Two Journeys

Pastor Andy Davis preaches on Mark 9:33-41, a passage that exposes the pride of the disciples and Jesus’ powerful efforts to cure them of it.

Turn in your Bibles to Mark 9:33-41. As we look at this passage this morning, we're looking at a vital question, what is the nature of true greatness? What does it mean to be truly great as a human being? The Bible has not left us in the dark concerning this. Isaiah 66:2, one of my favorite verses, God says, "This is the one I esteem. He who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word." God delights in humility in his people. Delights in it. In order, therefore, to make us great, He must humble us. He must do a work of humbling in us. He must to some degree lay us low because of our pride.

All the work of God in his people is a work of humbling first and then exaltation. This is a consistent theme. We humans seek to soar aloft, to be tall and lofty and exalted. The beginning of that Book of Isaiah, Isaiah 2, at the end of that chapter, God says He is committed to leveling everything that soars in his lofty high mountains and tall trees and all that. He's talking about human beings. He's very clear about that. He says in Isaiah 2:17, "The arrogance of man will be brought low and the pride of man will be humbled. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day and the idols will totally disappear."

That's a work of humbling. The question may come in our hearts when we see what a consistent theme this is in the Bible of how God must humble us in order to save us. One might, in a very I think wicked way, have a thought creep into our minds that God may be secretly threatened by us, threatened by our greatness. He's got to level us. I was at a conference recently in which a speaker brought up this theme. The speaker didn't think this, but he brought up another woman writer that had written on this topic and how one particular theologian, John Calvin, just does a great job of the majesty, the exalted nature of God. This author wrote that it's always about humbling human beings. This author wrote these words, it seems, "God can only make himself great by making us small." The one who quoted this didn't believe this, but said that this author had put in the knife and was twisting it. God can only make himself great by making us small. I didn't find any particular difficulty in this challenge. It didn't strike me as anything difficult to refute. Because can I tell you something? God is great and we are small. That's just a fact. God and his healing of us must bring us around to the truth. We must see the truth about his exalted greatness and our relative smallness.

It's just simply true. God in his kindness shows it to us in order to save us. Solomon, the greatest king on earth at the time, in the dedication of the temple that he had made in 1 Kings 8:27 said, "But will God really dwell on earth? Heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain him. How much less this temple I have built!" Solomon wasn't lacking in self-esteem there. He just saw it as it really was. Also, we see the same attitude in David in Psalm 8:3-4. He said, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have made, what is man that you are mindful of him? The Son of Man that you care for him?” That's just a reasonable conclusion. When you look at the cosmos and the distant galaxies and just the size of the universe, we should come to a sense of our relative smallness. And yet amazingly in that Psalm, David goes on the very next verses, “You have made man a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands and you put everything under his feet.” There is a greatness to man in the image of God. But compared to God, we are small and we need to know that. We need to be humbled.

What we need here is health then, in our minds and souls, when we learn about the majesty, the great majesty and the glory of God, and we learn who we are. Created in his image, yes, immeasurably valuable, yes, but also infinitely small compared to God. Pride is at the root of all of our sin. As Augustine wrote centuries ago, pride is the beginning of sin, and what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation. This is undue exaltation when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end and becomes a kind of end in itself. That's pride.

In today's text, Jesus is going to address the core of his disciples' disease and that is their sense of pride, their pride toward one another. It starts with this shameful argument the disciples were having on the road. Look at it, verse 33-34, “They came to Capernaum. And when He was in the house, He asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the road?’ But they kept quiet, because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.” I mean, this strikes me as an unusually juvenile moment on their part. The apostles are really quite remarkable people, and here they are debating. Imagine a group of adults at a party or something like that and this was the argument, this was the topic. You come into the group and you listen. Okay, what is going on here? It's a shameful thing. Now, some of us, if we're willing to be candid, admit from time to time we think we're the smartest person in the room or the most handsome or beautiful or the most skillful or the most whatever, but we usually have the good manners to keep that to ourselves, to not make it obvious that this is what we're thinking. Not these disciples, however. They're openly discussing which of them is the greatest. I think it's because these men were in a unique religious context, the Jewish context, in which piety was paraded openly by the religious leaders of the day. Remember how Jesus talked about the Pharisees and the religious hypocrites. When you give to the needy, don't announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do, because they sound trumpets when they give to the poor, needy, and they do the same with their other acts of piety. The concept of a humble religiosity, a humble piety was new to them. They weren't used to it. 

Also new was the concept of a humble leadership, a humble kingdom, a king who was a humble servant of all. That was new. It was I think unknown really on planet earth until Jesus came as our servant king. Kings of the earth don't do that kind of thing, but Jesus came as a servant. We're going to talk more about that in the next chapter. These men expected a messianic kingdom of extreme glory in the pagan way. Pomp and power like all the other kingdoms of the world, lording it over those under their power, wearing silk robes and crowns and sitting on thrones of honor, judging the world. That's what they were thinking of. That was their human conception of the kingdom that they thought was just around the corner. They're just about to come into it and they expected this kind of greatness, but at the core of it was their own pride. The twelve apostles are having discussion about which of them was the greatest. Now, I hope they were willing to give Jesus the top spot. He's the greatest. But they were vying for number two, number three, et cetera, the pecking order. This theme dominated their minds. This was on their minds big time. It was eating at their souls like some kind of a cancerous tumor. Jesus, the Great Physician, has come to heal all his people of that disease of pride. 

This passage has a unifying theme of Jesus addressing pride. There's some disparate parts to the paragraphs, and the connections aren't always obvious. But I think if we look at it a certain way, we can see how they hold together. For example, later in the text, John's going to bring up a man driving out a demon. Why does he bring that up? Well, I'll get to that, but I think if I were to stop the twelve apostles and say, "All right, let's discuss it. Let's put Jesus at number one. Let's try to find out who's number two. What you got? What are your qualifications? What's your best?" I'm like, what do they have to say? These are a group of humble fishermen who weren't doing much before Jesus showed up. Jesus comes along, "Follow me. I'll make you fishers of men." I haven't seen them do many great things here. What do you think? In the Gospel of Mark, are they looking great?

I don't know what the criteria are here. I do think that they were empowered by Jesus to drive out demons and they did that. I think it was the greatest moment of their lives up to that point. That's what they got. But keep in mind what just happened, nine of them swung and missed. They failed to drive out a demon just recently. What is the nature of this greatness? Do you see how deceived we can be about ourselves? They're discussing it. We're going to walk through this passage and see Jesus seeking to cure them of pride. It's a consistent issue. They deal with it again and again. 

The very next chapter, you can look over on the page or maybe turn the page to Mark 10. Some of what I want to say I'm going to hold back until we more fully walk through that passage then. But in Mark 10:34 and following, remember how James and John came to Jesus in Mark's gospel? The sons of Zebedee came down. "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask." "What do you want me to do for you?" He asked. They replied, "Let one of us sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory." This is a basically pride-based request and Jesus is going to deal with it fully there. I'm not going to walk through that today, but it's coming up.

Then even the last night they were together, Last Supper, a very heavy night as Jesus is getting ready to die, it says in Luke 22:24, “a dispute arose among them as to which of them was the greatest.” This is a consistent theme. I do believe it's why at the Last Supper, Jesus washed their feet. This is not a light issue, this is a significant issue. It goes to the core of their souls, of their salvation. I must say ours too, ours too. Jesus has to deal with this, this deadly danger of pride.

