkness. But what about today? Is demon activity real today? Are people still oppressed and even possessed? Leahy also writes concerning the challenge to the modern church: “The true Church of Christ, guided by Scripture alone, knows that Satan and his forces remain active, and that demonic activity will continue until the end of time. This belief, founded on the Word of God, is confirmed in the experience of the Church in a world which makes Satan its god, accepting his word and rejecting that of the Lord God. The Church is profoundly aware of certain phenomena which can only be adequately explained if the belief in the reality of demon-possession is retained. Engaged in the ‘work’ of God, she is conscious of that ‘counter-work’ of which Satan is the undoubted author. The Church is also conscious of the subtlety and cunning of Satan, of his many arts and guises, of his masquerades and camouflage. The true Church dare no demythologize the demons, for this would mean a rejection of Divine revelation and an arrogant assertion of man’s ability to measure all phenomena by the measure of his own mind. The Church is challenged by the existence and continuing activity of the demons. She must be precise as to the exact nature of that challenge.4 And what of their possible effect on us as Christians? In his book Unseen Realities: Heaven, Hell, Angels, and Demons, R.C. Sproul writes, “… we read in the Scriptures that Satan has an army of assistants, the demons, and we see that their activity was heavily concentrated during Jesus’ tenure on this earth. In fact, the very first beings to recognize the full identity of Jesus were demons, They called Him the Son of God and asked, “Have you come here to torment us before the time?” (:29). They understood that their days were limited. They knew there was a time when they would be finished, but they also knew that the time wasn’t yet, and so they tried to negotiate with Jesus. Jesus released them from inhabiting the man they were tormenting, drove them into the pigs, and sent them to their destruction. People ask, “Why didn't he send them to hell?” It was simply because the time hadn’t yet come. But he dealt with them. These demons are in many places. In the Bible, we see them possessing people and oppressing people, causing bodily harm, property damage, and all kinds of things. The Christian is always faced with this question: Can I be demon-possessed? I don’t believe so. I believe that people can be demon-possessed, but I don’t think that this is possible for a Christian, because God the Holy Spirit resides in the regenerate person, and the Scripture tells us, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor 3:17). So, no demon can hold us hostage to the power of Satan. Demons can oppress us, they can harass us, they can tempt us, attack us, and so on, but thanks be to God, He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world (1 :4).5

3 Frederick S.Leahy, Satan Cast Out: A Study in Biblical Demonology, The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975, p. 97. 4 Leahy, p. 160. 5 R.C. Sproul, Unseen Realities: Heaven Hell, Angels, and Demons, Christian Focus Publications, 2011, p. 157.

26 How would you respond to a Christian who questions, in this modern day, whether we still need to believe in angels and demons?

What were some of the ways the Devil debased this man?

How do people these days end up being disgraced when they listen to the Devil’s lies? Why does demonic activity ultimately lead to suicidal despair?

Why is Jesus the only decisive answer to such despair?

Why do the demons know precisely who Jesus is?

How is Jesus’ command to the demons different from the way exorcism is portrayed in the movies?

In what ways can someone who has just been saved be a better evangelist than someone who has been a Christian and studied the Bible for a long time?

Describe a scenario where Jesus might change someone you know so that they would once again be in their right mind and come home.

Pray for that person.

27 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: Jesus is the Servant King who liberates those enslaved in a fallen world by wielding absolute authority, even over demons.

“Jesus believed demons were real, and that should settle for all of us the question of their existence. Yet beyond this fact, we see in our Lord’s encounter with the Gerasene demoniac the power, mercy, and authority of the Son of God, who commands the demon with merely a word. In this text we will see the purpose of Satan to destroy and the power of the Savior to deliver. Whether it is a demonic man ( 5:1-20), a diseased woman ( 5:24-34), or a dead little girl ( 5:21-43), Jesus has the power to save.” - Akin, Exalting Jesus in Mark

Jesus confronts the ______:

Satan attempts to ______the image of God in man. (5:1-2) Satan attempts to ______the image of God in man. (5:3-4) Satan attempts to ______the image of God in man. (5:5) :10 :44

Jesus conquers the ______:

Our Savior is a ______(5:6-13) Satan is a ______. (5:13)

Some theological truths about demons:

Jesus commissions the ______:

Will I let Jesus ______me? (5:14-17) Will I let Jesus ______me? (5:18-19) Will I let Jesus ______me? (5:20)

28 Week 19: Jesus is the Great Physician

21 And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. 22 Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet 23 and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” 24 And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. 25 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” 29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?” 32 And he looked around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” 35 While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” 37 And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. 38 They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” 40 And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. 41 Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi”, which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” 42 And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. 43 And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. - Mark 5:21-43

Jesus is sovereign over wind and waves, demons, and disease. Increasingly his identity and character are being made plain to the disciples and all the others who genuinely followed him. The miracles he performs are not merely about messianic identification, however. They also identify the character and heart of God. He sees our pain, knows our struggles, and works on our behalf. Who and why and when He chooses to heal are beyond our understanding, but there is no doubt that He is able. In this passage, he heals a woman without even a word. Then, he raises a child with a command. In both circumstances, he displays awesome power, incredible mercy, and perfect goodness. This passage of scripture combines two accounts or miraculous healing which – on the surface – seem connected only by their timing. But the intersection of these two miraculous events is meant to teach us something more about Jesus than just the fact that He has the capacity to heal.

29 Consider these 3 insights from David Garland: 1) The two main characters interacting with Jesus here occupy opposite ends of the economic, social, and religious spectrum. Jairus is a male, a leader of the synagogue. As a man of distinction, he has a name. Jairus has honor and can openly approach Jesus with a direct request, though he shows the greatest deference. By contrast, the woman is nameless, and her complaint renders her ritually unclean. She is walking pollution. Her malady therefore separates her from the community and makes her unfit to enter the synagogue, let alone the temple. She has no honor and must slink about and approach Jesus from behind, thinking that she must purloin her healing. Moreover, Jairus has a large household and is thus a man of means. The careworn woman has become destitute because of her medical bills. Her complaint makes childbearing hopeless and marriage next to impossible. The only thing that these two persons share in common is that they both have heard about Jesus, they desperately desire healing, and they have run out of options. Jairus gains Jesus’ attention by prostrating himself before him and begging him to come with him to touch his “little daughter.” Though he is a respected religious leader, he is no different from the leper who came to Jesus kneeling and beseeching Jesus (1:40). The woman is no different from the leper as a source of uncleanness and takes matters into her own hands by stealthily touching Jesus’ cloak from behind without asking his leave. Both Jairus and the woman believe that contact with Jesus is sufficient for healing (5:23, “Put your hands on her”; 5:28; “If I just touch his clothes”). Dovetailing the stories of two such dissimilar individuals reveals that being male, being ritually pure, holding a high religious office, or being a man of means provide no advantage in approaching Jesus. Being female, impure, dishonored, and destitute are no barrier to receiving help. In other words, the only thing that avails with God and Jesus is one’s faith. Health, wholeness, and salvation are not extended to just the lucky few who already have so much of everything else. But neither does Jesus set the lowly over against the lofty. Faith enables all, honored and dishonored, clean and unclean, to tap into the merciful power of Jesus that brings both healing and salvation. 2) In both of these stories, Jesus has the power to overcome the defilement of ceremonial uncleanness (bleeding and death) and to reverse it. The Jewish laws concerning impurity sought to prevent it from infringing on the realm of God’s holiness. Jesus’ ministry shows that God’s holiness is unaffected by human impurity when it comes in contact with it. Throughout the , Jesus’ connection with what is unclean does not render him unclean. Quite the reverse, Jesus purges the impurity. He touches a leper and cleanses him. He ventures into tomb areas and drives out a legion of demons into a herd of pigs. He is touched by one with a hemorrhage, and she is made whole. He touches a dead girl and brings her to life. Jesus does not need to purify himself from the pollution of a person with a flux or from contact with a dead body (Hag. 2:13); he overcomes it. 3) These accounts raise a third issue: Jesus’ triumph over death. The good news that is proclaimed in this section is that in Jesus’ presence storms subside, demons beat a retreat, infirmities are put right, and death loses its hold. In 5:39, Jesus declares the girl’s death to be merely sleep. This is not some cagey medical diagnosis, a comforting euphemism, or a general eschatological hope. He calls it sleep because he “wills in this particular case to make death as impermanent as sleep by raising the girl to life.” At the same time, however, one must also be sensitive to the reality that no matter how genuine or desperate the faith, all are not healed or saved from death. One must look beyond the moment of suffering to the eternal significance of Jesus’ power. That power is related to the kingdom of God, which is present but which is yet to be fully manifest. In the meantime we will suffer from maladies and death. Our faith is in God’s power to conquer death, not simply to restore things as they were. We can face the tragedies of everyday existence with confident faith that God is not through with us. 6

6 David E. Garland, Mark, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), 224–225.

30 Do you know anyone who came to Jesus in desperation, convinced He was the only One who could help?

Have you known anyone whose initial interest in Jesus was misguided?

What deliberate steps can you and your church take to lead such a person to saving, biblical faith?

What does the woman’s healing tell us about the role of physicians and the role of faith?

How can we be more encouraging of spiritual babes in our churches without condoning bad theology?

How do these stories encourage us that no person and no situation are beyond Jesus’ ability to restore?

31 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: We can come to Jesus with our requests, and He will honor even imperfect faith when the object of that faith is Him.

Jesus hears the ______of the ______(5:21-24).

We can come to Jesus with our request (5:21-23). We must come to Jesus in faith (5:23-24).

Jesus responds to the ______of the ______(5:24-34).

We can approach Jesus in our ______(5:24-27). We must approach Jesus in ______(5:28-34).

Jesus has ______over the ______(5:35-43).

We can believe in Jesus in spite of the ______(5:35-36). We can believe in Jesus regardless of the ______(5:37-40). We can believe in Jesus because ______(5:41-43).

Five Questions We Always Ask of Every Text:

1. What does this text teach me about ______?

2. What does this text teach me about ______?

3. What does this text teach me about ______?

4. What does God want me to ______?

5. What does God want me to ______?

32 Week 20: A Prophet Without Honor

1 He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2 And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 4 And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” 5 And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went about among the villages teaching. - :1-6

Jesus found no acceptance in his hometown – not even among his own family. This passage shows the incredibly destructive power of unbelief as it demonstrates the responsibility of all people to carefully consider the person of Christ, the miracles of Christ and the message of Christ and decide how they will respond. The theme in this passage is “amazement”. Typically, we associate that word with the response of people to Jesus wherever he went. But this time, it is Jesus who is amazed. In his sermon, “Amazing Unbelief”, Dr. John MacArthur says, “The Bible doesn’t say that Jesus wondered, or was astonished, or was amazed, except for two times: here, and on an occasion when He was amazed at the faith of a centurion – as recorded both by Matthew and Luke. The Bible tells us the people were constantly amazed at Him. They were astonished at Him. But only those two times was He amazed at them. Once with the centurion He was amazed at his faith. Here, He is amazed at the unbelief in His own hometown.” Why such unbelief here?

Alan Cole gives us an overview: 1. Jesus and his disciples seem to have moved inland from the lake to the highlands of Galilee, for he is found teaching, apparently in the synagogue of Nazareth (although unnamed by Mark), which is always his own country, the town of his boyhood, though he may later live and work in (Matt. 4:13). To the last he is ‘the Nazarene, Jesus’ (14:67), in spite of his birth in and base in Capernaum. 2. Even in Nazareth, the effect of his teaching was startling: no-one who heard it could deny the wisdom displayed in it. Nor did they attempt to deny that he had already done miracles elsewhere, but instead of laying either of these things to heart, they were simply concerned as to their source. They were in fact much more concerned with the mechanical question ‘how’ than the theological question ‘why’. Yet the question in itself was a good one. It was indeed the question that was to exercise the scribes and Pharisees later (11:28): what was the source of the authority of Jesus? Like John’s baptism, his authority could only be ‘from heaven or from men’. For, although the scribes suggested a third possible demonic source, it is doubtful, from the sternness of the reply of Jesus, if even they took this bitter suggestion seriously. So the question of the synagogue congregation at

33 Nazareth was well directed, had they only been ready to accept the obvious answer. From 1:22 onwards, the fact of the authority of Jesus has been obvious to all those not already self-blinded by their own theological prejudice: it only remained to recognize its source, and that would be declared unequivocally by Peter in 8:29. 3. They were right in rejecting the earthly background or relationships of Jesus as being the source of his power. It was not as Mary’s son, nor as eldest brother of Joseph’s family, that he did such things: nor was it as the village carpenter, as they would have considered him to be. One can sense their slow bewilderment in the listing of his brothers by name. But, having rightly rejected any human source, they boggled at attributing both the wisdom and the miracles to a divine source. They were staggered by such an equation; they took offence or ‘stumbled’ at him, as the Bible says. The people of Nazareth ‘knew all the answers’ about Jesus: they were not prepared for any fresh revelation. Familiarity, to quote the English proverb, had bred contempt, as apparently it also had among his own brothers (see on 3:31). Jesus himself will sadly quote a similar Semitic proverb in verse 4: the only place where the prophet of Nazareth (Matt. 21:11) was not acclaimed was Nazareth itself. 4–6. So it was that, in the very place where Jesus had been brought up as a boy, the only exhibition of divine power that he was able to give was to heal a few sick folk who were humbled enough by pain and need to believe in him (5). He who was to rejoice at the faith of the Syrophoenician woman (7:29) marveled at the lengths to which unbelief could go in his own townspeople (6). They might be staggered at him: but here Mark says that he was staggered at them.7

It's clear that that amazing unbelief would cripple them spiritually. MacArthur says unbelief has these 4 effects: 1. Unbelief obscures the obvious. It was obvious that He had divine power. It was obvious that He taught divine truth. But unbelief obscures the obvious. And in Luke 16:31, Jesus said, “If they don’t believe and the prophets, they’re not going to believe the one rose from the dead.” He did, and they didn’t believe. This is the nature of unbelief. It will go everywhere but to the truth. It will go everywhere but to the reality, the obvious. 2. Unbelief elevates the irrelevant. Verse 3, look at these ridiculous questions: “Is not this the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not His sisters here with us?” What does that have to do with anything? But that’s the way they thought. They couldn’t possibly have focused on the power; they couldn’t possibly have focused on the profundity of His teaching. They have already rejected Him wholesale, and now they want to attack Him by attacking His family. He comes from a local well-known family of very common people. To imagine that He’s the Messiah, His family’s probably right, He is a maniac. He comes from an obscure town and an obscure family; He can’t possibly be who He says He is. And they speak with disdain of Him. 3. Unbelief assaults the messenger.

7 R. Alan Cole, Mark: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 2, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989), 170–171.