 Now, we need to see big picture. We've been over this before, but we need to see the origin. Where did this whole thing come from? It came, I believe, from Satan. It came from Satan's fall into sin. I actually think we're looking at the primordial, the beginning of evil itself. We're looking at the core of where did evil come into the good universe that God made? There's not a clear open answer to that, but I think if you know how to read the whole scripture, 66 books of the Bible, you can put some things together. The key passages are Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14. Oracles against two human kings, I'll talk about that in a minute, but the king of Tyre and the king of Babylon. King of Tyre in Ezekiel 28:17. The key is the language. Both of those oracles soars far beyond anything that would ordinarily be said to a human king. You get the sense that you're reading a judgment that God had worked long before this king ever lived. Ezekiel 28:17, “your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor.” I believe it is talking about Satan. Satan was made beautiful, powerful, and wise, and he became enamored with himself. He became enamored with his own attributes and he fell into wickedness. Isaiah 14:13-14, “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High’.” I think it starts in Ezekiel 28 with “Ain't I something? I'm beautiful, I'm wise, I'm powerful, then I can take God on and topple him”. There's this soaring, rising attempt to topple God. Satan is not understanding the infinite gap there is between creator and all creation. It's an immeasurable gap, and he thought he could close that gap and topple God from the mountain. But however powerful Satan is, there's still that infinite gap forever. God judges him in both oracles, Isaiah 14:15, “but you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit.” The same thing in Ezekiel 28, “I threw you to the earth. I made a spectacle of you before kings. I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God. I expelled you, O guardian cherub from among the fiery stones.” The word in Ezekiel 28:16-17 is clear because Satan became powerful and arrogant based on his wisdom, beauty, and power, and God moved to throw him to the earth. Ultimately, he's going to be cast down into the lake of fire, he and his angels, the demons.

 Pride, I believe, is the original sin in the universe. That's where it started, causing Satan to rise up against God. It was based on his own evaluation of his attributes of what God had put in him. But then having been thrown to the earth, we read the tragic story, which is the story of the Bible, of how he recruited the human race to join him in the same rebellion, and we did. He was successful in recruiting Adam and Eve to his same mentality, his same rebellion, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was because they could become like God, knowing good from evil, and that the fruit was powerful to make them wise. They wanted to take God's place. Therefore, pride was at the root of human beings' fall into sin. Now, if you look at the oracles, if you were to go to Isaiah 14 and read them in context and you were to read the oracle in Ezekiel 28, these are oracles against human kings. As I said, they're oracles against the king of Babylon, the most powerful military conqueror on earth, the most powerful political leader on earth, and then the king of Tyre, most powerful economic ruler on earth. It's about everything that we care about on earth, that's what these human kings are. You just say, "It doesn't say anything about Satan here." But I believe what's going on is that Satan is the true puppet master behind the human puppets on the stage of human history, and he's hidden. He's devious and deceptive and not obvious. Just like in the Garden of Eden, it's not Satan that shows up. It's a talking serpent. God, in his wisdom, knows Satan is shrewd, but God shows himself even more shrewd. He's like, "Are you going to do that? Fine, then I'll talk to your puppet, but I'm really talking to the puppet master. I'm going to talk to the king of Babylon." Where in that human king is Satan? He's getting that same judgment, and they are too. Human kings are often like that. I'm going to talk to the king of Tyre, but I'm really talking to the puppet master behind the king of Tyre. There's a wisdom to that. It's like you're going to play games, you're going to put on costumes? I will talk to you in language you'll understand and you're going to get judged. But so also will all the human beings who act like you, who take over their kingdoms and their faith. 

We're not the king of Tyre, we're not the king of Babylon, but we want to be master of our own fate and captive of our own soul. We want to run our own little kingdom. And that is the way in which we are like these dark kings. In order to save us, God has to humble us, absolutely, has to humble us. So many verses are on this in the Bible. I love James 4:6. We also quoted in 1 Peter, “ God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Let that sink in; God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

What is it like to have the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God opposing you? You don't want that. But what do you want? You want grace. If you will humble yourself, he will give you grace, lavish grace. He gives us more grace, Peter says. In order to save us, He must humble us. Every aspect of our salvation, all of it is designed to humble us. The doctrine of predestination is very humbling because we're told that we were chosen before we had done anything good or bad, before the creation of the world, not on the basis of any works. That's very humbling. The fact that Christ died for our sins centuries before we were born humbles us.

The fact that that God regenerated us by his sovereign power, taking out the heart of stone and giving us the heart of flesh so we could listen to the gospel message humbles us. The fact that faith is a gift of God humbles us. The fact that Romans 6:17 says, "Thank God you obeyed," means my obedience is because God worked it in me. That's humbling. And then we begin the journey of sanctification. Are you all finding it humbling? I am. You must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. How's that going for you? Did you have a pretty perfect week, or are you consistently humbled by sanctification again and again, and again the Holy Spirit convicting you of sin?

It's very humbling. This process, this journey is humbling, and you're crying out like Paul, “The very thing I hate I do and the thing that I want to do I don't do. What a wretched man I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death?” That's humbling. And then when He in an instant glorifies you and does in an instant what you couldn't do in a lifetime through your joint efforts with the Holy Spirit, that will be humbling. When He raises your body from the grave in glory and you will shine like the sun for all eternity and you didn't do anything to raise yourself up, that's humbling. The whole thing's humbling and why?

Because of where you're headed. Where are you headed? You're headed to be spectacular, radiantly glorious, beautiful, powerful, and wise forever, and in order that you might not fall later into sin, as Satan did long ago. He's brought you through this whole journey so that you'll remember you are not only a creature created by the infinitely wise creator, but you are a sinner redeemed by grace. When you're shining like the son in heaven and your brothers and sisters are shining too, you won't worship them and you won't worship yourself. You'll worship the God who saved you. That's why He asked to humble you, and so we're being humbled.

We're humbled by what? We're humbled by the cross. We're humbled by this command. In this account, we're humbled by a child. Let's just walk through it. First the cross. I'm going to go back a couple of verses to verse 30 to 32, which we read last week, but it's relevant here. “They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, because he was teaching the disciples. He said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him and after three days he'll arise.’But they did not understand what he meant and they were afraid to ask him about it.”

This is the repeated reminders of the cross that they just can't handle. Their conceptions of the messianic kingdom were worldly glory, worldly power, worldly beauty. That's what they were thinking. Peter rebuked him. He rebuked Jesus about this, about the cross. Jesus turned and rebuked not just Peter, but all of them saying, "Get behind me, Satan. You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of man." Your human conceptions of the kingdom are basically satanic. That's what He's saying. You want to rise up in your pride, you want to glorify yourself in your beauty and power, that must not be. If you want to be in my kingdom, you have to be stripped of satanic pride.” 

Now, they couldn't handle that teaching. They didn't understand it. Their minds couldn't handle a dead messiah. A dead son of David didn't make any sense to them, but they especially couldn't handle the conception of the need for him to suffer a bloody death on the cross in our place under the just wrath of God that we wouldn't go to hell, which we deserve. They couldn't handle that message. They didn't know that their sins needed to be atoned for by his blood. Neither did they understand how much they would have to drink from his cup of suffering in order to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. They didn't expect that either. The message of the cross was offensive to them. Jesus tells them these facts, but they can't understand it. 

Then He asked them about their discussion. Look at it again, verse 33-34, “They came to Capernaum. And when He was in the house, He asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" Now, He knew what they're arguing about. He knew very well what they were arguing about. Why does He ask them? He's trying to draw the poison out. Let's bring it out. Let's talk about it. That's Jesus. He's bringing it up. But they were afraid to tell him why. They knew it was shameful. They were ashamed of what they were arguing. They didn't want to talk to Jesus about it. It's a shameful thing. Which of them was the best at exorcism, I guess. We don't have any examples of their teaching ministry at this point. I don't know their criteria, what made them great. It's pretty embarrassing, and they're ashamed to tell him. Jesus has to deal with it. He gives them this command, “To be first, you must be last.” In verse 35, “Sitting down, Jesus called the twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’"

We're going to expand and zero in on this in the next chapter. I'm going to reserve a lot of the comments for then. Mark 10:42-45, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” It's a pattern of humble servanthood. That's what's greatness in my kingdom. If you want those positions, those gradations of honor and eternity in the kingdom of heaven, you need to serve, be willing to serve. That's what He's going to talk about.

Then He brings in an object lesson, a little child, verses 36-37, “He took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me, but the one who sent me.’” Jesus is a great teacher. He uses object illustrations, tangible parables, things that they can understand. Here, He actually uses a little child, probably a toddler, able to stand on his own, but small enough to be picked up and held in his arms. He's going to use this child so that they can look at the face of this little child. 

Now, in the next chapter, when his disciples were rebuking parents who were bringing little children for Jesus to bless them, Jesus became angry and indignant with them. He said, Mark 10:14-15, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." Every sinner on earth has to be converted from pride and humbled like a little child in order just to be saved. Just to be saved, just to have your sins forgiven, you have to become a little child. What does that mean to have humble, weak, child-like faith? You think about a little child that reaches up for his or her mother crying and extending arms. That's a picture of weak faith, weakness in yourself, faith toward the caregiver, toward the mother of the father. That's a picture of conversion. You don't come to Christ's kingdom like a triumphant warrior having fought a great battle and you're ascending the marble steps to the podium and receiving a crown of glory. That's not how you're saved. You're saved like becoming a little helpless child. That's how you're saved. You're like the thief on the cross who has nothing to offer, nothing, no works, no resume, nothing, but looks over to Jesus and says, "Remember me, Lord, when you come in your kingdom." "Today, Jesus said, "you'll be with me in paradise." You can't even enter the kingdom unless you're converted and become like a little child. That's humbling. But that's not this passage, that’s Mark 10:14-15. In this passage, Jesus extends it out to how they treat each other and uses a child to talk about how they should be horizontally treating one another. What does the humble life look like? Well, three aspects, humble to welcome one another gently, humble to see others' successes gladly, and humble to serve others simply.

We'll walk through these quickly. First of all, humble to welcome one another gently. Verse 37, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me, but the one who sent me.” This has to do with how you treat each other, how you talk to each other, how you deal with each other. And that does not involve harshly arguing with each other about greatness. That's not how we treat each other. Jesus is saying effectively, I am in each disciple you meet, every one of my genuine children. Treat them gently and lovingly and tenderly like any normal loving adult would treat a toddler. That's how gently and kindly you should be treating each other. Welcome each other like you would welcome this little child, because in so doing you're welcoming me. And if you welcome me, you also welcome the one who sent me. God is in all of this. Treat each other gently and kindly and not with arrogant, boasting about your greatness. Imagine you are at a playground and you see a little girl fall and skin her knee, and she's crying. The caregiver, maybe mom, maybe dad, maybe a nanny, grandma, grandpa, whatever, comes over. The child's crying, but the caregiver hasn't extended any help yet, hasn't picked the child up. The child's crying and hurting. The caregiver said, "I want you to acknowledge my superiority and greatness before I'll help you. Then I'll help you." But what would you think of such a person? It's like, what's wrong with you? This is not about your ego. It's not about your greatness. It's about treating someone with gentleness and kindness. That's what Jesus is. He's giving a picture of how you should be treating each other, not this arrogant boasting, this harshness that's going on. Welcome each other like that. And in so doing, you'll be welcoming me and through me welcoming God.

Then he says humble to see each other's successes gladly. What happens now? That's an interesting moment, verse 38, “‘Teacher,' said John, ‘we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop because he was not one of us.’" Now, you could say, I don't get the flow here. Why did John say this? Let's imagine there is a connection, and it could be that John, ahead of any of the other apostles, gets it. He gets the humility and the meekness and the loneliness and his conscience is bothering him about something that had just happened recently, and so he tells this story. Now, I think the reason it's relevant is, like I said, I was trying to guess what their criteria of greatness was.

Like in sports, you look at statistics and championships won so you can determine what's called these days, the GOAT, “the greatest of all time.” You got to measure these things. All right, you apostle GOAT candidates, what are your credentials? What do you got? We drove out some demons. Good for you. Apparently not always because we just got done with that. Father, remember the nine apostles who didn't pray and didn't drive out the... You're not so great, but maybe that's the best of what you got. But John is remembering this. He's like, "Actually now that I think about it, we saw a man driving out demons and we told him to stop. We tried to stop him because he wasn't one of us." 

Now we get to the issue of pride of horizontal competition, where you're in competition with other servants of God for which of them is the greatest, who did more, who did the most, all of that. We know what a destructive thing this can be, this arrogance, this pride. I heard a story, it's probably more of a parable than an actual historical story. But back in the days when in Egypt, in different places, monks would go out in the desert to fast and deprive themselves. They were being holy out in the desert. These demons were trying to tempt these holy men, and they weren't successful in getting them to sin. So then like The Screwtape Letters, the older demon says to the younger demon, "Tell him his brother has just been made bishop of Alexandria." It worked. Immediately, jealousy and pride came over him. That happens a lot. You're in ministry and you're comparing yourself with others to see who's the greatest. 

What we need to understand is that these apostles weren't the only ones that Jesus gave power to to drive out demons. In Luke 10, He sends out 72 disciples with power to drive out demons, not just the twelve. It seems that this guy is a legitimate follower of Christ who has a legitimate power through the Holy Spirit to drive out demons. John and the other apostles tried to stop him, tried to shut him down, because he wasn't one of them, one of the twelve. He wasn't one of the select group. I think John realizes now that probably is the wrong thing to do. “Was that the wrong thing to do, Jesus?” “Yes, it was.” Why? Well, he needs to see the unity of the work of Christ. Look at verses 39-40, “'Do not stop him,’ Jesus said. ‘No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us.’" 

It's like the same spirit of God who is in him doing legitimate exorcisms is working a legitimate saving faith in him to say Jesus is Lord. You can't say Jesus is Lord apart from the work of the Spirit, the same Spirit at work in you is at work in him. He's not going to be able to say anything bad about us. Conversely, he's going to testify that I'm Lord and that he loves me. But then Jesus says strikingly in verse 40, "Whoever is not against us is for us." It's interesting, because in Matthew 12:30, He says the opposite, but the same thing, just a different way. He says, "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." These are two sides of the same equation. You're either for Jesus or against him. There are two and only two kingdoms, the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of Satan. You're serving one or the other. There's no third option. If you're not against Jesus, you're for him. If you're not for him, you're against him. He says it's black or white. Therefore, if anyone actually is legitimately serving the kingdom of God, he's on your side. We're on the same team. We're in the same kingdom. We should be celebrating other people's successes as though they were our own. But that pride of competition can be very divisive, very harmful in a church and indeed in the kingdom of Christ.

What's so beautiful about this is in heaven, we're going to be so liberated from pride. We'll be liberated forever from self-focus and self pride. We are going to celebrate the successes and honors and glories of our brothers and sisters like they were our own. Why? Because 1 Corinthians 12:26 says we're all part of one body. 1 Corinthians 12:26 says, "If one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers with it. But if one part is honored, what? The whole body is honored with it." Therefore, we should not just celebrate other's successes, but help them succeed even more. Feed them with encouragement, with the Word of God, with anything we can to help our brothers and sisters in their ministries flourish and be fruitful because we're all serving one Lord, one kingdom. That's pretty awesome.

Finally, humble to serve others, simply Jesus. Jesus said in verse 41, "I tell you the truth. Anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward." There’s a fuller teaching on this in Matthew 10. In Matthew 10, He sends them out, the twelve, two by two, and He tells them not to bring any money for their journey or any extra tunic or sandals or staff or anything because the worker's worth is keep. You're supposed to go to a town and find somebody who'll welcome you in and take care of you, meet your needs, like the widow did with Elijah or the other family did with Elijah. They bring you in and feed you and care for you and you stay there and do your preacher ministry. Then He circles back to the support givers, the support givers. In Matthew 10:40-42, Jesus says, "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me. Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward. Anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. And if anyone gives you, one of my little ones, even a cup of cold water, he will never lose his reward.” If you're out, you twelve apostles, on your preaching journeys and you're getting hot and your throat is parched and someone comes along having heard you preach and says, "I want you to preach more," and gives you a cup of cold water, God in heaven will see that and reward that person. If anyone supports you and cares for you while you do your preaching ministry, they get the same reward you do." That's very humbling, isn't it? Not everyone's an upfront person, but those that give support to the upfront people get the same reward as the upfront people. That should level this pride and put us all where we need to be, on the same team. That's the passage. 