34 End of verse 3: “They took offense at Him.” They were scandalized by Him. It was an absolute blasphemy in their minds that He would claim to be God, the Son of God. This is scandalous. This is the same word you’ll find in 1 Corinthians 1 where the gospel is a stumbling block, a skandalon to the Jews. 4. Unbelief spurns the supernatural. Verse 5: “He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.” He shut down the whole supernatural operation. Same thing is stated in Matthew 13:58. What is this about? Was it a power problem? It’s not a power problem, it’s a purpose problem. What is the purpose of miracles? To attest to the truth. If you’ve rejected the truth, there’s no need for the miracles. As I said, if you had a person in your midst who could heal all your diseases, conquer death, deliver from demons, who could provide by a word a sumptuous meal for untold thousands of people, who showed compassion, who could show you the way of life and every aspect, is this the person you want to kill? But that’s what it was. “Give us Barabbas. Give us Barabbas. Give us Barabbas. Kill Jesus.” That is so bizarre. And this is the ultimate disaster of unbelief; it literally shuts a person off from God. He can do nothing if you don’t believe.

Why might the people in Jesus’ hometown have resented Him?

List some of the things Jesus said and did that are astonishing.

How is it possible for a person to see what Jesus did and yet deny that He is the Son of God?

What are some biblical examples of God or Jesus doing miracles in spite of people’s unbelief?

Have you ever been amazed that people don’t believe in Jesus despite the evidence?

Do you sometimes display amazing lack of trust in Jesus?

35 Lesson Outline Main Idea: We cannot come to Jesus on our terms. We must see Him for who He truly is.

When you consider Jesus, are you only ______(6:1-3)?

His teachings should ______you, but that is not enough (6:1-2). His miracles may ______you, but that is not enough (6:2). Miracles so far in Mark:

His background will not ______you, but so what (6:3)? “Isn’t this the carpenter?”

When you consider Jesus, are you ______(6:3-4)?

In spite of clear ______, you may ______Him (6:3). In spite of close ______, you may ______Him (6:4).

When you consider Jesus, are you guilty of ______(6:5-6)?

Unbelief is one thing that ______Jesus (6:5). Unbelief is one thing that ______Jesus (6:6).

I beseech you, my hearers, by the death of Christ—by his agony and bloody sweat—by his cross and passion—by all that is holy—by all that is sacred in heaven and earth—by all that is solemn in time or eternity—by all that is horrible in hell, or glorious in heaven—by that awful thought, "forever,"—I beseech you lay these things to heart, and remember that if you are damned, it will be unbelief that damns you. If you are lost, it will be because ye believed not on Christ; and if you perish, this shall be the bitterest drop of gall—that ye did not trust in the Savior. - Charles Spurgeon, (sermon) The Sin of Unbelief

36 Week 21: What Do You Get for Faithful Service to God?

14 King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some said, “ has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.” 15 But others said, “He is .” And others said, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” 16 But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” 17 For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because he had married her. 18 For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” 19 And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death. But she could not, 20 for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly. 21 But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. 22 For when Herodias’s daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests. And the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it to you.” 23 And he vowed to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, up to half of my kingdom.” 24 And she went out and said to her mother, “For what should I ask?” And she said, “The head of John the Baptist.” 25 And she came in immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” 26 And the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he did not want to break his word to her. 27 And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison 28 and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. 29 When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. - Mark 6:14-29

Mark 6 contains the horrific account of the execution of John the Baptist – the one of whom Jesus said, “among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.” John’s faithfulness to God and the truth cost him his life. Considered the greatest man by Jesus, he suffered a cruel end nonetheless. While we can certainly and rightfully assume his everlasting reward, it is striking nonetheless to note that John’s ultimate sacrifice for the cause of Christ happens right after we see Jesus commissioning and dispatching the 12 into the world with the same Gospel purpose. What did it cost these men? What did it cost other great leaders of the faith? What will it cost me? Peter and Paul Both martyred in Rome about 66 AD, during the persecution under Emperor Nero. Paul was beheaded. Peter was crucified, upside down at his request, since he did not feel he was worthy to die in the same manner as his Lord.

37 Andrew went to the "land of the man-eaters," in what is now the Soviet Union. Christians there claim him as the first to bring the gospel to their land. He also preached in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, and in Greece, where he is said to have been crucified. Thomas was probably most active in the area east of Syria. Tradition has him preaching as far east as India, where the ancient Marthoma Christians revere him as their founder. They claim that he died there when pierced through with the spears of four soldiers. Philip possibly had a powerful ministry in Carthage in North Africa and then in Asia Minor, where he converted the wife of a Roman proconsul. In retaliation the proconsul had Philip arrested and cruelly put to death. Matthew the tax collector and writer of a Gospel ministered in Persia and Ethiopia. Some of the oldest reports say he was not martyred, while others say he was stabbed to death in Ethiopia. Bartholomew had widespread missionary travels attributed to him by tradition: to India with Thomas, back to Armenia, and also to Ethiopia and Southern Arabia. There are various accounts of how he met his death as a martyr for the gospel. James the son of Alpheus is one of at least three James referred to in the New Testament. There is some confusion as to which is which, but this James is reckoned to have ministered in Syria. The Jewish historian Josephus reported that he was stoned and then clubbed to death. Simon the Zealot so the story goes, ministered in Persia and was killed after refusing to sacrifice to the sun god. Matthais The apostle chosen to replace Judas. Tradition sends him to Syria with Andrew and to death by burning. John The only one of the apostles generally thought to have died a natural death from old age. He was the leader of the church in the Ephesus area and is said to have taken care of Mary the mother of Jesus in his home. During Domitian's persecution in the middle '90s, he was exiled to the island of Patmos. There he is credited with writing the last book of the New Testament--the Revelation. An early Latin tradition has him escaping unhurt after being cast into boiling oil at Rome.

7 And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts— 9 but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. 10 And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. 11 And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” 12 So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. 13 And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. - Mark 6:7-13

38 Yes, you may lose your life for faithfully serving King Jesus. You may actually lose your head, as John the Baptist found out. Mark 6:14-29 is something of a parenthesis and flashback that records the imprisonment and execution of John the Baptist. John is the forerunner of Jesus’ message and ministry. He is also the forerunner of His death. Jesus has just warned the 12 apostles that their preaching would not always be welcomed. The brief ministry and abrupt end of John the Baptist would confirm Jesus’ point: the cost of discipleship is great indeed.8

Take a moment to read the following article by Stephen Nichols, The Cost of His Discipleship, about German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer: On July 20, 1944, the Valkyrie plot to assassinate Hitler failed. The very next day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a letter to Eberhard Bethge, his former student and future biographer. Bonhoeffer had been in prison since April 5, 1943. In the wake of the failure of the Valkyrie plot, Hitler led a crackdown on the resistance movement. Hundreds were immediately arrested; many in the movement already held in prison were moved to higher security prisons. Many were put on expedited paths to their execution. Bonhoeffer was one of them. But on July 21, 1944, Bonhoeffer wrote about a conversation he had in America in 1930. He was in the United States to learn of theological developments. He was to spend the year at the patently theological liberal Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He found it wanting. “No theology here,” he reported back to Germany. But he did find dear friends, and he found adventure on a road trip from New York to Mexico City. Somewhere along the way, as they camped in pup tents and sat around a fire, they asked each other what they wanted to do with their lives. One of them, a Frenchman named Lasserre, said he wanted to be a saint. Bonhoeffer picks up the story from there in his letter to Bethge the day after the failed plot: At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. . . . I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous or an unrighteous man, a sick man or a healthy man. By this- worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. As we reflect on that list in that last sentence, there’s only one word we really like, “successes.” We tend to avoid the other things mentioned by Bonhoeffer, but those things are part of life, of “this- worldliness.” Bonhoeffer then adds that by living life in this way, “We throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of the God-man in the world — watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith.” Bonhoeffer learned this in a very short time in a very short life. He died in his thirty-ninth year. While most people are only beginning to make their mark and offer their mature thought as they turn forty, Bonhoeffer never made it to that milestone. Young Professor in Berlin He was born into an academic family. His father, Karl Bonhoeffer, was a renowned psychiatrist at the University of Berlin. One of his brothers, a chemist, would go on to discover the spin isomers of hydrogen. The family home had a large library, a conservatory, and walls lined with very impressive looking oil portraits of his predecessors. Dietrich excelled as a student. He took his first doctorate as he

8 Daniel Akin, Exalting Jesus in Mark

39 turned twenty-one and a second doctorate three years later. He served in the academy, initially. But he loved the church. As a young professor at the University of Berlin, he noticed an appeal for a teacher of a confirmation class at a Lutheran church in Berlin, on the other side of the tracks from where the Bonhoeffer family home stood. These were rough kids, who had already chewed through a few prospective teachers. The pastor was hoping to get an idealistic seminary student who didn’t have the better sense to not do this. Instead, the pastor and this band of prepubescent ruffians got a theology professor in wire-rimmed glasses and tailored suits. Within minutes, Bonhoeffer had won them over. When the day came for their confirmation — a day the pastor was almost sure would never come — Bonhoeffer took them all to his tailor and got them all suits. He was the kind of professor who would just as soon pull out a “football” and hit the soccer pitch with his students as he lectured to them. During the time he spent in America, he got an armload of 78s of blues and negro spirituals. After the soccer games, he would spin records with his students and talk theology. For Bonhoeffer, education was discipleship. Life Together When the German Lutheran Church endorsed the Nazi party and became the Reich Kirche, Bonhoeffer quickly became a leader among the Confessing Church, despite his very young age. He lost his license to teach at the University of Berlin, and his books were placed on the banned book list. He was appointed the director of one of the five seminaries for the Confessing Church. At this seminary in Finkenwalde, he taught his students the Bible and theology, and he also taught them how to pray. Bonhoeffer saw these three things — biblical studies, theology, and prayer — as the essential elements of the pastoral office. Eberhard Bethge, one of his students at Finkenwalde, exemplifies what he was taught by Bonhoeffer. Bethge wrote, “Because I am a preacher of the word, I cannot expound Scripture unless I let it speak to me every day. I will misuse the word in my office if I do not keep meditating on it in prayer.” The Gestapo found out about the seminary at Finkenwalde and shut it down. Bonhoeffer spent the next year in his parents’ home. He wrote Life Together, memorializing what he practiced and what he had learned at Finkenwalde, and he visited his students and kept them on task with their studies and ministry. Letters from Prison The next years of Bonhoeffer’s life, 1940–1943, are debated. He joined the Abwehr at the urging of his brother-in-law. But it does not appear that he is actually much of a spy at all. He used his position to travel freely around the country — a way to keep up with his students and keep up with the churches they were pastoring. Then comes the contested episode of his life as he became part of a group seeking to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer’s role was not one of providing strategy — that was supplied by the other highly placed military and intelligence agency officials. Bonhoeffer appears to be the pastor in the room, the one who gives the blessing on the undertaking they were about to embark on. Bonhoeffer wrestled with it, wondering if what they were doing was right and not at all presuming it was right and righteous. It was war, and these Germans were convinced that Hitler was an enemy to the German state and the German people, as well as to the other nations plunged into war. Whatever Bonhoeffer’s contribution was to this group, he did not make it presumptively or rashly. The plots, like the Valkyrie plot, all failed. On April 5, 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested and sent to Tegel Prison. For the next two years, he would live in a 6’ x 9’ prison cell. He spoke of missing listening to birds. He missed seeing colors. Early in his time at Tegel, he despaired for his life. It was also in Tegel that Bonhoeffer wrote about living a “this-worldly” life. It was at Tegel that he spoke of learning to have faith in life’s failures, difficulties, and perplexities. At Tegel, he wrote poetry. He

40 wrote a novel. He wrote sermons for weddings and baptisms — they were smuggled out and read by others at these occasions. Bonhoeffer’s time at Tegel yielded his classic text Letters and Papers from Prison. In one of those letters, on June 27, 1944, he wrote, “This world must not be prematurely written off.” He was in a Nazi prison cell while Hitler was unleashing madness upon the world, and Bonhoeffer wrote about being a Christian in the world, in the time and place in which God had put him. Cost of Discipleship In 1936, Bonhoeffer published Nachfolge. It would be later published in English as The Cost of Discipleship. In it he declares, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” In Christ, we are dead. The old self and the old way is dead. And, in Christ, we are alive. After the Valkyrie plot, Bonhoeffer could write simply, “Jesus is alive. I have hope.” To be in Christ means, we are not only united to him in his death; we are united to him in his life. Bonhoeffer once preached a sermon on Colossians 3:1–4, where Paul reminds us that we are dead, that we are alive in Christ, and that our lives are “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Bonhoeffer notes, “Our true life is hidden — but it is grounded firmly in eternity.” While he was in prison, Bonhoeffer worked on what would be his magnum opus, Ethics. He was unable to finish it, though he wrote most of it. It was published posthumously. In this book, Bonhoeffer spoke of the Christian life as the Christusleben, the life-in-Christ. This is truly living, truly being what God intended us to be. Sending us into the stratosphere, Bonhoeffer writes, “So heaven is torn open above us humans, and the joyful message of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ rings out from heaven to earth as a cry of joy. I believe, and in believing I receive Christ. I have everything. I live before God.” Whether Bonhoeffer was justified in his actions of conspiring to assassinate Hitler or not, or whether his death is an execution or a martyrdom, one thing emerges. Bonhoeffer’s contentment, even joy, while being in a Nazi prison cell was rooted in the reality that he was dead and that he was raised to new life in Christ. He could live in the world and for the world, because he lived from the cross. He lived from his identity in Christ. Beginning of Life Bonhoeffer was moved from Tegel prison to the dungeon prison beneath the Gestapo headquarters in September of 1944, just as the Allied Forces intensified their bombing of Berlin. Almost nightly Bonhoeffer heard the whistle of the bombs, felt the foundations shake, and wondered if this would be his last night on earth. In the trickle of letters, which he was able to get out, he repeatedly asked for prayer. In Life Together, published in 1938, he spoke of intercessory prayer as one of the sweet gifts that God gives us. God gives us the gift of praying for others. Bonhoeffer clung to those prayers as if his very life depended on them. On February 7, 1945, the day after his thirty-ninth birthday, Bonhoeffer was transferred to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, then on to Regensburg. On April 8, he and other prisoners were transported to Flossenburg. Along the way, he preached a sermon. They were jostling around on crudely erected benches packed in the back of a transport truck. Large canvases were pulled over the steel frame. Bonhoeffer and the others were emaciated, mere shadows of their former selves. And Bonhoeffer preached a sermon to them. He led them in the Lord’s Prayer, and they sang a hymn. The next day, April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged on the gallows on a concrete slab at Flossenburg Concentration Camp. His final words were these: “This is for me the end, the beginning of life.”