Let's learn a few lessons. First of all, just let me use this passage as a mirror. We should not assume we are any better than the twelve apostles arguing about which of them is greatest. We should assume we have this same problem and say, "Lord, show it to me. Show me where pride is hurting me. Show me where my arguments with loved ones is coming from pride. Show me where my pride is hurting my marriage, my parenting, my relationship with my brothers and sisters, my relationship with my neighbors, my relationship with my coworkers. How is pride hurting me? Show it to me. Expose it to me.” Don't assume the answer is that it isn't. How can the cross of Christ level my pride? How can I see in Jesus' death on the cross the remedy to my pride? How can I see in Jesus, the ultimate humble servant, the remedy for my arrogance and my pride? How does this passage convict you? How can we learn the lessons of humility that the Bible teaches us? How can we meditate? I would challenge you, memorize, James 4:6. Memorize this one verse and meditate on it every day for a week or even a month, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Just say it to yourself like 50 times in one day. God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. God, give me more grace and humble me. How can I humble myself so that you will give me more grace? How can you work humility in me? How can we better celebrate the ministry successes of others? How can I as a pastor celebrate other successful pastors whose church is maybe more fruitful than ours or bigger or more this or that? We're on the same team. Whoever's not against you, this is for Him. How can we within this local church celebrate and help the ministry successes of others and not be jealous of them?

How can we welcome, how should we welcome one another like little children? How can we be gentle and deal gently and lovingly with each other like little children? And finally, how can this cup of cold water teaching motivate us to store up treasure in heaven? If God's not going to forget even the slightest tiny act of service, the cup of cold water, one will never lose his reward, Jesus said. How can that motivate me to serve Christ better?

Finally, how does this passage speak to lost people? How is your pride holding you back from coming to Christ? How is your pride holding you back from repenting of your sins and believing? Jesus said you have to be converted and become like a little child. What's holding you back from trusting in Jesus so that your sins can be forgiven?

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for this passage, for its power, its complexity, its beauty. Lord, though we do not delight ever and sin, we do thank you that the sinful attitudes of the apostles and their sinful discussions with each other are recorded in scripture, so that we can ourselves be convicted and we can ourselves repent. Strengthen each of us, oh Lord, as we look at this passage. Teach us, Oh Lord, our ways. Help us to see ourselves in it and humble ourselves that you may lift us up. In Jesus' name, Amen. 

Jesus exposes and humbles the proud disciples so they might serve others better. Jesus is a perfect example of humility as the Messiah.

The post The Humbling of the Twelve (Mark Sermon 45) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In chapter 7 of the Book of Romans, the main topic is the relationship of Christians with the Law, which can not justify or sanctify.

The post Class in Romans: Romans 7 Overview appeared first on Two Journeys.

In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul warns the prideful Corinthian congregation (and us) to stop desiring the world’s comforts and praise and to imitate him in suffering for the gospel.

The post 1 Corinthians Episode 5: Courageous Stewards of the Gospel appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis expounds on three themes woven together in Mark 9:14-32: the vicious demon, the various degrees of people's unbelief, and the glory of Christ.

Turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 9. I know some of you can scarcely believe we're going to do 14 through 32 today. You're like, I thought we were the church that spent whole sermons on one verse. But not today. We're going to move faster. But it's a marvelous narrative and account we're going to move through. One of the most remarkable pictures of Jesus in the Bible is in Revelation 1, where the beloved and aged apostle John saw the glorified resurrected Christ with eyes of blazing fire and feet of burn bronze, and it says, "with a sharp, double-edged sword coming out of His mouth."

Now that phrase double-edged sword should bring to our mind another text, Hebrews 4:12 which says, "The word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword." It divides, it penetrates, it divides soul and spirit, joints and marrow judges the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts. We have this concept of a double-edged sword coming out of Jesus' mouth. Swords are designed to sever, to separate. It's what they do. This double-edged sword comes out and in our text today, we're going to see Jesus wielding the double-edged sword of rebuke. He rebukes the demon clearly in verse 25, the text says, “He rebuked the demon and he left.” So in that way, the double-edged sword comes out of Jesus' mouth, severing the connection between the demon and the young man. But the text does not speak of the other rebuke that He gives so very powerfully to His disciples. The text doesn't call it a rebuke, but that's what it is.

In Matthew’s account, "Oh, unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?" It’s very heavy what He speaks to His apostles. We're told in 2 Timothy 2, the word of God is God-breathed. All scriptures God-breathed and useful. Useful for what? For teaching. What's next? Rebuking? Correcting, training and righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good word. So the conception I have of that double-edged sword coming out of Jesus' mouth is a sword to destroy His enemies as He is the king of the kingdom of heaven. He is the mighty ruling conquering king of Revelation 19 who comes back, and the sword comes out of His mouth and He kills people. He just destroys His enemies and destroys demonic power. The sword coming out of His mouth is like a weapon against His enemies.

But Jesus is also portrayed and again and again, we see this in His healings, as a great physician. In that sense, the sword comes out of His mouth as a scalpel to heal His people of the tumors that are besetting their souls, or we could say severing the invisible chains that are wrapped around our souls. All of you came in here, I came in here today, with invisible bonds wrapped around our souls that Satan has in his deceptiveness, woven around our souls and manifesting themselves in our lives, and those need to be severed. We need to be set free from indwelling sin and Jesus, the great physician can do it, but it's not a painless process. Sometimes He has to hurt us in order to heal us. The image I have today is all of us just need to lay on the operating table under His sharp double-edged scalpel and be rebuked by Him. Rebuked from what? Fundamentally in the text, it's going to be unbelief, our unbelief, which in Matthew’s Gospel He calls perverse.

I never thought of myself as a perverse person, but there is something fundamentally perverse about not believing in Jesus. We're going to find in our text, Jesus does not coddle or isn't comfortable with unbelief ever. He's never nice to it. He doesn't speak gently to unbelief. He always rebukes it. He deals with it very forcefully and directly. But in the middle of that, we have this father, one of the most pitiable characters in the Bible along with his son, his oppressed son, saying on behalf of all of us, thank God for it, "Lord, I do believe, help my unbelief." How many of you feel you could say that to him today? I feel all of us could. I think it's a prayer we could pray all the time to Jesus. So that's the text that's in front of us today. “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

In this text today, this account, we have one main goal. We're going to see one main goal that should not be a surprise to us. There'll be three themes serving that one main goal. And to that end, those three themes woven together in a perfect narrative that I want to honor. I want to honor the narrative. I want to walk through the narrative, but then I want to unravel the themes to achieve that one main goal. This is not just another exorcism, it's not just another healing account. First of all, how could there be just another exorcism? How are the exorcisms you saw this week? Were they amazing? I mean this is not... There is no such thing as just another exorcism. This is a miracle, a mighty miracle.

But even in the four Gospels, this has unique elements and it's worthy of our careful study. Now in this account, Jesus is going to be confronting two basic enemies, a demon who is revealed as uniquely vicious, and then varying levels of unbelief on the part of different people in the account. He's against the demon, He's going to fight the demon, and He is against the unbelief in the various people He's addressing. The one main goal is the same in all four Gospels, is indeed the same every week as I get up to preach, there is one main overarching goal of the four gospels, I would argue of the entire Bible, 66 books of the Bible, but specifically the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For us specifically in the Gospel of Mark, that account, it is to bring us to a living faith in Jesus for the salvation of our souls from sin.  That's the point of the Bible. That's the point of all four Gospels. 

The theme of Mark's Gospel is asserted right from the very first verse, Mark 1:1, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God,” that you would come to the faith that Jesus is the son of God and you would have a greater, more detailed, more majestic understanding of what that means. Then at the end of the Gospel of Mark, as Jesus has just died, and the centurion speaks in a summary sort of way for all of us, "Truly this man was the son of God." That brackets the entire 15 chapters up to that point in the Gospel of Mark or as Peter confessed as recorded in Matthew's gospel, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God,” that we would be able to make that confession from our hearts." You Jesus are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And again, the purpose statement in John's gospel, John 20:31, "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God and that by believing may have life in His name." That's the point of the whole Bible, I think. So every account in every Gospel is written to serve this one main goal to produce faith in Jesus Christ. How does it do that? It does it by giving us Jesus' credentials for such a lofty claim. His mighty words, His mighty works, His perfect character. Every statement serves that end, it's going to give us His credentials, His power, His nature, His compassion, His love, His unique identity as the incarnate God man, credentials, as the basis of our faith in Jesus. 