41 Which is harder, dying for Jesus once or living radically sold out to Jesus day after day, year after year?

What is the most recent example you have heard of a martyr for Christ?

What is the most recent example of persecution you heard of in your own country?

What reactions have you seen in today’s world that could be characterized as fear of Christianity?

Why did Herod fear John, and why was he tormented after his death?

What unbiblical practices in your own country are popular, so that if you spoke out against them, you would be persecuted?

How would you explain to a non-Christian why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people?

What might it cost you to follow Christ faithfully in the years to come?

42 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: Faithful service to God may cause the kings of this world to oppose you, even kill you, but it will bring great pleasure to the true King, Jesus.

“What are the rewards for faithfully serving our God? What are the blessings for a life of devotion to King Jesus? Jesus will actually address these questions later when He tells His disciples, “I assure you . . . there is no one who has left house, brothers or sisters, mother or father, children, or fields because of Me and the gospel, who will not receive 100 times more, now at this time—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and eternal life in the age to come” (10:29-30). You see, sometimes the rewards and spiritual benefits include persecution.” - Akin

Expect that some ______you (6:14-16).

Let your good works ______you (6:14-15). Let your good works ______them (6:16).

Expect that some will try to ______you (6:17-20).

______will drive some to oppose you (6:17-18,20). ______will drive others to oppose you (6:19).

Expect That Some Will Attempt to Destroy You (6:21-29).

Accept that the ungodly will use ______means to get you (6:21-23). Accept that the ungodly may get your ______(6:24-29).

Death cannot silence a life. Murdering someone will not put an end to their testimony. Remember the saying, “Even though he is dead, he still speaks through his faith” ( Heb 11:4). Today no one names their son Herod. Millions, on the other hand, bear the name of John. One’s tombstone may serve as a trumpet, one’s grave a megaphone of a life well lived for the glory of a great King whose name is Jesus. Throughout history the message of the martyrs continues to ring loud and clear. These choice servants of Jesus are a wonderful source of strength and encouragement. None fulfills that assignment better than John the Baptist. Herod and Herodias may have received his head on a platter, but our Lord received his soul into heaven for all eternity. John lost his head, but Herod and Herodias lost their souls. In the end there is no question who won and who lost. Bad things do happen to good people. But great things happen to godly people who put it all on the line, even their head on a platter, for the truth of God’s Word and the glory of His name! - Akin

43

44 Week 22: * The Feeding of the 5,000

30 The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. 33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. 34 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. 35 And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. 36 Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” 37 But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” 38 And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” 39 Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. 41 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. 42 And they all ate and were satisfied. 43 And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 44 And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men*. - Mark 6:30-44

For those of us who have grown up in church, this is a rather familiar story. Some of us can easily picture it on flannelgraph. (Am I dating myself?) Unfortunately, the story has often been reduced to over-simplistic explanations that diminish the awesome glory and power on display here. Danny Akin writes, Perhaps no story in the Bible, other than the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, confronts us with this reality of our Lord’s deity more directly than the feeding of the five thousand. Only God could do what occurred on that remarkable day in Israel. This story, so popular and captivating for children—and yes, adults—is so important in the life and ministry of Jesus that it is the only miracle, outside of the resurrection, that is recorded in all four Gospels ( Matt 14:13-21; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 9:10-17; :1-13). In this parable, we see Jesus love and pastoral concern for his own disciples. He recognizes that the intense pressure of ministry with him and his unrelenting schedule have made incredible demands on them physically and that they needed a break. We also see Jesus’ shepherd heart for the people. He was concerned – yes – that they were physically hungry since they had been away from their homes in order to come out to hear Him. But what really grabs his heart is that they are “like sheep without a shepherd”.

45 What are “sheep without a shepherd”? Bear bait. Wolf bait. Lion bait. It was not their physical vulnerability that struck Jesus nearly so much as their spiritual vulnerability. Their spiritual leaders had burdened them with a religion of hopelessness and despair. Their unforgiven sins had left them at odds with God Himself. And the “roaring lion” of this world was bent on devouring them. What did they need? A shepherd. The shepherd. A shepherd who sees their needs and has the capacity to meet them. A shepherd who is unlimited by circumstances. A shepherd who speaks and it is done. A shepherd who will love them, provide for them, protect them, and safely guide them all the way home. That’s what this story is about.

And for the modern, more cynical reader who seeks to dismiss the miraculous element here as merely some sort of moral tale, David Garland speaks: “Many modern scholars have tried to rationalize the feeding miracles away. Some resort to desperate measures. They claim that Jesus had a secret stash of food hidden in the desert. He stood at the secret entrance to a cave where the bread was hidden, and the crowd was fooled into thinking that something miraculous was happening. This ludicrous explanation ignores the text, which does not mention the crowd’s reaction to the feeding. Another contends that “rich and pious ladies used to inquire of Him where he thought of preaching to the people on a given day, and sent baskets of bread and dried fish to the spot which He indicated, that the multitude might not suffer hunger.” Others have argued more reasonably that Jesus got his disciples to share their own provisions they had selfishly tucked away for themselves. The crowd, observing their generosity, followed suit and shared what they had with others. Barclay claimed, “This is a miracle of the birth of love in men’s souls; it is a miracle of the awakening of fellowship in men’s souls; it is the eternal miracle of Christianity, whereby a miscellaneous crowd of men and women becomes a family in Christ.” Still others have explained the miracle away by contending that the numbers for the crowd were greatly exaggerated in the oral tradition. Schweitzer claimed that it was a sacramental meal—each receiving a tiny fragment as a token of the eschatological feast to come.9 All these rationalizations approach the text with an a priori dismissal of the miraculous. It may reconcile our scientific skepticism that asks, Can something like this really happen? but it causes us to miss the Christological point that Mark wants to underscore: Here is one who is like Moses but greater than Moses, who is like Elijah and Elisha but greater than these prophets. When the Israelites complained to Moses and Aaron about the lousy provisions in the desert, they responded, “Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord” (Ex. 16:8). This statement is a confession that only God can bring food in the desert. In feeding the five thousand, Mark shows that Jesus exercises God’s power and uses it for the good of his flock (Ps. 78:52–55). He is the true shepherd of his people, who provides the necessities of their spiritual and physical life. This incident also emphasizes the need to combine teaching with social concern. As God did not neglect the physical and spiritual needs of the people of Israel in the desert, so the church cannot

46 neglect either need. Jesus provides the bread of life. He offers the people bread that feeds the soul and bread that satisfies the needs of the body. On the one hand, giving Bible lessons to large crowds and sending them away hungry does too little. Starving people rarely make good religious followers because they are intent on physical survival. On the other hand, simply filling their bellies without also filling their hearts with a spiritual challenge does too little. The two go hand in hand.”9

And why does this miracle appear at this point in the Gospel of Mark? Sinclair Ferguson tells us why, saying, The previous section, on Herod, raise the question: “Who is Jesus?” But it had then gone on to describe the murder of John the Baptist. Why did Mark not include the answer to that question then? Because he knew that the next section of his Gospel would answer it. Jesus is the One who has compassion; Jesus is the One who meets men’s needs. He is the who will one day lay down His life for His sheep. Perhaps some of those whom Jesus fed went home that day, singing with new meaning: The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want. He makes me down to lie In pastures green: he leadeth me the quiet waters by.10

Are peoples’ “felt needs” sometimes different from what they really need?

How can you determine what are the real needs of the people around you?

How can we meet the physical needs of people without turning our ministry into a “social gospel”?

How can we advance the gospel of salvation without neglecting the physical needs of people?

9 David E. Garland, Mark, The NIV Application Commentary, Zondervan Publishing House, 1996, 257–258. 10 Sinclair Ferguson, Let’s Study Mark, The Banner of Truth Trust, 94.

47 How is the response of the crowd a warning for us ( John 6:15,26-27)?

How did Jesus keep the feeding of the five thousand from being a mere social gospel?

What hope or encouragement do you derive from this event?

48 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: Jesus’ mission of love and rescue is demonstrated in His feeding of the five thousand.

Like Jesus, we should find ______from ______(6:30-32).

How did Jesus mentor his disciples?

Rejoice in God’s ______on your ministry (6:30). Consider the “many” in Mark 6:12-13 …

Get away for some ______and ______from your ministry (6:31-32). “rest a while” means …

Like Jesus, we should have ______for others (6:33-37).

People have ______needs we should address (6:33-34). People have ______needs we should address (6:35-37).

Like Jesus, we should seek to ______of others (6:37-44).

Do what only ______can do (6:37-40). Trust Jesus to do what only ______can do (6:41-42). Recognize that a ______can become a ______with Jesus (6:43-44).

Sally Lloyd-Jones writes, “The Bible is not a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a story. . . . You see, the best thing about this story is—it’s true. There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling the one big story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them” ( Storybook Bible , 17).

49

50 Week 23: The One Who Walks on Water and Heals the Hurting

45 Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to , while he dismissed the crowd. 46 And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. 47 And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. 48 And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, 49 but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a , and cried out, 50 for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” 51 And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, 52 for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. 54 And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him 55 and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well. - Mark 6:45-56

Here’s some background on the text from Sinclair Ferguson: The story of the feeding of 5,000 ends with an unexplained abruptness in Mark’s Gospel: “Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to Berthsaida” (. 45). Why the immediacy? And why the separation? 5,000 people represented the population of 2 of the largest towns in that region. Perhaps Jesus was concerned that if the real secret of the feeding of the multitude became commonly known it would be just a matter of moments before these people would proclaim him to be their long- hoped-for Messiah. Remember John 6:15: “Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” He knew that his own disciples had hardly begun to grasp his real ministry as yet; how much less did the people in general understand? So, rather than be involved in a Galilean uprising, he sent his disciples away quickly, dispersed the crowd, and went alone into the hill country to pray (vv. 45-46).

What happens next is beyond amazing. In fact, the scripture says that the disciples were “utterly astounded”. What shook them so? This epiphany of Jesus! This amazing declaration of his true identity as Son of God, co-equal with the Father! Jesus’ walking on water is one of the most spectacular scenes we have in the Gospels. What is the meaning of this miraculous event? What was Jesus aiming to teach?

51 Again, David Garland is helpful: To understand the full significance of Jesus’ walking on the water, one must appreciate the web of motifs behind the text. This Old Testament background makes it harder to bridge the contexts. Our unfamiliarity with these traditions, compounded by a tendency to interpret details literally, causes us to miss their symbolic significance. The incident is thus trivialized. Jesus did not walk across the water as an amusing gimmick to astound his friends. His action conveys to the disciples and to the reader schooled in Scripture who he is. He comes as a divine figure to rescue his floundering disciples.

(This verb occurs in two key passages in the Old Testament. In Exodus 33:19–34:7, Moses asks God to show him his glory, and God responds by passing before him and proclaiming his identity. And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.” … Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.…” And in 1 Kings 19:11–12, the Lord tells Elijah to stand on the mountain, “for the Lord is about to pass by.” One can conclude from these passages that when Jesus wants to pass by his disciples, he wills for them to see his transcendent majesty as a divine being and to give them reassurance.4 God cannot be fully seen, but Jesus can. The one who comes to them on the sea is not simply a successor to Moses, who fills baskets with bread in the desert. Only God can walk on the sea, and Jesus’ greeting is not simply a cheery hello to assuage the disciples’ fears. He greets them with the divine formula of self-revelation, “I am.” Isaiah 43:1–13 is significant as a backdrop for interpreting this passage. The disciples have been summoned by Jesus to pass through the waters, and Jesus is with them (Isa. 43:2). “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. [It is] I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior.” (43:10–11) Here is the answer to the disciples’ question in 4:41, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” This person is the God who needs only say, “I am.”)

The alternative interpretations that try to make sense of why Jesus wanted to pass by his disciples require much less work to express its meaning. They may therefore be more attractive, because one need not explain Old Testament imagery so foreign to many modern listeners. But these interpretations paint a rather mundane scene that misses the enormous significance of what Mark describes. This is an epiphany, a surprise self-disclosure of Jesus’ deity to bewildered disciples.

52 This epiphany does not occur on a mountain, the traditional locale for encountering the divine presence, where one’s vision seems unlimited, but on the deep waters, traditionally viewed by Israel as a place of dangerous storms and sinister power, where one’s vision is blinded by fear. The sea, however, was the scene of Israel’s greatest deliverance, when God parted the waters of the Red Sea and revealed his divine power over both the deadly forces of nature and humans. The Old Testament motifs in Mark’s account of Jesus’ walking on the water recall God’s mastery over the waters of chaos as Creator and Savior. Jesus walks on the waves like God and speaks like the one true God, “It is I. Don’t be afraid.” Jesus wants to show his disciples a glimpse of his divinity in order to help them unravel the clues to his identity. They do not follow a great prophet or superhero but the very Son of God. He does what no human can do and will do what no human can do—redeem humankind from the bondage of Satan and sin. Miracles do not always evoke faith, however; nor do they always communicate. One can make this particular miracle look trite, as in the musical drama Jesus Christ Superstar Herod taunts Jesus to “walk across my swimming pool.” Many may fail to appreciate the Christological implications of this miracle and, in that sense, are like the disciples who do not understand about the loaves. Jesus is not pulling off a staggering visual stunt to amaze his friends. Rather, the miracle attests that God himself has visited us in the flesh. This spine-tingling, knee-buckling reality cannot be captured by a jaded Hollywood and may be overlooked by modern Christians who have lost their sense of awe before the holy. Even those disposed to believe that God meets us in Jesus Christ may find it hard to believe that Jesus walked on the water and may dismiss it as pious legend or look for some rational explanation. Such attempts eviscerate this text of its imagery and power. Christians believe they know God through Jesus Christ. In this account, Mark presents Jesus’ revelation of himself to his disciples as God incarnate. But he comes as “an elusive presence they cannot control.” We not only meet God in Jesus Christ, we also learn about ourselves through him. The disciples’ fear and lack of comprehension in response to this miracle says something about the human condition when it comes in contact with the divine. The disciples thought they were seeing a ghost. They did not understand the loaves, and their hearts were hardened. We rarely see God walking past or recognize his blessing, bounty, or presence in our lives. In bridging the contexts we ought to reflect on similar experiences from our past where God met us but we were too dense to see it at the time. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we only recognize in retrospect who it was who appeared in our lives (:13–35). One thing no one can miss in this miracle: Jesus clearly cares for his disciples. He sees their distress and comes to them during the darkest part of the night, when they are having trouble in the deepest part of the lake. He shows patience when they fail to see what it all means but recoil in fear. There is no rebuke, only calm assurance. He then delivers them safely to the shore. The disciples see more than God’s back, as Moses did; they saw the face of God in the face of his Son. He is the Savior, who brings calm and deliverance. One can imagine the early Christians who heard this story taking great comfort in it as they applied it to their own distressed situation. As Rawlinson imagines it: … faint hearts may even have begun to wonder whether the Lord Himself had not abandoned them to their fate, or to doubt the reality of Christ. They are to learn from this story that they are not “forsaken,” that the Lord watches over them unseen, and that He Himself—no phantom, but the Living One, Master of wind and waves—will surely come quickly for their salvation, even though it be in the “fourth watch of the night.”11

11 David E. Garland, Mark, The NIV Application Commentary, 266–267.

53 If someone told you that it is impossible for a man to walk on water, how would you respond?

If someone suggested that the disciples created myths about Jesus after His death, how would you respond?