Second, it's also going to address the readers. It's going to reach out to us as the readers where we're at and address our condition and seek to win us from varying levels of unbelief into belief in Christ. The gospels then frequently exemplify unbelief. They put unbelief on display so we can see ourselves in it, so that the word of God becomes a mirror. This is what unbelief looks like. Just to tell you where we're going, we're going to see unbelief in this account expressed in prayerlessness. If I were to ask any of you to say how many of you could be convicted on that count, that you show self-reliance through prayerlessness. That's a form of perverse unbelief. You're like, wait a minute, I didn't know it was perverse. It is. Jesus thinks it is. For you to be self-reliant and therefore think, I got this, I got this and don't need to pray about it. Is that you, it's me. We need to be weened off of that and learn to pray without ceasing, to not think that anything is too little to bring the God in prayer. That's where this sermon is going. Does that make sense? 

That's what the apostles did. The demon possessed young man came and they thought, “We got this”, and they relied on themselves and their technique and their experience. I believe, and I'm going to argue this, that God the Father threw them under the bus for their own good. He knew what they wanted. He knew what they were trying to do. He would not do it. Jesus was not there. He is up on the Mount of Transfiguration and God the Father let them twist in the breeze. Why? Because we needed the help. They needed it. That what is going on. The idea here is that we would be won to a greater, more mature, more developed faith in Christ, and faith is the eyesight of the soul. We're going to see Jesus as He really is. That's what's going to happen in this narrative. The three themes are the demon, the faith of the people and the glory of Christ, His attributes, how He behaves here, what He shows about himself here. Those are the three themes.

 So first theme, number one, is the demon; it’s vicious nature and it's chronic reign of terror over this young man and his loving father. That's theme number one. Theme number two is the faith of the people surrounding this case. Actually their unbelief, their varying levels of unbelief. There is no person in this account whose faith is exemplary. No one displays exemplary faith here. Rather, there are varying levels of unbelief. First the crowd, we have the crowd, they come in at the beginning. It's the group of people who are not defined or described here at all. They're just there. They're always there, the crowd. They are the ones from whom Jesus is trying to win His elect sheep. Out of that crowd, people who will cross over from death to light. They're at the level of unbelief. Some of them may be already believers, but that's the crowd. Their spiritual condition is not described, but they're mentioned. They're mentioned at the beginning of the account, and then they come flooding in right before the miracle. When Jesus sees them coming, He does the miracle.

Second, you've got Jesus' enemies, teachers of the laws, one translation “of the scribes”. We already know what they think. They've told us what they think. They think that Jesus does exorcisms by Beelzebub above the prince of demons. That's their official judgment. Remember how Jesus warn them about blasphemy against the Spirit that would never be forgiven, not in this age or in the age to come. They've already decided that Jesus does miracles by the power of Satan. In John 9, they've already decided that anyone who said that Jesus is the Messiah will be thrown out of the synagogue. They're the enemies. 

Third, you got Jesus' nine apostles that were down below while the three apostles, Peter, James, and John were up on the Mount of Transfiguration, the nine apostles. Jesus is utterly exasperated with them and rebukes them as we'll see in this account. Then you've got the father of this young man who has enough faith to be there for the healing, but his faith has taken a major hit because of the apostle's failure. He's at the point now where he doesn't know what to think about Jesus. Those are the individuals we're going to look at.

 Then theme number three, the great theme is the glory, the glories of Christ, His character, His words, His actions, His response to unbelief, rebuking it to heal it, His compassion on the father and the young man, His infinite power, especially in His openly claiming omnipotence, all things are possible for him who believes. It’s an incredible claim. A small display of that power effortlessly driving out this demon instantly and effortlessly.

Dealing also with the wisdom of Christ and dealing with His apostles' unbelief as they come to Him privately later and say, what happened? How did we fail? Then dealing with them. Then at the end, the extra paragraph that I added on, the Christ glory, which He's getting them ready again and again for, His death on the cross and His resurrection. He's getting them ready for what they are not ready for, how Peter keeps pushing against it. That's the whole account. 

Now, these themes, the demon, the people's unbelief and the glories of Christ are woven together through this account. They're woven together like a tapestry. What I want to do is I want to honor the account as the Holy Spirit has given it to us and just walk from A to Z , first making comments along the way. Secondly, I'm going to pull out these themes and talk about them and then apply it. So that's what we're doing in the sermon. The account starts. They're coming down off the perfect mountaintop experience, the Mount of Transfiguration. Wouldn't you love to have been there? A foresight of Jesus' heavenly glory, the radiance, the brilliant light, all of that, but now it's time to get back to work. He's got to come down off that mountaintop. “No Peter, we're not building three shelters, we're not staying up there. We have work to do.” He has to come down off that mountain and He comes down into this big argument going on.

Jesus come down off that Mountain of Transfiguration to continue His journey to the cross. That's where He's going. He sees the nine apostles that He left behind arguing with the teachers of the law while the crowds listening to the argument. The crowd sees Jesus and are said to be overwhelmed with wonder. It's a very strong expression. They're stunned to see him. We don't know why, it doesn't say, but it's likely they have been desperately searching for Jesus and He's not around. They're wondering where He is. Here are the nine apostles. Where's Jesus? Now they see Him, and they run to Him. Jesus begins by asking the apostles that He left behind, “What were you arguing with them about?” They're arguing with these scribes, the teachers of the law, and the father speaks up and we get the first part of this tragic story ,and it is really tragic. Verse 17, “Teacher, ‘I brought you my son who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech." Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, mashes his teeth and becomes rigid.” It's like he has epileptic seizures or something like that. But you can see the physical effects of this. "I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not." The father gives this narrative in verse 17 and 18. The demons overpowering viciousness is first opened up here. More on that in a moment. Jesus doesn't focus on that enemy, the demon, but He zeroes in on a far more significant enemy and that is the unbelief on the part of His apostles. That's the greater danger here. Why is that? Why is unbelief such a great concern for him? Because everything that Jesus does is to produce faith in the hearts of His people so that they can be saved from their sins.“For it is by grace, you have been saved, through faith and this not of yourselves, it's the gift of God.” He wants to give us salvation from our sins through our faith in Jesus and no other way. Unbelief is the enemy. 

 Jesus reacts with a powerful rebuke concerning His apostles who failed to drive out the demon, and thus severely wound the faith of this man and almost certainly many in the onlooking crowd. Verse 19, "Oh, unbelieving generation." Jesus replied, "How long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?" I think this is definitely the sharpest rebuke Jesus ever gave to the twelve. As I think about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I think this is the sharpest rebuke. He's generally very gentle with them, dealing with them, but this is... It's very strong, this rebuke. Then Jesus ordered, “bring the boy here to me.” Behind that you get absolute certainty that Jesus will be able to handle this situation. Don't you? Absolute certainty. “Bring him here.”

There is no problem with the demon at all. He'll handle that. They brought the demon-possessed boy to Jesus, and immediately the demon threw the boy down in the ground in a convulsion. He is dominating this tragic young man and his helplessly grieving father. The young man rolls around on the ground, foaming at the mouth. Then Jesus does something unusual. He asks for the medical history of this young man. How long has he been like this? It's fascinating because Jesus doesn't usually do that. He just heals people. He didn't ask the leper, how long has he been leprous? He just heals them. He doesn't need that information. He doesn't need... He knows everything, everything He needs to know and He knows all things and so He doesn't need that. So why does He ask? I think He asks so that we might have a sense of the greatness of the tragedy that's been going on, the magnitude of the emotion that Jesus is stepping into, and also therefore the greatness of the miracle He's about to do.

We're not very naturally compassionate. We don't generally care. We're like the priest and Levi in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, walking right by people, bleeding by the side of the road. We generally don't care, but the Holy Spirit wants us to care and He brings us into the situation. Do you understand what this has been like? So He asked for the history. The father answers, "From childhood." Now you have to walk into that and try to understand what that answer means, from childhood. It means that this young man's not a boy anymore. He's not a child anymore, he’s a young man. That means this has been going on for years, for years and years. I can scarcely imagine. Then He asks if the demon has often thrown the boy into the fire or the water to kill him. Often. So we're going to walk back through this to understand the viciousness of the demon, but I'm just going through the account right now. 