What was the crowd hoping for when they wanted to crown Jesus king immediately?

Have you ever felt that you were doing the will of God obediently, but you still ended up with trouble and difficulty?

Mark records three of the instances when Jesus prayed (1:35; 6:46; 14:32-42). How might you change the time, place, and nature of your prayers in light of those accounts?

How are you encouraged by the disciples’ slowness to understand who Jesus was?

What does Jesus’ willingness to heal all who came to Him mean for us today?

How do we avoid the heresies of the “health and wealth gospel” or “moralistic therapeutic deism”?

54 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: Jesus’ miraculous acts of walking on water and healing point to His true identity as the great “I AM.”

16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. - 2 Peter 1:16

The early church knew of the mythical views of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and they rejected them. Instead, they followed and worshiped “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and have touched with our hands” ( 1 John 1:1). This story has none of the trappings of mythology. It gives all the evidences of a real event told by an eyewitness (i.e., Peter). Finally, if Jesus was truly raised from the dead, we can also believe that He really walked on the water ( Mark 6:45-52) and He really healed the hurting ( 6:53-56). - Akin

Jesus is the One in Whom we should have ______(6:45-52).

We are guided by His ______(6:45). We are encouraged by His ______(6:46). Mark only records three times that Jesus prays:

We are blessed by His ______(6:47-50). We are blessed by His ______(6:50-51). We are blessed by His ______(6:52).

Jesus is the One to Whom we should come ______(6:53-56).

Jesus can be sought by those ______(6:53-55). Jesus will bless those who ______(6:56).

Jesus knows you better than you know yourself. He loves you more than you love yourself (which is a great deal). He is more compassionate than you could ever hope. He is more powerful than you could ever imagine. And He knows your needs more perfectly than you or I could ever comprehend. This “Bread of Life” allowed His body to be broken that your soul might receive the spiritual nourishment it needed. He walked the stormy waters through the dark night that led to the cross, so that He might rescue us and that we might never again be terrified or afraid. Through the wonderful touch of His bloody, redemptive hands, we can forever be healed of sin’s diseases and made well forever. He walked across the stormy waters of judgment in our place, and He took on our sicknesses in His own body. “Take heart,” He says. Understand, “I AM!”

55

56 Week 24: The Deadly Lures of Legalism, Part 1

1 Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from , 2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, 4 and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) 5 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” 9 And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! 10 For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban” ’ (that is, given to God) — 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” - Mark 7:1-13

“It is a grave danger, a peril to the body of Christ. It will distort your view of you and remove from you a sense of need for God's grace. It is a seductive temptation that has troubled the church for generation after generation after generation after generation. In ways it defines the graphic difference between the religion of the Pharisees and the Gospel of the Kingdom that Christ came to preach.” That’s how Pastor/Speaker Paul Tripp describes the danger of legalism. The Pharisees – as we know – have rejected the Good News of God’s Kingdom in Christ. They were his primary opponents during his life and the architects of his death. After His resurrection, they were the instigators of persecution and attempted destruction of the infant church. One primary reason behind their constant and vigorous opposition to Jesus was because Jesus exposed to the emptiness, futility, and utter man-centeredness of the religion they led, taught, and required of others. The foundation of the Pharisaical rules was the “Torah” – the law that God gave through Moses to the Jewish people of the Old Testament (OT). The most famous part of the Torah is the 10 Commandments, but these are actually just 10 of a total of 613 commandments given to the ancient Israelites. While following 613 commandments would be hard enough, over time Jewish leaders began to slowly add to these laws in the Mishnah. This additional teaching is an ongoing compilation of sermons and sayings by Jewish rabbis meant to interpret the original Mosaic Law. The original intent of these additions was to clarify the law, but it ended up adding many layers of complicated

57 regulations. This Mishnah was already lengthy in Jesus’s day and continues to grow to this day. So for the Pharisees, they not only tried to follow the 613 commandments of the Mosaic Law, but the literally thousands of new commandments that were created to clarify the original 613 commandments. For example, in the Mosaic Law, one of the commandments is to keep the Sabbath holy, which means that Jews were not supposed to work on Saturdays. But to clarify this, the Jewish scholars created thirty-nine separate categories of what “work” means, and within those thirty-nine categories there are many sub-categories. So to follow the rule of not working on the Sabbath, there are literally thousands of sub-rules to follow, including how many steps you can take, and how many letters you can write on the Sabbath. While most average Jews in Jesus’s day didn’t even attempt to follow all of these additions to the original Mosaic Law, the Pharisees did. They prided themselves on following not just the letter of the Mosaic Law, but even the letter of the Mishnah. Most notably, the Pharisees sought to abide by the external laws that distinguished the Jewish people from all of the other nations – the laws that made them outwardly distinct. These included laws about what to eat, what to wear, circumcision, how to pray out loud, etc. Jesus’s critique of the Pharisees was that they were legalistic – only concerned with the external appearance of keeping the Law rather than the inward spirit of the Law. Why is that such an issue? 1) It denies the pervasiveness and universal guilt of mankind due to sin. If the Pharisees could meticulously define how to keep every law with multiple steps and requirements, they could create a system whereby they felt genuinely righteous and guilt free. By ignoring the “heart” or the “spirit” of the laws of God and instead by reducing them to keepable “steps” or “measures”, they created a self-condemning deception. 2) It denies the need for and diminishes the value of grace. The Gospel of Christ is a message of the amazing, infinite grace of God that reaches down to the worst of sinners offering them the righteousness of Christ in exchange for their gross unrighteousness. It is a recognition of our failures to meet the standard of God’s Law (the “spirit” and the actuality) and our subsequent need for forgiveness. By pronouncing themselves righteous (Luke 18:11) they denied the priceless worth of grace. 3) It creates grotesque pride and foments intense judgmentalism. The Pharisees were masterful at comparing themselves with common people, with Jesus’ disciples, and even with Jesus himself. They believed that – because of their rule-keeping – they were superior to all others. This also created harshness and judgementalism. For instance, in the episode of Jesus and his disciples eating grain on the Sabbath, they were far more concerned with the 39 rules and sub-rules of Sabbath keeping than they were with those hungry all around them. As Jesus so sharply noted, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!” 4) It allows men who are evil in their hearts to become practiced and successful hypocrites who are, in reality, far from God. The wickedness of many of these men becomes apparent in the Gospels – especially in their treatment of Jesus in His final week. By being accomplished rule-keepers, they were able to hide the violence, hatred, and wickedness that existed in their hearts.

58 John Piper defines “legalism” like this:12 “Legalism is the conviction that law-keeping is now, after the fall, the ground of our acceptance with God. I will say that again: legalism is the conviction that law-keeping is the ground of our acceptance with God, the ground of God being for us and not against us.” He goes on to explain: So if you ask, “How can I get God to be for me and not against me?” the legalist answer is “Keep the law. Perform the law.” Now that is wrong, and the reason we call that legalism is because it is renounced. It is denounced in the New Testament. Romans 3:20: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” Romans 3:28: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Galatians 2:16: “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” So we call it legalism if one says we are justified by works of the law: “We get God to be for us, God becomes our friend, when we measure up by keeping the law.” And the biblical gospel is the good news that this is impossible. God knows it is impossible, and he has provided another way — namely, the way of faith in Jesus Christ, who himself bore our punishment for not keeping the law and himself fulfilled our requirement that we do keep the law, so that in Christ we have a punishment and we have a perfection that is complete. Therefore, God is for us because we are in Christ, not because we have gone the way of law-keeping. Now that leads us to a derivative meaning, I think, of legalism that may be even more common: it is the spirit and the life that flow from a failure to be humbled, broken, amazed, and satisfied by the grace of God in Christ. There are all kinds of attitudes, right — pride, demandingness, lack of mercy, lack of compassion, unkindness, impatience — and these have their root, don’t they, in a heart that is not stunned by grace, not broken and humbled by grace, not joyfully filled with grace? That creates a legal spirit. So legalism is not just this conviction that we get right with God by keeping the law. Legalism is used rightly — I think biblically — if we say it is an attitude, a spirit, a disposition of all kinds of behaviors and feelings that are rooted in a failure to be amazed that I am saved by grace. A failure to be amazed that I am accepted by God freely — to be melted, broken, humbled, and filled with joy because of what God has done. That flavors all we do, and the opposite of it is right there in Luke 18 in the Pharisee standing by himself. He prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18:11). That is the spirit of a man who says right words. He says, “Thank you,” right? He says, “Thank you, God.” That is a right thing to say, but he is not broken. He is not stunned. He is not blown away by the fact that he is saved by grace, not according to his works. So what we want, what I want in my life, is not just to be free from a principled legalism — you know, a theological legalism that says you get to heaven, or you please God, or you win his favor by keeping the law. I want to have a gracious spirit, a gospel spirit, not a legal spirit that comes from a failure to be amazed at my being saved by grace.

12 https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-legalism

59 While we are quick to condemn the Pharisees for their behaviors, attitudes, and general missing of the mark, we rarely tend to see ourselves in their category. Unfortunately, we are often far more like Pharisees than we care to admit. TGC council member Dan Doriani gives four classes of legalists:13 Since the charge of “legalism” is tossed around carelessly, we should define the terms and see who does and who does not deserve the label. Let me name four classes of legalists. 1. Class one legalists believe that they can do something to earn God’s favor and even obtain salvation. The rich young man who asked Jesus what he could do to inherit eternal life fits this category (Matt. 19:16-22, Luke 18:18-23). Many of the world’s religions are legalistic in roughly this sense. 2. Class two legalists require believers to submit to man-made commandments, as if they were God’s law. Think of the Pharisees who attacked Jesus when he didn’t follow their rules for the Sabbath, for washing hands, and for avoiding sinners (Matt. 12:1-14, 15:1-2, Luke 15:1-2). 3. Class three legalists obey God and do good in order to retain God’s favor. Here we think of disciples who believe God’s daily favor depends on their daily performance. When something goes wrong, they are prone to ask, “What did I do to deserve this? Is God punishing me for something?” These three errors are different from each other, yet each is a form of legalism. Sadly, some hurl the “legalist” label at anyone eager to understand and obey God’s law. Let us remember that Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15; see also Gen. 26:5, Exod. 20:6, Psalm 119, John 15:10). That said, there is probably one more kind of legalist. It is a borderline case. This person avoids the worst forms of legalism. Yet he so accentuates obedience to God’s law that other ideas shrivel up. He thinks of Christian living as little more than obedience to God’s law. He reasons, “God says we should tithe, so I tithe. The Bible says we must pray, so I pray. It says submit to leaders, witness, read Scripture, so I submit, witness, and read.” We could call this person a Nike Christian. He hears a command and thinks I’ll just do it. He reasons, “God has redeemed us at the cost of his Son’s life. Now he demands my service in return. This is my duty.” Class four legalists so dwell on God’s law that they neglect other aspects of the Christian life—the love of others, the nurture of character, the pursuit of noble but optional projects, and more. They may forget why we obey God. They don’t see that the law is more than a command, that it reflects God’s very character. That is, we obey, in part, because obedience leads us toward to conformity to him. We don’t kill because God gives life. We are faithful in marriage because he is faithful. We tell the truth because God always tells the truth. We are kind to the poor and the alien because God cares for the poor and the alien. If we return to the man I met a few weeks ago, we might answer him this way. There are Christians who have tried to love both doctrine and holiness in equal measure. In the history of the church, the Puritans and the early Pietists both hoped to live out that ideal. But given our fallenness, it’s hard to get it right. Theologically minded believers can act as if right action will surely follow if we just get our ideas straight. And practically minded believers can avoid the great Christ-denying forms of legalism and yet hurt themselves by wandering into a lesser form of legalism (Nike Christianity). So by all means let us strive to love doctrine and holiness in equal measure. And let us love our Lord all the more, for he loves, forgives, and restores us when we miss that mark.

13 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/legalist1/

60 Do you have any tendencies toward legalism?

How would you recognize such tendencies in yourself?

How would you battle against them?

What is the connection between pride and legalism?

What is wrong with the logic behind “guilt by association”?

Do you know a person who is godly but who chooses to associate with less reputable types?

Which rituals in your church are possible to do as merely external show without necessitating an internal spiritual reality?

Which of your practices are long-held traditions that have no basis in Scripture?

61 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: Jesus calls us to trust not in our own external righteousness (legalism) but in His perfect work on our behalf.

There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. . . . The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit. . . . Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind. (Lewis, Mere Christianity , 108–9)

Legalists honor God with their ______, resulting in ______(7:1-8).

They love to ______themselves to others (7:1-5). It is pretty difficult to compare ______…

They actually play the ______with a distant heart (7:6-8). Checking the boxes is easy. Examining our ______is not …

Legalists make void the Word of God, resulting in ______(7:9-13).

They reject the ______of God and establish their own (7:9). They ______God’s Word to their own advantage (7:10-13).

You might have a problem with hypocrisy if…

You have two very different sets of friends … You judge others harshly … You live a secret life … You have a problem with gossip … You will do anything to avoid looking bad … You claim to be something or someone you are not …

62 Week 25: The Deadly Lures of Legalism, Part 2

14 And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” 17 And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” - Mark 7:14-23

In a powerful message entitled “The Soul-Shrinking Wretchedness of Religion”, Pastor Sam Storms notes 5 dimensions that threaten true biblical spirituality: (1) Religion distorts the meaning of worship, leading people to believe that merely conforming to an external standard or observing a ritual can compensate for the absence of an internal spiritual passion (7:6-7). (See: Isaiah 1:10-17 and Amos 5:21-24.) (2) Religion leads you to elevate man-made traditions and rules over and above the commandments of God as revealed in Scripture (7:8-13). (3) Religion makes it possible for a person to have an appearance of godliness while remaining unconverted (cf. Mt. 15:13-14; 6:5). (4) Religion prevents a person from dealing honestly with the real source of sin: the human heart (7:14-23). The Pharisees insisted that unwashed hands defiled the food that you eat, which in turn defiled the soul. Jesus says it’s just the opposite! Spiritual and moral contamination don’t come into us from the outside but arise within us and go out! The physical doesn’t defile the spiritual. The problem isn’t with our environment. The problem is with our hearts. Our problem isn’t unwashed hands, but unwashed souls. In other words, spiritual and moral defilement don’t originate from outside us. They come from within: from the heart, from wicked thoughts, from lusting and lying and deceiving and sensuality and pride and envy and slander and other expressions of a depraved and fallen heart. Note: v. 19 and Mark’s editorial comment – “Thus he declared all foods clean.” By “all foods” he means those foods that were prohibited in the Mosaic Law. (5) Finally, religion distorts the character of true holiness and godliness, by defining it in terms of external practice only rather than in terms of internal purity (7:14-23). Religion shrinks the soul. It shrivels the spirit. It hinders the mind from seeing the beauty of God’s grace in Jesus. It blinds our spiritual sight from beholding the grandeur of God’s greatness. It reduces us to spiritual pygmies. It stunts our spiritual growth. It turns the human heart into a wretched deformity of what God intends it to be.