Then the father exposes his own level of unbelief. “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” Have compassion and help us. See how this poor man's faith has been wounded by the failure of the apostles. It's not a minor deal when we mess up. He had come there expecting Jesus could help. Now he's not so sure. Jesus then uses, I think, a gentler rebuke on the Father. He's just a great physician. He knows what each person needs. So He repeats it, “If you can?” I think that's the right way to read it. "If you can? Everything is possible for him who believes." Do you realize the significance of that statement? It's incredible and we're going to dive into that in due time. But it's amazing. Then the father gives what I've already said is a timeless answer. You want to hold onto it for the future, like tomorrow's quiet time or maybe later today. "Lord, I do believe, help my unbelief."

Jesus then sees the crowd coming together, running to the scene. There's already a crowd. Now there's lots more people coming because Jesus is back from the Mount of Transfiguration, and they're running there. From that crowd Jesus is going to seek to gather His sheep through faith. It is for their sake and for the countless millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions crowding around this scene through the scripture in the centuries that would follow. It's for our benefit that Jesus does this miracle. When He sees the crowd, verse 25, He rebuked the evil spirit. That's the one use of the word “rebuke” in the account. "He rebuked the evil spirit, ‘You deaf and mute spirit.’" Now we understand it's not just mute, but he's made this young man deaf. "You deaf and mute spirit." He said, ‘I command you come out of him and never enter him again.'" The latter part of that command I find to be unique. There's no other restraint like it in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I'm going to talk more about that in a minute or so. But that particular demon is forbidden from ever tormenting this young man in that manner again, as though that young man and his father and that family have suffered enough from this. It's enough. 

That part of the account ends with the disciples asking Jesus privately why they had failed. You can understand why they did it privately. They didn't want to do it in front of the crowd. They go to him later, like in the house or something like that. Say, what happened? Why couldn't we drive it out? Keep in mind that Jesus specifically earlier had given the twelve apostles this power over demons. That's key to understanding the rebuke. Mark 3:14-15, “He appointed twelve, designating them apostles that they might be with him and that He might send them out to preach and have authority to drive out demons.” There it is. He gave them that authority and they did. They went out and did it. Mark 6:13, “They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.” So Jesus answers their query, why couldn't we drive it out? In Mark's Gospel, it says, "This kind can only come out by prayer." What does that tell you? It means they didn't pray. Is that significant? Oh, yes, it is. God found it significant. What was going on there as they tried to do the exorcism? They were relying on themselves. This is the “We got this” thing. “All right, I got this. I know what to do.” They were relying on their own experience, their own knowledge, their own strength, their own expertise. Could I say their own technique, and the demon refused to come out. God, the Father did not do anything on their behalf. 

Then the final section of today's sermon is that paragraph that I've added in which Jesus warns them again, what's about to happen and tells them not to tell anyone. He warns them because He's training them, specifically the apostles, getting them ready for the cross. He's going to be betrayed, He's going to suffer, He's going to die and He's going to rise again. But they didn't understand.

Now we have honored the account as the Holy Spirit gave us in Mark's Gospel. Let's walk through it. I want to pull out the themes. Let's talk first about this demon. Jesus rebukes this vicious demon who is stunningly vicious. They all are, but this is a vicious demon. This demon's oppression of this young man gives us an insight into the coldness and evil of Satan's heart toward the human race. Jesus said in John 10:10, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy." You see that with the demon. The demon was constantly seeking to kill this young man, but it also stole from him. It stole from his hearing and his speech. Jesus called him a deaf and mute spirit. The father said it robbed him of his speech. But later we learn of hearing and later in the text we get insight into the idea of types of demons. "This kind of demon can only come out by prayer", He says. So there are different levels, I guess, of demons. There are different categories of demons and other scriptures give us indications that this is true. And positively, the holy angels are at least divided into two categories: arc-angels and angels. An arc-angel in the Greek is just a ruler angel. Ruler angels have authority over other angels, but that gives us a glimpse into the whole way that angels are organized into levels of power and authority and responsibility. Paul says in Ephesians 6, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers." Plural. "Against the authorities." Plural. "Against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." It's layer upon layer of authority, and they're evil. We have a glimpse with the phrase, “this kind”, et cetera.

This demon focused in a kind of specialty sort of way on two functions in the young man beyond the epileptic-like seizure that he produced on him. Jesus calls him a deaf and mute spirit. We know the spirit isn't deaf, the spirit isn't mute. That's not the issue. That's the effect he’s having on the young man. It may well be that demons are responsible for specific physiological effects on people, and we openly have it said in the Book of Job how Satan afflicted Job with sores from the head of his top of his head to the bottom of his feet. He is able to do that kind of affliction, physical affliction on human bodies. We'll find out in heaven how responsible they may or may not have been for pandemics, for AIDS, for tumors, for any of the above, but it's Biblical at least to think that these physiological effects can be demon- produced. It is not something our medical scientific world thinks about much, but we Christians ought to. The demons didn't go out of business when Jesus ascended to heaven. Quite the opposite.

I want you to think about what life must have been like for this young man and his father. The demon had often it says, sought to kill him by throwing him into the fire of the water. If you were this young man's father, what would your life be like? The word often implies periodic attacks, right? Periodic. You don't know when the next one's going to come. So how can you live your life and think of these specific attacks on this young man's life thrown into the fire. What do you have to do? Grab him out of the fire, roll him on the ground, put a carpet on him, beat the flames out of his clothing. Into the water, you dive in and rescue him. Is he catatonic? Is he stiff? Is he fighting you, beating you up as you're pulling him to shore? And when's the next attack going to happen? Is it middle of the night? Is it three weeks from now? Is it at a family gathering? Is it at the synagogue? Is it on the Sabbath? Do you think the demon cares about what's best for you? It's been going on since he was a boy from childhood. That's years of this abuse. Years. I'm telling you, as a father of five children, I can scarcely go over these details without tears sitting in my eyes. It's true. I'm like, what would it have been like? The demon is vastly more powerful than this young man or his father or any of the scribes that were standing there or the nine apostles that tried to drive him out. This demon is a tyrant. He is a bully. He is vicious. No compassion. Picture a powerful warrior kicking a little boy around physically on the ground like on a playground. I mean just rage would rise up inside you at that kind of bullying. But that's what's going on here. 

By contrast, let's see Jesus. Jesus' glory, light versus darkness. Light versus darkness. In verse 22, the father said, "If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us." The father has gone to the fountain of compassion. The source, the most compassionate man there has ever been is Jesus. He's compassion incarnate. No one cared like Jesus, and He's also omnipotence incarnate. He doesn't understand the level of power that Jesus has. “If you can do anything, please have compassion on us and help us, if you can.” Everything is possible for him who believes. Jesus is infinitely above the demon in power. 

You notice again and again, we don't get any reaction of the demon to Jesus here. I guess in one sense you do, but in other accounts it's pretty obvious the demons are afraid of Jesus. Remember the legion of demons, they're terrified of Jesus and there's an army of them inside a man, so they're afraid. Jesus is infinitely above the demons, totally different than the demon. The demon has absolutely no mercy, no pity, no compassion. But Jesus' heart is deeply moved and tender toward this boy and his father. So then He rebukes the demon, verse 25, “'You deaf and mute spirit,’” He said, “'I command you to come out of him and never enter him again.’" That rebuke is the foretaste of a final sentence that He's going to give, a final sentence to the devil, and his angels, “Depart from me.” He says this to people, but we get a sense of what He's going to do to Satan and the demons. "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” That's what hell is all about, punishment for Satan and for the demons. 

The demon makes the boy thrash around one more time, foaming at the mouth. When Jesus drives him out, He leaves the boy completely still as if he's dead. Verse 26, 27, “The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looks so much like a corpse that many said he's dead, but Jesus took him by the hand, lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.” This is the demon's last temper tantrum. He has no desire to come out of this young man, but he's overpowered by Jesus. It reminds me of Revelation 12:12 where it says of Satan, "he is filled with fury because he knows his time is short." He's up against infinitely greater power and that power, power is now brought to bear upon his kingdom and he can't do anything to stop it, but he's angry about it. So let's celebrate Jesus's effortless power over demons again.

And note again, this unique element, the demon is forbidden from ever entering this young man. Again, I don't find any other such prohibition in the Bible. It's unique. Why is it unique and why is it important? Because Jesus actually said this is exactly contrary to demonic behavior. In Matthew chapter 12:43-45 Jesus says this, "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and doesn't find it. Then it says, I'll return to the house I left. When it comes back, it finds a house unoccupied,” that's a keyword, "swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits, more evil or more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there and the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how I'll be with this generation."

It's a complex statement, but basically it’s saying the demons are roaming around, restless, looking for a place to occupy, to inhabit. Jesus talks about a man, a house, a generation. So basically, you know, put your fists in the water and pull them out and there's no hole left. Why? Because the water rushes in to fill it. That's what the demons do. They're coming back. That's what they do. But in this case, He will not let this demon come back on this family again. Jesus doesn't throw away words. Do you think He's serious about this? Jesus is always serious about everything He says. How's He going to do it? Two things - constant vigilance and omnipotence. God the Father, will He honor His Son's judgment? Of course He will. He's entrusted all judgment to the Son, and so He will watch this demon. Think of it like restraining order, like a demonic restraining order or one of those ankle bracelets that's put on somebody that's on parole or something like that. It's like I'm watching and he cannot come back in. I'm not saying that this family never suffered anything again, didn't have any other diseases. I'm not saying that. Just that this cannot happen again. By the way, it's also a picture of the thing Satan complained about in the Book of Job saying you have put a hedge around him and everything he has, called often the “hedge of protection.” Demons are constantly bumping into restraints that God puts up. Then He lets open a door and the demon flood in a certain direction. He shuts it down again. He's doing this every day, but this is a glimpse into that. 

Then Jesus addresses unbelief. Having dealt with the vicious demon, He now addresses unbelief. As I said, no one has exemplary faith in this account. Sometimes, in some accounts, He will comment on the exemplary faith of a person like the Syrophoenician woman. “Woman, you have great faith. Your request is granted, the demon's gone.” Or the Roman centurion who said, “Lord, I don't deserve to have you come under my roof. Just say the word.” Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, I've not found anyone in Israel with such great faith." So, occasional comment. Here, no one. No one's faith is exemplary here. Everyone needs some help. The crowd, they're the harvest field. He is reaching out to them that some may cross over from death to life watching this miracle. Then you have the Scribes, they are the enemies that Jesus has fought against who may have already or are committing the blasphemy against the Spirit ascribing to Satan the works of the Holy Spirit. They were arguing with the apostles at the beginning, almost certainly making much of their failure saying, "Aha, Jesus is a fraud. The very thing we've been saying.” 

But the real issue here are the apostles, the nine apostles. They are the focus. Jesus says in verse 19, "Oh, unbelieving generation." He says, more sharply in Matthew 17:17, "Oh, unbelieving and perverse generation." We need to lay under that word and hear it. It is perverse for us to not believe in Jesus. It's twisted. There's a sickness to it, and we can see it, like with the Jews when they had seen the ten plagues in Egypt, the Red Sea crossing, the manna, the water from the rock, all of that, Sinai, and they get to the border of the promised land and they don't believe God is strong enough to take on the Amalekites and the Anakites and all that. It's like, how could you possibly come to that conclusion? That's perverse.

It's even more the case with Jesus. How many miracles does he need to do? How many amazing teachings like the Sermon of the Mount, does he have to give for you to be persuaded? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? It's perverse not to believe in Jesus. It's twisted, it's sick. He uses that word. In Luke's account of the storm on the sea, the disciples cried out in fear, “Master, master, we're going to drown." In Luke 8, "He got up and rebuked the wind and the waves and the raging waters and the storm subsided. Then He turns to His disciples, saying, ‘where is your faith?’" Their unbelief is specifically in that Jesus had given them power over demons and they had driven out demons, but they failed to pray, so they're displaying faithless self-reliance. Verse 28, 29 in our account, "After Jesus had gone indoors His disciples, asked him privately, ‘Why couldn't we drive it out?’” Verse 29, “He replied, ‘This kind can only come out by prayer.’" 

Some of you may have a King James version or some other that adds an extra phrase, "and fasting." Huh? Where'd that come from? I don't know. I don't think it's original. We have to bump into text issues from time to time. We don't have the original Gospel of Mark. We just have copies. The science of text criticism is to look at all those copies and figure out as best we can what the original was that Mark wrote. I think some overzealous monk copying Mark's gospel centuries ago thought the account needed a little help and kind of juiced it in with a major element of their monastic life, fasting. Think, “Oh, I get it. Can't just be prayer. It's got to be prayer and fasting.” But all right, first of all, it's not in all the oldest manuscripts and best manuscripts. It seems to be pretty obviously a later edition. It also seems to be obvious why they would do it. It just seems like this kind of healing can only come out by prayers. A strange answer. What? The disciples didn't pray. Surely they must have prayed. No, they didn't. But they thought, I'm having a practical problem with it. How does it work practically? The father brings the demon possessed young man, and they're like, we need to fast. How long is a fast? A minute? I'm fasting right now. All of you are too. And you're like, when is this sermon going to end? So you're already thinking about your stomach. I wouldn't call that fasting. Fasting is a length of time. It's like, “Bring him back tomorrow. We got to get fasted up.” It doesn't work. So it's added in. No, no, no. It's much more powerful if it just says this kind can only come out by prayer.

Let me ask you a question. “What kind of demon can come out any other way? Oh, like this kind. You don't need to pray. You can do that one on your own.” There's no such thing. He is definitely rebuking. They're self-reliant, faithlessness, and that's the essence of our unbelief. We got this. We can save ourselves. We can solve our own problems. We got this financial problem or this medical problem. Medical science has it. Those are all idols. If they're not focused on God, I'm not saying we don't go to hospitals or get treatments and all that, but trust God in it, that God can use it. Make it God-centered and anything you rely on, that God is an idol. And the number one idol we rely on is ourselves.

Jesus made it plain in John 15, "I am the vine. You're the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing." Don’t you think it would be good to tell him, “Lord, I can't do anything apart from your help. I need you. Be with me in this situation. Help me through this.” So you're saying, “What pastor? Like when I get behind the wheel,” maybe especially then. It's like, No, no, no. I got the driving thing. I'm good at driving. Any area where you think you don't need God's help, ask him for it.

The boy’s father had enough faith to bring the boy, the young man, to Jesus initially. That's why he was there. But by this time, he's not certain. And He says, "If you can do anything, take pity and help us." "If you can?” said Jesus, "Everything is possible for him who believes.”

As Job said to God in Job 40:22, "I know that you can do all things. No plan of yours can be thwarted." This is the doctrine of omnipotence. Anything that can be done by power, God can do. Faith is tapping into that and saying, “I know God, you can do anything in this situation. All things are possible.” But Jesus adds, “for him who believes.” He makes His power available for believers. It's not a faith promise kind of thing, not at all. Our faith doesn't create the will of God. Our faith fits into and yields to the will of God, but it's by faith that these works are done. Then the boy’s father gives this timeless statement, which I've already highlighted, "I do believe, help my unbelief." So I would just commend that to you for the rest of your lives. Say,” Lord, I'm a believer. I believe in you. I believe you're the son of God, that you died for my sins, that you rose again. But I have pockets of unbelief, especially manifested in self-reliance. Help me with my unbelief.”

Jesus again predicted His death and resurrection. Verse 30-32, “They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were because He was teaching the disciples. He said to them, ‘The son of man is going to be betrayed and the hands of man, they will kill him, and after three days he'll arise.’ But they did not understand what He meant, and they were afraid to ask him about it.” We're going to have a chance again in Mark 10 to circle back on this, so I didn't want to preach a whole sermon on it, but I'm bringing it in now just to say, look, get ready. The disciples needed to get ready because they weren't understand the necessity of the death of Jesus.