63 For todays’ lesson, our real focus is on our own hearts. Jesus’ words are not meant to convey a broad-sweeping, nonsensical libertarianism that suggests there is nothing you can put in your mouth or body that harms you or would be sinful. The message is that what matters most about us in what is in our hearts. I can be a teetotaler and have a heart far from God and free of the love of people. I can have never used an illicit drug in my life and still be lost with only a form of godliness with no substance. (2 Timothy 3:5) I can give the appearance of goodness – even godliness – by my external behaviors (especially public ones) and still be a hypocrite because it doesn't match my heart. Continuing the idea that “religion” – as Storms describes it above – is an “outside-in” proposition, never touching our hearts and the uncleanness that is there, Tim Keller explains: Jesus shows us why we can’t shake that sense of uncleanness. The story continues: After [Jesus] had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods “clean.”) (Mark 7:17–19) Jesus’s language is quite graphic here: Whether you eat clean or unclean food it goes into the mouth, down to the stomach, and then (literally) out into the latrine. It never gets to the heart. Nothing that comes in from the outside makes us unclean. He went on: “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’ ” (Mark 7:20–23) What’s really wrong with the world? Why can the world be such a miserable place? Why is there so much strife between nations, races, tribes, classes? Why do relationships tend to fray and fall apart? Jesus is saying: We are what’s wrong. It’s what comes out from the inside. It’s the self- centeredness of the human heart. It’s sin. In fact, these evils that come from the heart make us so unclean that Jesus later tells the disciples: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And 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, where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ ” (Mark 9:43–48) Sinful behavior (the reference to hand and foot) and sinful desires (the reference to the eye) are like a fire that has broken out in your living room. Let’s say a cushion on your couch has ignited. You cannot just sit there and say, “Well, the whole house isn’t burning—it’s just a cushion.” If you don’t do something immediately and decisively about the cushion, the whole house will be engulfed. Fire is never satisfied. It can’t be allowed to smolder; it can’t be confined to a corner. It will overtake you eventually. Sin is the same way: It never stays in its place. It always leads to separation from God, which results in intense suffering, first in this life and then in the next. The Bible calls that hell. That’s why Jesus uses the drastic image of amputation. There can be no compromises. We must do anything we can to avoid it: If our foot causes us to sin, we should cut it off. If it’s our eye, we should cut it out.

64 But Jesus has just pointed out that our biggest problem, the thing that makes us most unclean, is not our foot or our eye; it’s our heart. If the problem were the foot or the eye, although the solution would be drastic, it would be possible to deal with it. But we can’t cut out our heart. No matter what we do, or how hard we try, external solutions don’t deal with the soul. Outside-in will never work, because most of what causes our problems works from the inside out. We will never shake that sense that we are unclean. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “The line between good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.” Time after time the Bible shows us that the world is not divided into the good guys and the bad guys. There may be “better guys” and “worse guys,” but no clear division can be made between the good and the bad. Given our sin and self-centeredness, we all have a part in what makes the world a miserable, broken place. Yet we’re all still trying to address that sense of uncleanness through external measures, trying to do something that Jesus says is basically impossible. Let me give some examples. One example is religion itself: If I stay away from dirty movies and profane activities and bad people, if I pray and read my Bible, if I try really hard to be good, then God will see that I’m worthy and come in and heal my heart. The problem is that, as Jesus said, that model doesn’t stick. You never feel you’re good enough. Though you’re praying and trying your very best to be good, your heart doesn’t change. You’re never filled with love and joy and security. You’re actually more anxious, because you never know if you’re living up. When something goes wrong in your life, you’ll immediately be thrown into doubt: “I thought I was living a good enough life. Why did God let this happen?” You never find out. Religion doesn’t get rid of the self-justification, the self-centeredness, the self- absorption, at all. It doesn’t really strengthen and change the heart. It’s outside-in.14

So – what is the solution to this sickness of the heart? Surely it is not through the heaping on of additional rules to make us feel superficially righteous. And it can’t be an elaborate game of pretend where we try to convince others – and ultimately ourselves – that we are different than we truly know ourselves to be. It begins with us taking an honest, Holy Spirit driven assessment of the fruit of our lives: Our words, attitudes, actions and ask ourselves ‘why?’ and ‘from where?’ does this come. Here’s a powerfully helpful exercise: Find some time and privacy where you can be alone with God in the solitude of your thoughts. Open your bible to Psalm 139 and read it aloud slowly, as a prayer. Give special attention to verses 23 and 24. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! Write down what the Holy Spirit shows you. Confess the sins of the heart – the root sins. Now read Psalm 51:10-19, giving special focus to vs. 10, 12. Accept the grace of God. And know this, as Tim Keller writes:

14 Timothy Keller, Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God, 80–83.

65 “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). God clothed Jesus in our sin. He took our penalty, our punishment so that we, like Joshua, the high priest, can get what Revelation 19:7–8 pictures: “Let us rejoice and be glad.… Fine linen, bright and clean, is given [to us] to wear.” Pure linen—perfectly clean— without stain or blemish. Hebrews 13 says Jesus was crucified outside the gate where bodies are burned—the garbage heap, a place of absolute uncleanliness—so that we can be made clean. Through Jesus Christ, at infinite cost to himself, God has clothed us in costly clean garments. It cost him his blood. And it is the only thing that can deal with the problem of your heart.15

What are some of your least favorite or most challenging verses in the Bible?

Do you sometimes create ways to excuse yourself from obeying those verses, perhaps by employing some work-around or a fanciful interpretation?

In what ways do other religions focus on external actions?

How is Christianity different from each of those religions?

What is the remedy for the list of sinful heart conditions?

Why is “trying harder” inadequate and even counterproductive?

15 Timothy Keller, Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God, 91.

66 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: The most deadly contamination is not what I touch. The most deadly contamination is what is in my heart.

Legalists are confused concerning the ______of defilement, resulting in a lack of true understanding (7:14-23).

Defilement has its ______on the ______(7:14-20). This is one of the most critically important spiritual lessons in the whole Word of God. Jesus explains that corruption is not external but internal. Impurity is not a matter of the stomach but of the heart. Defilement is not what ______but what ______. Defilement is always about the ______.

Defilement reveals its ______on the ______(7:21-23). Inevitably, sin’s root will produce sin’s fruit. It's important to realize that sin is the root of our problems. We often get so occupied with the fruit (sins) that we forget to consider the root. A young man complained to an older Christian that, in spite of all his prayers and efforts, he was still constantly sinning. "On what trees do apples grow?" was the only answer he got. "Why, on an apple tree," said the astonished youth. The question seemed so irrelevant. "And on what trees do plums grow?" was the next question. The youth answered, "On a plum tree." The older believer then asked, "On what tree do sins grow?" The youth smiled and answered, "On a sin tree." He then understood that the sins we Christians commit are not little isolated bits of evil inserted somehow into our lives by Satan. These sins come out as fruit of sin which is within us. "If we say that we have no sin. We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" (1 Jn. 1:8).

What is the “root” of our sin? I turn to John Piper for the most powerfully comprehensive definition I have ever heard or read: Sinning is any feeling or thought or speech or action that comes from a heart that does not treasure God over all other things. And the bottom of sin, the root of all sinning, is such a heart — a heart that prefers anything above God, a heart that does not treasure God over all other persons and all other things. Sin is: The glory of God not honored. The holiness of God not reverenced. The greatness of God not admired. The power of God not praised. The truth of God not sought. The wisdom of God not esteemed. The beauty of God not treasured. The goodness of God not savored. The faithfulness of God not trusted. The promises of God not believed. The commandments of God not obeyed. The justice of God not respected. The wrath of God not feared. The grace of God not cherished. The presence of God not prized. The person of God not loved.

67

68 Week 26: The Savior Who Cannot Be Hidden

24 And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. 25 But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” 30 And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. - Mark 7:24-30

“Jesus had a way of exasperating people. . . . It only takes a glance through one of the Gospels. Before you know it, you find yourself squirming”.16 Does this passage make you a bit uneasy? A needy mom, desperate for God’s intervention, approaches Jesus and asks for a miracle, and he responds by referring to her (and Gentiles in general) as “dogs” getting scraps from the table? What do you make of this?

Tim Keller’s commentary17 is especially helpful here: How do you approach God? How do you connect with him? Most of us can think of two options. There is the ancient understanding: God is a bloodthirsty tyrant who needs to be constantly appeased by good behavior if not outright sacrifice. And there’s the modern understanding of God: He’s a spiritual force we can access anytime we want, no questions asked. But Mark tells us a story showing us that approaching God might mean something else entirely. The story begins with the mysterious statement that Jesus went to the vicinity of Tyre and did not want anyone to know it. What was going on? Well, Jesus had been spending all of his time ministering in Jewish provinces, and that ministry was drawing overwhelming crowds, and he was exhausted. So Jesus left the Jewish provinces and went into a Gentile territory, Tyre, in order to get some rest. But it doesn’t work. A woman hears of his arrival and makes her way boldly to Jesus. Though she’s a Syrophoenician, because of Tyre’s proximity to she would have known the Jewish customs. She knows that she has none of the religious, moral, and cultural credentials necessary to approach a Jewish rabbi—she is a Phoenician, a Gentile, a pagan, a woman, and her daughter has an unclean spirit. She knows that in every way, according to the standards of the day, she is unclean and therefore disqualified to approach any devout Jew, let alone a rabbi. But she doesn’t care. She enters the house

16 Joni Eareckson Tada, Glorious Intruder, 124 17 Timothy Keller, Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God, 92–97.

69 without an invitation, falls down and begins begging Jesus to exorcise a demon from her daughter. The verb beg here is a present progressive—she keeps on begging. Nothing and no one can stop her. In Matthew’s Gospel chapter 15, the parallel account, the disciples urge Jesus to send her away. But she’s pleading with Jesus—she won’t take no for an answer. You know why she has this burst of boldness, don’t you? There are cowards, there are regular people, there are heroes, and then there are parents. Parents are not really on the spectrum from cowardice to courage, because if your child is in jeopardy, you simply do what it takes to save her. It doesn’t matter whether you’re normally timid or brazen—your personality is irrelevant. You don’t think twice; you do what it takes. So it’s not all that surprising that this desperate mother is willing to push past all the barriers. So what is Jesus’s response to this woman as she is down on the floor begging? The story continues: She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” (Mark 7:26–27) On the surface, this appears to be an insult. We are a canine-loving society, but in New Testament times most dogs were scavengers—wild, dirty, uncouth in every way. Their society was not canine- loving, and to call someone a dog was a terrible insult. In Jesus’s day the Jews often called the Gentiles dogs because they were “unclean.” Is what Jesus says to her just an insult, then? No, it’s a parable. The word parable means “metaphor” or “likeness,” and that’s what this is. One key to understanding it is the very unusual word Jesus uses for “dogs” here. He uses a diminutive form, a word that really means “puppies.” Remember, the woman is a mother. Jesus is saying to her, “You know how families eat: First the children eat at the table, and afterward their pets eat too. It is not right to violate that order. The puppies must not eat food from the table before the children do.” If we go to Matthew’s account of this incident, he gives us a slightly longer version of Jesus’s answer in which Jesus explains his meaning: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” Jesus concentrated his ministry on Israel, for all sorts of reasons. He was sent to show Israel that he was the fulfillment of all Scripture’s promises, the fulfillment of all the prophets, priests, and kings, the fulfillment of the temple. But after he was resurrected, he immediately said to the disciples, “Go to all the nations.” His words, then, are not the insult they appear to be. What he’s saying to the Syrophoenician woman is, “Please understand, there’s an order here. I’m going to Israel first, then the Gentiles (the other nations) later.” However, this mother comes back at him with an astounding reply: “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. (Mark 7:28–30) In other words, she says, Yes, Lord, but the puppies eat from that table too, and I’m here for mine. Jesus has told her a parable in which he has given her a combination of challenge and offer, and she gets it. She responds to the challenge: “Okay, I understand. I am not from Israel, I do not worship the God that the Israelites worship. Therefore, I don’t have a place at the table. I accept that.” Isn’t this amazing? She doesn’t take offense; she doesn’t stand on her rights. She says, “All right. I may not have a place at the table—but there’s more than enough on that table for everyone in the world, and I need mine now.” She is wrestling with Jesus in the most respectful way and she will not take no for an answer. I love what this woman is doing.

70 In Western cultures we don’t have anything like this kind of assertiveness. We only have assertion of our rights. We do not know how to contend unless we’re standing up for our rights, standing on our dignity and our goodness and saying, “This is what I’m owed.” But this woman is not doing that at all. This is rightless assertiveness, something we know little about. She’s not saying, “Lord, give me what I deserve on the basis of my goodness.” She’s saying, “Give me what I don’t deserve on the basis of your goodness—and I need it now.” Do you see how remarkable it is that she recognizes and accepts both the challenge and the offer hidden within it? A good translation of Jesus’s rabbinical reply to her would be “Such an answer!” Some of the translations have Jesus saying “Wonderful answer, incredible answer.” And so her plea is answered and her daughter is healed. In his study of Mark, biblical scholar James Edwards puts it wonderfully: She appears to understand the purpose of Israel’s Messiah better than Israel does. Her pluck and persistence are a testimony to her trust in the sufficiency and surplus of Jesus: his provision for the disciples and Israel will be abundant enough to provide for one such as herself.… What an irony! Jesus seeks desperately to teach his chosen disciples—yet they are dull and uncomprehending; Jesus is reluctant to even speak to a walk-on pagan woman—and after one sentence she understands his mission and receives his unambiguous commendation.… How is this possible? The answer is that the woman is the first person in Mark to hear and understand a parable of Jesus.… That she answers Jesus from “within” the parable, that is, in the terms by which Jesus addressed her, indicates that she is the first person in the Gospel to hear the word of Jesus to her.18

As you read this text today and consider the lessons for us therein, focus on the faith of this woman. It is displayed in at least these ways: 1. Her faith was humble. This woman comes to Jesus with no demands, only a heartfelt plea for mercy (v. 26). She says nothing of “rights” or “privileges” or “authority” or “expectations” or of what she thinks she is “owed”. She makes no claims. She utters no complaints. She nowhere suggests that she and her daughter deserve better than they’ve received. There is no sense of entitlement on her part. 2. Her faith was persistent. According to Matthew’s account, she “was crying.” A better rendering of this verb would be, she “kept on crying”; she repeatedly cried out. This wasn’t a one-time request. 3. Her faith was not “in faith”, but in Christ Jesus. There is no sense of the paganism or mysticism that marked the religion of the people in her area in her day. Her faith is purely and solely in Jesus to do this. If He does not respond, her daughter will not be delivered. Soo much that masquerades as “faith” today is nothing more than Christianized witchcraft. Some teach as if “faith” was a force that can be conjured up or even commanded. We know better. What makes faith “great” is always its object, never its amount. It is the glorious King Jesus who is the source of this miracle. We credit his goodness and might far more than we credit her faith.

18 James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, p. 221.

71 How do you approach Jesus when you have a need?

Do you ever find yourself coming with a sense of entitlement?

Coming with complaints over the “unfairness” of your situation?

Coming with a sense that you “deserve” for God to work or that you have “earned” His response with good works or behaviors?

What does this passage tell us about Jesus’ concern for all people?

How does this passage help us understand his mission and the priority of Israel?

Why is it critical that we recognize Jesus as the fulfiller of Old Testament prophecies?

How is that critical to how we understand Him as Messiah?

72 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: No one is so unworthy that they cannot receive the blessing of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the Savior who cannot be ______(7:24-30).

Jesus cares for the ______, and so should we (7:24). That Jesus chose to get away in the region of Tyre and Sidon is missiologically significant. As best we can tell, this is the only time Jesus ventured beyond the borders of Israel. Further, Tyre and Sidon were inhabited by pagan Gentiles, and the region had a long history of opposition to Israel. This had been the home of Jezebel ( 1 Kgs 16:31-32). Both Ezekiel (ch. 26) and Zechariah (ch. 9) prophesied against her. James Edwards says, “Tyre probably represented the most extreme expression of paganism, both actually and symbolically, that a Jew could expect to encounter” (Edwards, Mark , 217). Yet Jesus goes there and graciously expands the scope and reach of the Messiah beyond what Israel expected. - Akin

Jesus cares for the ______, and so should we (7:25-27). Why did Jesus use the term “dogs” to describe people in this encounter?

What is the meaning of this mini-parable?

Jesus cares for the ______, and so should we (7:28-30). Why was her response to Jesus so fitting?

How are we like the “dogs” in this passage?

73

74 Week 27: The Savior Who Does All Things Well

31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. 34 And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” - Mark 7:31-37

It’s harder to find a better concise statement that sums up Jesus in Mark’s Gospel so far than this one: “He has done all things well”.

Jesus’ travel itinerary takes him to the sea of Galilee by way of a circuitous route that passes through Sidon and then back through the district of the Decapolis – a region containing 10 Gentile cities. Perhaps Jesus intent is maintain secrecy (7:24), or it is simply part of his plan to extend the message of the Kingdom of God to the Gentiles. Just as the Jewish crowds in Galilee brought their sick to Jesus (1:22; 8:22; 9:20), so a Gentile crowd brings a deaf and speechless man to him and begs him to place his hand on him (see 5:23; 6:5; 8:22, 25). Jesus displays great compassion, tender mercy, and awesome power as he heals this man. As the parent of a son with profound disabilities, I can only imagine the joy in this man’s family and in this man himself at the occasion of this miracle. Surely he was written off by the community around him and likely deemed less valuable than other people. Perhaps his life had been marked by negligence or even abuse as he was unable to speak up for himself. At the very least, he lived a diminished existence until he was delivered by Jesus. I can only imagine the shouts for joy and tears of gladness that must have marked that day. And here’s;’ an interesting irony: Jesus can command storms, demons, and illnesses, but his orders for people to keep silent fall on deaf ears. But we can hardly blame them, right? What would your reaction be to being able to hear and speak for the first time? How much celebrating would you do? How many people would you tell? But this miracle – like all others in Mark’s Gospel – is about more than the needs of 1 person being met. This miracle is about the ongoing revelation of Jesus Christ as God’s promised Messiah so that we all would humble ourselves, bow at his feet, and worship him as our King!

75 Again, Keller’s words are especially poignant here: Jesus deeply identifies with this man. All the touching of his ears, touching his mouth—it’s sign language. Jesus is saying, “Let’s go over here; don’t be afraid, I’m going to do something about that; now let’s look to God.” He comes into the man’s cognitive world and uses terms—nonverbal speech—that he can understand. Notice how he takes him away from the crowd. Why does he do that—wouldn’t he want everyone to see? Well, imagine this man as he grew up. He’s always been a spectacle. He’s deaf, and therefore he can’t produce proper speech. Just imagine the way people made fun of him all his life. Jesus knows this, and refuses to make a spectacle of him now. He is identifying with him emotionally. But there’s a deeper identification yet, because at one point Jesus utters a deep sigh. A better translation might be “he moaned.” A moan is an expression of pain. Why would Jesus be in pain? Maybe it’s because he has emotionally connected with the man and his alienation and isolation. That’s true, but he’s about to heal him. Why isn’t Jesus grinning at the man saying, “Wait till you see what I’m going to do for you”? Because an even deeper identification is going on: There is a cost for Jesus’s healing this man. Mark deliberately signals this with the word he uses for “deaf and could hardly talk.” A single Greek word, moglilalos, is used there and no other place in the Bible except Isaiah 35:5. It’s a very rare word, and Mark would have no reason to use it unless he wanted us to cross-reference what’s happening here with Isaiah 35. The prophet Isaiah says this about the Messiah: “ ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come … with divine retribution … to save you.’ Then will the eyes of the blind be open and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy” (Isaiah 35:4–6). Mark is saying: Do you see the blind opening their eyes? Do you see the deaf hearing, do you hear the mute tongue shouting for joy? God has come, just as Isaiah 35 promised; God has come to save you. Jesus Christ is God come to save us. Jesus is the King. There’s something else Mark wants his readers to think about. Isaiah says the Messiah will come to save us “with divine retribution.” But Jesus isn’t smiting people. He’s not taking out his sword. He’s not taking power; he’s giving it away. He’s not taking over the world; he’s serving it. Where’s the divine retribution? And the answer is, he didn’t come to bring divine retribution; he came to bear it. On the cross, Jesus would identify with us totally. On the cross, the Child of God was thrown away, cast away from the table without a crumb, so that those of us who are not children of God could be adopted and brought in. Put another way, the Child had to become a dog so that we could become sons and daughters at the table. And because Jesus identified like that with us, now we know why we can approach him. The Son became a dog so that we dogs could be brought to the table; he became mute so that our tongues can be loosed to call him King. Don’t be too isolated to think you are beyond healing. Don’t be too proud to accept what the gospel says about your unworthiness. Don’t be too despondent to accept what the gospel says about how loved you are.19

What has God done for you?

Who have you told?

19 Timothy Keller, Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God, 100–102.

76 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: Jesus is the true Servant King, as He befriends the most wretched of sinners, including you and me!

Jesus Is the Savior who ______(7:31-37).

Jesus hears our ______(7:31-35). As Jesus looks to heaven he ______(34) Why?

Then he said “Ephphatha”, which means ______.

Jesus deserves our ______(7:36-37).

How does this miracle display the “grand redemptive storyline” of Scripture? Creation – Fall – Restoration –

Mark’s conclusion has deep theological significance. “He has done everything well (good)” echoes creation and God’s work in Genesis 1–2. “He even makes deaf people hear, and people unable to speak, talk” recalls Isaiah, who wrote that when the Messiah comes, “the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then the lame man will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy, for waters will gush in the wilderness, and streams in the desert” ( Isa 35:5-6).

- Akin

What proofs have you seen so far in Mark’s Gospel that affirm your faith in Jesus as Messiah?

How does this miracle reveal the heart of Jesus towards you?

77

78 Week 28: * The Feeding of the 4000 and the Demand for a Sign

1 In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, 2 “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. 3 And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.” 4 And his disciples answered him, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” 5 And he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” 6 And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and they set them before the crowd. 7 And they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. 8 And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. 9 And there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. 10 And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha. 11 The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. 12 And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” 13 And he left them, got into the boat again, and went to the other side. - Mark 8:1-13

In one of the most unintentionally ironic passages in Mark, Jesus performs another staggering miracle (similar, but distinct from the previous feeding of a massive crowd) in full view of all the people and yet the Pharisees, bent on unbelief ask for “a sign from heaven”! This demand from the Pharisees is so significant that it is recorded in all 4 Gospels. How many ‘signs’ can you count so far in Mark’s Gospel? How much proof has he already given for people to accept that He is the Messiah and for them to pledge their loyalty to and faith in him? When someone has determined not to believe – and hardened their own hearts – what proof is there that will convince them?

Before we get to their reaction to the great miracle of feeding 4,000, let’s deal with the miracle itself for a moment. From Sinclair Ferguson: We have already noticed that there is a kind of parallel running through this section of Mark’s Gospel. The feeding of a multitude is followed by a sea voyage, conflict with the Pharisees, a discussion which has bread as its theme, leading to a remarkable healing and climaxing in a confession of faith. We will see later that this repeated pattern is of considerable significance for Mark. Through it he is indicating how slow of heart the disciples were to recognize and trust in Christ.

79 Here in this section, Jesus feeds ‘another large crowd’ (v, 1) There are obvious similarities between 8:1-13 and 6:30-43,) both cases the pattern of the miracle is similar; in both cases the motivation of Jesus is the same — compassion; in both cases there is a plentiful supply of food, miraculously created from a meager supply of bread and fish. It is often said today that somehow the narrative of Jesus’ ministry became confused at this point, and this passage betrays a confusion in the memory of the disciples, or perhaps simply a repetition by the author because of a special point he wants to make. A little thought underlines how impossible that is. For one thing, miracles in which thousands of people are fed from: handful of loaves are too memorable for anyone to think that happened twice if it happened only once. The idea that a confusion in memory took place is ludicrous. But further, the discussion which follows in 8:14—21 assumes there were two feedings. If there was only one, not only 1s the second story confused, the passage which follows it is a complete fabrication. What is the message of this miracle? It demonstrates the compassion of Jesus, as we have seen. But it is interesting to see this miracle in the context of the ancient promises God had given to his people about the blessings the Messiah would bring when he inaugurated his kingdom. He would supply bread for the hungry. Here is how Isaiah put it: ‘You who have no money, come, buy and eat! ... Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what 1s good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare (Isa. 55:1-2). When Jesus’ coming had been promised, Mary had praised God as one who had ‘filled the hungry with good things (:53). Like all the miracles, this miracle points to the identity of our Lord. There is another emphasis here. In the earlier feeding miracle it seems that the disciples’ “bank balance’ was in very good order. ‘Are we to go and spend that much [that is, eight months of a man’s wages| on food?’ they asked. Among twelve of them that sum amounted to two or three weeks’ wages. It is not impossible that they had such a sum. It is also possible that this was at a time before began to siphon off the funds for himself ( John 12:6). At the time of the second feeding, however, the disciples had insufficient resources. There was nowhere to buy food in this remote area, even if they had the money. Christ himself was their only resource. For the disciples this lesson was one they needed to learn over and over again. This second feeding miracle also seems to have been set in the region of the Decapolis, on the far side of the Sea of Galilee. ‘That distinguishes it from the first miracle not only geographically but also ethnically and religiously. This crowd was probably a mixed group of Jews and Gentiles, perhaps none of them deeply committed, but awakened by the presence and teaching of Jesus, and hungry to listen to him. In this case, the feeding of the multitude foreshadows the gathering together of those from every nation under heaven to the heavenly feeding of God’s people. But it also points to the ‘feeding’ of the people of God in the church today. Already Jesus was hinting (as perhaps the woman from Syrian Phoenicia had begun to see) that he would break down barriers which separated men and women from fellowship with one another.20

And now back to the Pharisees. What exactly were they seeking? More of the same? Something bigger than making the blind see or the deaf here? Something more amazing than feeding a multitude – twice – with food meant for 1? Something more phenomenal than raising the dead to life?

20 Ferguson, Let’s Study Mark, 117-119

80 David Garland gives us some insight here: Why does Jesus oppose giving the Pharisees a sign from heaven? In the Old Testament a sign was a public event that certified or confirmed a distrusted prophecy or a disputed claim. One sought a sign when a claimant did or said something that was strange, surprising, unconventional, or contrary to the Mosaic law. The sign did not happen by chance but had been predicted and thereby proved the legitimacy of a suspected utterance or claim. It did not have to comprise anything spectacular or miraculous but had to correspond to the prediction of what would occur.9 Some incorrectly argue that Jesus resolutely refuses to give any signs in Mark’s Gospel. For example, when the teachers of the law muttered under their breath that Jesus verged on blasphemy by announcing that the sins of the paralytic were forgiven, he proved his claim by making something happen (2:1–10). The reason Jesus balks at giving a sign here in 8:11–12 revolves around two issues: the meaning of the expression “a sign from heaven,” and the defiant disposition of these opponents. (1) “A sign from heaven” does not refer to the author of the sign—a sign from God. Signs by their very nature came from God, so that the phrase “a sign from God” is redundant. The Pharisees specifically ask for a sign “from heaven.” They have in mind a peculiar type of sign distinct from another sign they may have requested. Gibson argues that “a sign from heaven” refers to “apocalyptic phenomena which embody or signal the onset of aid and comfort for God’s elect and/or the wrath that God was expected to let loose against his enemies and those who threaten his people.” This generation, represented by the Pharisees, asks Jesus to do something that will signal Israel’s deliverance from her enemies and their crushing defeat. A sign from heaven is something that “is apocalyptic in tone, triumphalistic in character, and the embodiment of one of the ‘mighty deeds of deliverance’ that God had worked on Israel’s behalf in rescuing it from slavery.”11 Ironically, this request comes after the miraculous feeding, a miracle that pointed to the blessing, not the destruction, of Gentiles. Jesus refuses to give the Pharisees a sign from heaven because God has sent him to give his life on the cross for all humanity, not to smash the enemies of Israel or to give the nation political mastery of the world. He will not give in to pressure to take a course of action different from God’s purposes. (2) The Pharisees have already received plenty of proof in Mark 1–2 of the source of Jesus’ power, and they come now only as detractors who wish to tempt him. When Jesus addresses them as “this generation,” this phrase recalls the stubborn, disobedient generation of the desert (Deut. 32:5, 20; Ps. 95:10–11). Those who claim to know God and to teach God’s law to others do not recognize the signs that God has already displayed through Jesus because they are spiritually blind.21

What’s the cure to this tragic condition of spiritual blindness?

Consider this Q&A with Pastor John Piper: “Hello Pastor John, my name is Jacob, a college senior. I am reading your book A Peculiar Glory and looking forward to your new book, Reading the Bible Supernaturally. My question comes from chapter 12 of A Peculiar Glory. If it is indeed God who shines the light into darkness, how is it that we as humans are responsible for knowing God? I may have misinterpreted something along the way, but this seems like a legitimate question in light of Romans 1:18–23.”

21 David E. Garland, Mark, 308–309.

81 Jacob is absolutely right that I argue in A Peculiar Glory that all human beings are spiritually blind to the superior value of the glory of God. Which means that, left to ourselves, we will see the gospel, see Christ, see Scripture, but not see it, or see him, for what it truly is; namely, the most beautiful, valuable reality in the world. We can see, but there’s something wrong with our spiritual capacities to discern the beauty and value of what we see so that we always wind up preferring other things over God. “Seeing they do not see,” Jesus said (Matthew 13:13). That’s the essence of sin, and it’s the plight of every human being, not just a few. The only hope, therefore — he noticed I argued for salvation, for recognizing who Christ is and what his word is — the only hope for this salvation, therefore, is that God would miraculously shine in our hearts with the light of the glory of God. In the text that he’s talking about mainly, I think — at least this is the text I go — is 2 Corinthians 4:4–6, where our blindness and God’s supernatural intervention is so beautifully expressed. Let me read that: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” — hence, our inability to see the truth and beauty and worth of Christ in the gospel. We’re blind. In verse 6 is the solution: “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” There’s the problem: we’re blind. There’s the solution: supernatural, God-given sight of glory. That’s what Jacob is referring to. We’re blind and unable to see the beauty and worth of Christ in the gospel, and a miracle is required to save us, which 2 Corinthians 4:6 says only God can give by shining into your hearts. Jacob asked, “Well, then, how is it that we are responsible and liable to God’s judgment if we’re blind and can only be saved from our blindness by God?” The key to the answer of why spiritually dead, spiritually blind people who can only be rescued by a divine miracle, the key is to see that this blindness and deadness is willful. It is rooted in what we prefer. It is owing to our desires for darkness, desires that are stronger than our desires for light. We’re responsible for our moral preferences: our desires for darkness and our desires for light. Even though the Devil does have a hand in keeping us blind, like I read back in 2 Corinthians 4:4, our blindness originates from within us. It is owing to what we want. It’s not forced on us against what we want. Here’s the key text to help me get a handle on this. It’s :19–21: “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness” — now, notice: loved darkness — “rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light” — you have love of darkness and hatred of light — “and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been wrought by God.” This is a description of the blindness and deadness of all human beings in the world who refuse to come to the light. The light that God reveals of himself in nature, they refused to go there. The light that he reveals in Christ, in the gospel, the light that he reveals of himself in Scripture, the reason people don’t come is not that they lack light, but that they love darkness. They are not kept from light against their will. It’s precisely their strong-willed preferences for the darkness that keeps them away from the light. Therefore, our blindness and our deadness is a real blameworthy desire and love and preference for darkness over light. We are really responsible for these desires, these loves, these preferences that we have. They are the very essence of what is evil about us. Oh, how thankful we should be that God does not simply leave all of us in our rebellion, but instead breaks in with light so we can see and savor and embrace the glory of Christ as our supreme treasure.22

22 https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/the-only-solution-to-spiritual-blindness

82

How would you respond to someone who claimed the feeding of the five thousand ( 6:35-44) and the feeding of the four thousand ( 8:1-9) are really the same event reported twice by Mark (and Matthew)?

What is the significance of this feeding taking place in Gentile territory?

How is Jesus’ compassion and concern for the physical needs of the Gentile crowd indicative of His concern for our spiritual state?

When we are faced with an impossible situation and we want to turn it over to God, how do we go about doing that?

How do these miraculous feeding episodes serve as a sign of the inbreaking of the kingdom of God?

83 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: Jesus has the power to overcome our spiritual blindness and open our eyes that we may see.

Jesus always has a ______, but we may only see a ______(8:1-10).

Some skeptics have denied there were two feedings, arguing that the author of Mark somehow got the tradition confused. However, there is no confusion; there are clear differences:

Feeding the 5,000 Feeding the 4,000 5,000 men (15,000–20,000 people) 4,000 people total 5 loaves and 2 fish 7 loaves and a few small fish 1 day in the wilderness 3 days in the wilderness springtime/North of Galilee no mention of time/SE of Galilee 12 basketfuls of leftovers 7 basketfuls of leftovers one prayer two prayers mostly Jews mostly Gentiles

Further, and most decisively, Jesus clearly states there were two feedings in 8:19-20.

Jesus ______(8:1-3). Jesus ______(8:4-7). Jesus ______(8:8-10).

Unbelievers will demand a ______but ______one when they see it (8:11-13).

In spite of His numerous miracles and teachings that give evidence that He is the Messiah, they reject what they see and hear.

They ______the Lord (8:11). They ______the Lord (8:12). They ______the Lord (8:13).

84 Week 29: Sometimes We Just Don’t Get It!

14 Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. 15 And he cautioned them, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” 16 And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. 17 And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” 20 “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” 21 And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?” 22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.” - Mark 8:14-26

What makes us so slow to see and comprehend sometimes? How often in our own lives can we look back and see our own stubbornness and the need to be re-taught the same lessons over and over? We are not so different from the disciples, it seems. Even after all the at they had witnessed and experienced, they still seem to struggle with faith. They still seem to be unaware of who Jesus truly is and that God is right there with them. It’s easy for us to critique them, wondering how in the world could they not get it? But how much has God done and revealed in the world, in history, and in our lives, yet we still seem or act to be oblivious at times? If we truly had faith, wouldn't we pray more? Or at least differently? If we truly believed in his awesome power, would we not seek it persistently? If we believed he truly cared about all people, would we not introduce more people to him? If we believed in his great love, would we not worship him ? David Garland writes, The disciples have failed to discern the signs Jesus has shown them. Mark records a third sea incident, where the disciples’ failure to grasp the significance of what Jesus has done in their midst becomes disturbingly obvious. Their dim-sightedness shows how much they still have to learn about their Master.

85 In the first boat scene (4:35–41), Jesus calmed the sea and rebuked his disciples for their lack of faith. Their terror over the storm shifted to wonderment about Jesus: Who is this one who can still storms? In the second boat scene, they are again terrified, this time when Jesus comes to them walking on the waves. Mark explains their fear with the notice that “they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened” (6:52). Now in this third boat scene, Jesus rebukes them for their quarrel over not having any bread and accuses them of having hardened hearts, blind eyes, and dull hearing (8:17–18). The feedings of the multitudes and the sea adventures have given the disciples a unique opportunity “to learn who Jesus is, to understand the nature and source of the power that comes through him.” But the disciples have moved no closer to comprehension and remain bamboozled by it all. This last scene in the boat opens with an awkwardly phrased notice that the disciples forgot to bring loaves, “except for one loaf they had with them in the boat” (8:14). Why the contradiction between no loaves and one loaf? Have they forgotten that they have the one loaf (for they immediately begin to argue that they do not have loaves, 8:16)? Do they not even know that they have one loaf? Or do they think that one loaf is insufficient for their needs? Most likely, Mark teases the reader by allusively referring to Jesus as that one loaf. Without any clear antecedent, the next verse continues, “Jesus warned them, ‘Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees’ ” (8:15). Mark wants the reader to recognize Jesus as that one loaf who can multiply one into an abundance of loaves to feed thousands (see John 6:48–51; 1 Cor. 10:16–17). Jesus’ sudden warning about “leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” … clarifies the danger of the disciples’ worry about a bread shortage. In the Old Testament, leaven symbolized corruption and the infectious power of evil. The translation of the word zyme as “yeast” assumes that “yeast” and “leaven” are the same thing and obscures the negative connotation that leaven had for the first-century Jew. Yeast connotes to us that fresh and wholesome ingredient that makes dough rise and gives bread a pleasing, light texture. The ancient world used the more dangerous leaven. It was produced by keeping back a piece of the previous week’s dough, storing it in suitable conditions, and adding juices to promote the process of fermentation. But this homemade rising agent was fraught with health hazards because it could easily become tainted; it would then spread poison when baked with the rest of the dough. It, in turn, would infect the next batch. That is the idea Jesus uses to refer to his enemies. The Pharisees and Herod seem to have little in common—the one steeped in religious duties, the other sunk in iniquity. But they do share one poisonous fault that can infect others. Jesus does not explicitly identify what that toxic flaw is, but the context points to their obstinate refusal to believe in spite of the evidence. They will not admit the truth, let alone embrace it, even when it stares them in the face. Herod and his confidants failed to believe when they heard of Jesus’ mighty works (6:14–16). The Pharisees are insisting that Jesus provide a sign conforming to their own goals and aspirations before they will commit themselves to believe. Jesus thus warns the disciples not to fall victim to this same insidious unbelief. Their worry about where their next meal is coming from makes them deaf to the warning about not hearing and blind to the warning against blindness. Mundane concerns distract them too much, and they do not catch the subtle connection. They consistently fret about insufficient resources—it will take too much money to feed the crowd; there is no way the crowd can get bread in a deserted place; they have no bread. Their anxiety over such things keeps them from looking up and seeing what Jesus has done in their midst. It is as if they have tuned into Jesus with a primitive crystal radio set, and all they hear is a faint scratchy voice overwhelmed by background hiss. Jesus asks his disciples why all the squabbling about the loaves and then gives a quick recap of recent events to jog their memories (and the reader’s). He prods them to recall how much was left over when he fed the five thousand and the four thousand. They can recall the numbers easily enough,

86 but they cannot see past them to recognize that they have a bread maker with them in the boat. The scene is almost comical. Jesus has fed nine thousand people with next to nothing. The disciples themselves helped distribute the food and helped gather up the leftovers, twelve mat basketfuls and seven large basketfuls. Though they had a ringside seat at both events, it has apparently slipped their minds, and they come off as dunderheads worrying about not having enough to fix lunch for thirteen. Even when Jesus refreshes their memories, they still do not fully comprehend because they have hardened hearts. Jesus apparently believes that the feedings in the desert are the key events that should explain everything for the disciples. They did not generate the rush of excitement that his other miracles did, however. Mark does not report that anybody marveled. The disciples were only amazed before the miracle—that Jesus would even entertain notions of feeding such a huge mass of people. When they collected the leftovers, they appear to take it all in stride and do not ask, “Who is this who can feed thousands on such a small amount?” The meaning of the event clearly escapes them, but Jesus implies that it should point them on the way to recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, who works by the power of God. They are mired in their own little world, with its petty alarms, and cannot see God’s reign breaking into their midst. Jesus never gives up on the disciples and still holds out hope for them even when he expresses his exasperation: “Do you still not understand?” Jesus defines outsiders in 4:12 as those who see but do not perceive and those who hear but do not understand. The disciples therefore react to his miracles like outsiders (8:17–18). They are not going to forfeit their position as insiders, however, as some interpreters maintain. The “not yet” implies that eventually they will see and understand, though it will not come easily. Unlike the Pharisees, their problem is not that they refuse to see but that they cannot see until after the Jesus’ death and resurrection. 23

As we face new challenges, how can we increase the chances that we will remember God’s mighty works from the past and His words of encouragement?

And then – as if to remind them again of his character and might and true identity – Jesus performs another miracle. This one is similar to others he has performed, but different in one key regard. The man was healed in stages. His healing was not instantaneous, but progressive. Garland states, The next incident records unidentified persons in Bethsaida bringing Jesus a blind man for him to touch. With vivid detail Mark describes Jesus’ whisking the blind man away from the village, spitting into his eyes to heal them, and meeting with only partial success. For the first time Jesus asks an afflicted person about the success of his healing attempt, the way a physician would do. Mark describes the initial moment when the blind man receives rudimentary sight but things are out of focus. He can see people, but they look like walking trees. Jesus then repeats the procedure by placing his hands on the man’s eyes, which brings complete healing. Three verbs describe the man’s progressive restoration of sight. He opens his eyes wide (diablepo), his sight is restored (apokathistemi), and he can see all things clearly (emblepo). Jesus then sends him to his house and orders him not to go into the village. He continues to shy away from unnecessary publicity for his healing and steers clear of the towns and villages until he enters Jerusalem. His contact with crowds tapers off as he focuses his attention on instructing the disciples.

23 David E. Garland, Mark, 309–312.

87 Since the man does not recover his sight immediately, the reader gets the impression that his blindness is stubborn and hard to cure. The miracle shows Jesus’ power to heal even the most difficult cases. The Markan context, which portrays Jesus’ struggle to get his disciples to see anything, gives this unusual two-stage healing added significance. The blind man’s healing occurs between two examples of the disciples’ blindness (8:14–21; 8:31–33). This physical healing of blindness serves as a paradigm for the spiritual healing of the disciples’ sight, which also comes gradually and with difficulty. As we near the midway point of this Gospel, the first half has drawn attention to the disciples’ inability to recognize that Jesus is the Messiah empowered by God. When it finally dawns on Peter, the spokesman for the group, that Jesus is the Christ, the disciples encounter a new hurdle to their understanding. The second half of the book will reveal their inability to understand that this Messiah must suffer and die and be vindicated in his resurrection. As Jesus asked the blind man, “Do you see anything?” so he will ask the disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Peter does see something. After all of Jesus’ mighty works and deeds, he has a flash of insight: “You are the Christ” (8:29). The first stage of healing is complete. But he only has partial sight, as Jesus’ stern rebuke in the next sentence makes clear (8:33). Peter sees, but he sees the equivalent of walking trees. Both Peter and the disciples require a second touch before they will see all things clearly—that the Messiah must suffer and die.24

Let’s be incredibly thankful to God for his ongoing revelation of who He is through our understanding of Christ! Let’s also be grateful that, though we are hard of learning, He is generous in explaining! And though we fail to see, understand, and even believe at times, He is imminently patient and forbearing.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. . . . Count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him. (2 Peter 3:9, 15)

How was Jesus’ method of healing this blind man an encouragement for His disciples? How is it encouraging for you?

Why do you think this healing happened in two stages?

24 David E. Garland, Mark, 312–313.

88 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: Sometimes even Jesus’ disciples are slow to comprehend his message and meaning.

Disciples will see ______but fail to fully ______(8:14-21).

We still may misunderstand our Lord’s ______(8:14-16). We still may misunderstand our Lord’s ______(8:17-21). Jesus steps in with a series of questions: “Why are you discussing that you do not have any bread?” “Don’t you understand or comprehend?” “Is your heart hardened?” “Do you have eyes, and not see?” “Do you have ears, and not hear?” “Do you not remember?” “When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces of bread did you collect?” “When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many large basketfuls of pieces of bread did you collect?”

The ______may see, but it may come ______(8:22-26).

These verses constitute a visual parable that, though historically true, also symbolizes the spiritual pilgrimage of the disciples. Mark purposely sandwiches it between 8:14-21 and 8:27-38. The two- step healing Jesus uses is intentional. It is meant to portray the gradual, step-by-step understanding of the disciples.

We can ______the hurting to Jesus (8:22). We can ______the hurting to Jesus (8:23-26).

Amazing grace how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I’m found, Was blind but now I see. (Newton, “Amazing Grace”)

That was true for this blind man. It was true for the Twelve. It was certainly true for me. Now, what about you?

89

90 Week 30: Following and Serving the King

27 And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” 29 And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 30 And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. 31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” 34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” - Mark 8:27-38

Hopefully you remember reading some of the story of German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in our lesson several weeks ago. For this week’s lesson, I strongly encourage to do some theological and mental “heavy lifting” as you engage Bonhoeffer’s words on the cost of following Christ: In his inestimable classic, Discipleship, Bonhoeffer writes, ““Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ “He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels’” (Mark 8:31-38). The call to discipleship is connected here with the proclamation of Jesus’ suffering. Jesus Christ has to suffer and be rejected. God’s promise requires this, so that scripture may be fulfilled.

91 Suffering and being rejected are not the same. Even in his suffering Jesus could have been the celebrated Christ. Indeed, the entire compassion and admiration of the world could focus on the suffering. Looked upon as something tragic, the suffering could in itself convey its own value, its own honor and dignity. But Jesus is the Christ who was rejected in his suffering. Rejection removed all dignity and honor from his suffering. It had to be dishonorable suffering. Suffering and rejection express in summary form the cross of Jesus. Death on the cross means to suffer and die as one rejected and cast out. It was by divine necessity that Jesus had to suffer and be rejected. Any attempt to hinder what is necessary is satanic. Even, or especially, if such an attempt comes from the circle of disciples, because it intends to prevent Christ from being Christ. The fact that it is Peter, the rock of the church, who makes himself guilty doing this just after he has confessed Jesus to be the Christ and has been commissioned by Christ, shows that from its very beginning the church has taken offense at the suffering Christ. It does not want that kind of Lord, and as Christ’s church it does not want to be forced to accept the law of suffering from its Lord. Peter’s objection is his aversion to submit himself to suffering. That is a way for Satan to enter the church. Satan is trying to pull the church away from the cross of its Lord. So Jesus has to make it clear and unmistakable to his disciples that the need to suffer now applies to them, too. Just as Christ is only Christ as one who suffers and is rejected, so a is a disciple only in suffering and being rejected, thereby participating in crucifixion. Discipleship as allegiance to the person of Jesus Christ places the follower under the law of Christ, that is, under the cross. When Jesus communicates this inalienable truth to his disciples, he begins remarkably by setting them entirely free once more. “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus says. Following him is not something that is self-evident, even among the disciples. No one can be forced, no one can even be expected to follow him. Rather, “if any” intend to follow him, despite any other offers they may get. Once again everything depends on a decision. While the disciples are already engaged in discipleship, everything is broken off once again, everything is left open, nothing is expected, nothing is forced. What he is going to say next is that decisive. Therefore, once again, before the law of discipleship is proclaimed, even the disciples must accept being set free. “If any want to follow me, they must deny themselves.” Just as in denying Christ Peter said, “I do not know the man,” those who follow Christ must say that to themselves. Self-denial can never result in ever so many single acts of self-martyrdom or ascetic exercises. It does not mean suicide, because even suicide could be the expression of the human person’s own will. Self-denial means knowing only Christ, no longer knowing oneself. It means no longer seeing oneself, only him who is going ahead, no longer seeing the way which is too difficult for us. Self-denial says only: he is going ahead; hold fast to him. “. . . and take up their cross.” The grace of Jesus is evident in his preparing his disciples for this word by speaking first of self-denial. Only when we have really forgotten ourselves completely, when we really no longer know ourselves, only then are we ready to take up the cross for his sake. When we know only him, then we also no longer know the pain of our own cross. Then we see only him. If Jesus had not been so gracious in preparing us for this word, then we could not bear it. But this way he has made us capable of hearing this hard word as grace. It meets us in the joy of discipleship, and confirms us in it. The cross is neither misfortune nor harsh fate. Instead, it is that suffering which comes from our allegiance to Jesus Christ alone. The cross is not random suffering, but necessary suffering. The cross is not suffering that stems from natural existence; it is suffering that comes from being Christian. The essence of the cross is not suffering alone; it is suffering and being rejected. Strictly speaking, it is being rejected for the sake of Jesus Christ, not for the sake of any other attitude or confession. A Christianity that no longer took discipleship seriously remade the gospel into only the solace of cheap grace. Moreover, it drew no line between natural and Christian

92 existence. Such a Christianity had to understand the cross as one’s daily misfortune, as the predicament and anxiety of our natural life. Here it has been forgotten that the cross always also means being rejected, that the cross includes the shame of suffering. Being shunned, despised, and deserted by people, as in the psalmist’s unending lament, is an essential feature of the suffering of the cross, which cannot be comprehended by a Christianity that is unable to differentiate between a citizen’s ordinary existence and Christian existence. The cross is suffering with Christ. Indeed, it is Christ-suffering. Only one who is bound to Christ as this occurs in discipleship stands in seriousness under the cross. “. . . let them take up their cross. . . .” From the beginning, it lies there ready. They need only take it up. But so that no one presumes to seek out some cross or arbitrarily search for some suffering, Jesus says, they each have their own cross ready, assigned by God and measured to fit. They must all bear the suffering and rejection measured out to each of them. Everyone gets a different amount. God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while others are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case, it is the one cross. It is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering that everyone has to experience is the call which summons us away from our attachments to this world. It is the death of the old self in the encounter with Jesus Christ. Those who enter into discipleship enter into Jesus’ death. They turn their living into dying; such has been the case from the very beginning. The cross is not the terrible end of a pious, happy life. Instead, it stands at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death. Whether we, like the first disciples, must leave house and vocation to follow him, or whether, with Luther, we leave the monastery for a secular vocation, in both cases the same death awaits us, namely, death in Jesus Christ, the death of our old self caused by the call of Jesus. Because Jesus’ call brings death to the rich young man, who can only follow Jesus after his own will has died, because Jesus’ every command calls us to die with all our wishes and desires, and because we cannot want our own death, therefore Jesus Christ in his word has to be our death and our life. The call to follow Jesus, baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, is death and life. The call of Christ and baptism leads Christians into a daily struggle against sin and Satan. Thus, each day, with its temptations by the flesh and the world, brings Jesus Christ’s suffering anew to his disciples. The wounds inflicted this way and the scars a Christian carries away from the struggle are living signs of the community of the cross with Jesus. But there is another suffering and another indignity from which no Christian can be spared. To be sure, Christ’s own suffering is the only suffering that brings reconciliation. But because Christ has suffered for the sin of the world, because the whole burden of guilt fell on him, and because Jesus Christ passes on the fruit of his suffering to those who follow him, temptation and sin fall also onto his disciples. Sin covers the disciples with shame and expels them from the gates of the city like a scapegoat. So Christians become bearers of sin and guilt for other people. Christians would be broken by the weight if they were not themselves carried by him who bore all sins. Instead, by the power of Christ’s suffering they can overcome the sins they must bear by forgiving them. A Christian becomes a burden-bearer—bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). As Christ bears our burdens, so we are to bear the burden of our sisters and brothers. The law of Christ, which must be fulfilled, is to bear the cross. The burden of a sister or brother, which I have to bear, is not only his or her external fate, manner, and temperament; rather, it is in the deepest sense his or her sin. I cannot bear it except by forgiving it, by the power of Christ’s cross, which I have come to share. In this way Jesus’ call to bear the cross places all who follow him in the community of forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all Christians.25

25 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Fortress Press, Kindle Edition, pp. 49-54

93 How is Jesus’ call to discipleship “radical”?

How have we made the normal Christian life less radical than what the Bible calls for?

Why is it inadequate to consider Jesus only a great moral teacher?

Why is it inadequate to see Him as merely an example to follow?

In what way is it commendable to “proudly” declare that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God?

What kind of King did the Jews of Jesus’ day expect the Messiah would be?

How do we sometimes expect Jesus to do the same for us?

94 How would you answer a child who asked, “Why does it say Jesus ‘must’ suffer, die, and rise again?”

What do you suppose Peter was thinking when he rebuked Jesus ( 8:32)?

What are man’s concerns ( 8:33)?

How does the world entice you to live the self-centered life?

Discuss Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s statement: “Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.”

95 Lesson Outline

Main Idea: The normal Christian life involves dying to self that we may find life in Christ.

This text will provide the answer to three crucial questions: Who is Jesus? What did He come to do? What does He expect of you? It is the beginning of the “Great Discipleship Discourse” ( 8:31– 10:52), in which three times Jesus predicts His passion ( 8:31-33; 9:30-32; 10:32-34). Immediately following each time, He instructs them concerning true discipleship and what it means to truly follow Him because they just do not get it! - Akin

You must know and personally confess ______(8:27-30).

There is an ______question (8:27-28). There is one ______answer (8:29-30).

You must learn and affirm the ways of ______and not ______(8:31-33).

The first half of Mark focuses on who He is. The Gospel tells us the King has come! Our response is to repent and believe. The first confession comes from an insider when Peter says, “You are the Messiah!” ( 8:29). The second half focuses on what He came to do. The Gospel tells us the King must die! Our response is to take up our cross and follow Him.

God’s ways are often ______but ______(8:31-32). God’s will is often a ______but ______(8:32-33).

You must understand and accept that Jesus calls you ______(8:34-38).

The ______life must be put to death (8:34). The ______life must be put to death (8:35). The ______life must be put to death (8:36-38).

May all of us learn how to die for Christ and the gospel, that we, and others, may truly live. May all of us learn what is, and how to live, the normal Christian life.

96 Week 31: The Turn - From Identity to Purpose

This week’s lesson is adapted from Chapter 926 (“The Turn”) of Tim Keller’s study of Mark, Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God.

Some questions to consider as you review Mark 8:27-9:1 … In Mark 8:31 we are told that Jesus “must suffer … and be killed …”. Why was Jesus’ death a “must”?

The Jews of the first century were expecting the Messiah to come, but a Messiah who came to suffer was not only unexpected, it was hard to comprehend. Why did Jesus’ followers not understand when he said that he must suffer and die?

How does Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross take away our fear of death? What difference does that make in our lives?

Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Describe the cross that we pick up as we begin life in the kingdom of God.

26 Timothy Keller, Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God, 103-118.

97 From Keller: Chapter 8 of Mark’s Gospel is a pivotal chapter. It’s the climax of the first act, in which the disciples finally begin to see the true identity of the one they have been following. In it Jesus says two things: I’m a King, but a King going to a cross; and If you want to follow me, you’ve got to come to the cross too. This is how Mark tells the story: 27 And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” 29 And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 30 And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. (Mark 8:27–30) Here at last Peter begins to get the answer to the big question, “Who is Jesus?” He proposes to Jesus, “You are the Christ.” Peter is using a word that literally means “______.” 31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. (Mark 8:31–32)

Jesus’s first important statement here is “______.” By using the word must, Jesus is also indicating that he is planning to die—that he is doing it ______. He is not merely predicting it will happen. This is what probably offends Peter the most. It is one thing for Jesus to say, “I will fight and will be defeated,” and another to say, “This is why I came; I intend to die!” That is totally inexplicable to Peter. That’s why the minute Jesus says this, Peter begins to “______” him. Why is Peter so undone, that he would turn on Jesus like this right after identifying him as the Messiah?

Why would it be absolutely necessary for Jesus to die? A ______Necessity All human beings know the difference between ______and ______love. In false love your aim is to use the other person to fulfill your happiness. Your love is ______: You give it only as long as the person is affirming you and meeting your needs. And it’s nonvulnerable: You hold back so that you can cut your losses if necessary. In true love, your aim is to spend yourself and use yourself for the happiness of the other, because your greatest joy is that person’s joy. Therefore, your affection is ______: You give it regardless of whether your loved one is meeting your needs. And it’s radically vulnerable: You spend everything, hold nothing back, give it all away.

98 What we need is someone to love us who doesn’t need us at all. Someone who loves us radically, unconditionally, vulnerably. Someone who loves us just for our sake. If we received that kind of love, that would so assure us of our value, it would so fill us up, that maybe we could start to give love like that too. Who can give love with no need? ______. Why did God create us and later redeem us at great cost even though he doesn’t need us? He did it because he ______us.

A ______Necessity When someone really wrongs you, ______is established that has to be paid by someone. Once you sense that debt, again there are only two things you can do: One thing you can do is to try to ______… The alternative is to ______. But there’s nothing easy about real forgiveness. When you want to harbor vengeful thoughts, when you want so much to carry out vengeful actions but you refuse them in an effort to forgive, it hurts. When you refrain, when you forgive, it’s agony. Why? Instead of making the other person suffer, you’re absorbing the cost yourself. You aren’t trying to get your reputation back by tearing their reputation down. You are forgiving them and it is costing you. That’s what forgiveness is. True forgiveness always entails ______. … If we know that forgiveness always entails suffering for the forgiver and that the only hope of rectifying and righting wrongs comes by paying the cost of suffering, then it should not surprise us when God says, “The only way I can forgive the sins of the human race is to suffer—either you will have to pay the penalty for sin or I will.” Sin always entails a ______. Guilt can’t be dealt with unless someone ______. The only way God can pardon us and not judge us is to go to the cross and absorb it into ______. “I must suffer,” Jesus said.

A ______Necessity Jesus’s death had to be a violent one. The writer of Hebrews says that “without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin” (Hebrews 9:22). This is not a magical view of blood. Rather, the term blood in the Bible means ______before its natural end. A life given or taken is the most extreme gift or price that can be paid in this world. Only by giving his life could Jesus have made the greatest possible payment for the debt of sin. Jesus’s death was not only a ______, however; it was also a ______. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:8-11)

99 A New Kind of ______Jesus says, “I’m a King, but not like any king you ever imagined. I’m a king who must die.” Yet he does not stop there. Mark writes: 34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” 9 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.” (Mark 8:34–9:1) Jesus is saying, “Since I am a King on a cross, if you want to follow me ______must go to a cross.” What does it mean to take up our cross? What does it mean to lose our life for the gospel in order to save it?

When Peter hears that Jesus is going to Jerusalem, which will entail suffering—almost certainly not just for Jesus but also for him—he’s furious. Why?

When Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power,” what does he mean?

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, the death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end: Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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Calvary Baptist Church Dothan, Alabama 2020

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