Timeless lessons as we close. First, above all, as I've been pleading with you throughout the whole sermon, trust in Jesus, come to Jesus, trust in him. Let the evidence in Mark's Gospel, and the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, John, let the evidence be enough for you. Read it. You could read this afternoon, enough accounts to give you enough to believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. Trust in him.

 And if you are a Christian, lay under Jesus's sharp scalpel. Let him expose your unbelief. Where there's smoke, there's fire. Look for prayerlessness in your life and trace that down, you're going to find self-reliance at the heart of it generally. So if your prayer life needs to grow and develop, let it grow and develop.

Pray about more things, more categories of things than you've ever prayed for before. Ask the Lord through the Holy Spirit to show you areas of self-reliance and prayerlessness. Then meditate on Jesus's stunning words, "Everything is possible for him who believes." God can do exceedingly abundantly beyond anything you could ask or imagine, think, and then finally, pray this man's prayer, “ I do believe, help my unbelief.” Allow him to show you your unbelief and to heal you from it.

 Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to walk through this powerful account. We thank you for the things that we have learned as we have done so. Lord, I pray that you would be speaking to our souls, the words of the Gospel, speak to our souls and help us to believe in Jesus in ways and in dimensions, and in a breadth and depth and height in ways that we've never seen before. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Jesus wields the power of rebuke over vicious demons and the unbelief of His people which all ultimately display his radiant glory and grace .

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In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul criticizes the Corinthians for their factions, calls on them to grow in maturity, and to build the church using the Word of God.

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In the last class on Romans 6, Pastor Andy Davis explains that under grace we are free from sin.

The post Class in Romans: Battling Indwelling Sin appeared first on Two Journeys.

Scripture, in its prophetic nature, reveals the sufferings of Christ and Elijah as well as the centrality of the cross for salvation.

The post The Prophesied Sufferings of Elijah and of Christ (Mark Sermon 43) appeared first on Two Journeys.

Scripture, in its prophetic nature, reveals the sufferings of the messengers of the Kingdom of God and the centrality of the cross for salvation.

Turn in your Bibles now to Mark 9. We continue our studies here in Mark 9:9-13, and as I look at this text, indeed, look at every text in the gospel of Mark, I come again and again to the centrality of the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross of Christ is the absolute center of the Christian faith. The Apostle Paul made this plain again and again in so many of the things that he wrote. He said in 2 Corinthians 2:2 , “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”  He said later in that same epistle, 1 Corinthians 15:3, "for what I received, I passed onto you as a first importance that Christ died for our sins According to the scriptures." He said in Galatians 6:14,  “May I never boast  except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." But Paul also made it plain that the cross is a stumbling block. 1 Corinthians 1:23-24, "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, foolishness to the Gentiles, but to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Why was the cross such a stumbling block, especially to the Jews? It had to do with Jewish expectations of a glorious messianic kingdom. God had predicted a glorious kingdom established by the Son of David, the Messiah, and that Messiah would reign on David's throne establishing and upholding it, from that time on and forever [Isaiah 9].  His kingdom would extend from shore to shore as Psalm 72 makes it plain, and his enemies would lick the dust at his feet and all the nations’ Gentiles would serve him. The apostles were completely convinced that Jesus was indeed the Christ, the Son of David. Peter had spoken for all of them on that matter. In Mark 8:29, Jesus said, “'What about you? Who do you say that I am?’ And Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ.’" The apostles believed that Jesus would reign in Jerusalem on David's throne and that the arrogant Romans would finally be crushed under his awesome power. They're utterly convinced that this kingly reign was imminent. Some of them indeed were angling for positions of power in his throne room, but they had no conceptions of the cross, the need for the Messiah, the Son of the living God, to die a bloody shameful and cursed death on their behalf.  

They stumbled over that. So Jesus had to establish this in their minds again and again, there in Caesarea Philippi. He began the process of instructing his disciples accurately on what had to happen. Mark 8:31-32, "He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priest and teaches of the law and that he must be killed. And after three days rise again." He spoke plainly about this.  As a matter of fact, we're told in Matthew's Gospel that He began a consistent pattern of teaching on this theme. That's when it started, and it was again and again and again, He taught them about this. We see it again in Mark's Gospel in Mark 10: 32-34, “They were on their way up to Jerusalem with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished while those who followed were afraid.” Again, He took the twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. ‘We're going to Jerusalem’, he said, ‘and the son of man will be betrayed to the chief priest and the teachers of law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.’"

This caused their minds to reel. It just seemed inconceivable that Jesus would be rejected by his own people, condemned by the Romans and die on a Roman cross there at Jerusalem. Jesus had walked on water, spoken to the wind and the waves, and they had obeyed him. He had driven out a legion of demons with a word, and they obeyed him with a clear fear of him there. There was literally nothing He could not do. How then could He die? How could He be rejected and killed?  Peter had spoken for all of them there at Caesarea Philippi, “Never Lord.” He said, “This shall never happen to you.” 

Then after that, as we've noted, comes the Mount of Transfiguration, I believe, to re-establish his transcendent glory in the minds of his apostles. He took Peter, James and John up a high mountain, and there He was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling, white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. It is clear that He does that to make their confidence in his glory firm and stable, given the message of the cross that they're now being schooled in. The stunning glory of Jesus Christ blinded their eyes. They could be no doubt of the absolute supremacy of his person. Then Moses and Elijah came to confirm his glory.  But as they talk together, Luke tells us the topic was his imminent death and they spoke about his departure, his exodus, which He was about to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem. Peter still cannot comprehend the need for the cross before the glory of the kingdom. He did not understand that Christ's blood shed on the cross was essential to redeem his sinful people from the curse of God that they had earned by their violation of his holy laws to bring his people wholly and pure into the kingdom of God. They didn't understand that and that there could be no other way than that, no other way than the cross of Christ and His atoning blood shed on the cross.

Peter up there on the Mount Transfiguration wants to stay there and bask in the moment. Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.”  He did not know what to say. They were so frightened. I talked to the staff this week about this and I said, "Do you see what's going on with Peter? What was the plan? Is he going halfway down the mountain to get some brushwood and some sticks and lean them against each other to make a temporary shelter for Jesus and Moses and Elijah? There was no plan." So when you don't have a plan, just keep your mouth shut. If you think you have a plan, in any case, even your best plan isn't good compared to God's plan. So I don't know what the tabernacle thing is, but just “we're going to stay here on the mountaintop.”

But then God, Almighty God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ shows up in a glory cloud. A bright cloud appeared and enveloped them, and a voice came from the cloud, “'This is my son whom I love. Listen to him." Suddenly when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus,’” Almighty God, speaking from the glory cloud makes it plain. They need to listen to what Jesus is saying, to the word Jesus is saying, and I mean specifically about the need for the cross, about his imminent suffering and death on the cross on our behalf. Moses and Elijah are merely servants. They didn't merit equal treatment with three shelters there, not at all. Jesus is the only begotten son of the living God, and so Jesus only is left, not even the cloud. It's just Jesus and they need to listen to Him. Especially they need to listen to him teach his suffering and his death.

They're coming down off the mountaintop. The time has come to descend, seeing the radiant, brilliant glory of Jesus, seeing Moses and Elijah speaking with Jesus, hearing the voice of God, a glory cloud coming from a brilliant cloud which enveloped them and surrounded them. There has never been such a mountaintop experience as that, but they cannot stay up there on that mountain. They have to descend. They have to descend to the writhing, seething, suffering, hate-filled, sin filled wicked world, the world of sin and death to continue that journey to the cross. That's what they need to go do.  Jesus has to continue to instruct them, and the central lesson must be the cross.

The apostles who are going to take the message of the cross to the ends of the earth, they need to be prepared for that message. Until they're ready, they're forbidden to talk about what they had just seen on the Mount of Transfiguration. Look at verse 9, "As they're coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the son of man had risen from the dead." Why is this? This is again and again, we bumped into this messianic secret, this prohibition of talking about all of this again and again. First and foremost, I think the reason is for crowd control because the crowd is getting heated up in their messianic expectations. We have clear evidence of this in John 6 after the feeding of the 5,000, and we're told that some in the crowd there [John 6:15] wanted to take Jesus by force and make him king, so He had to hide himself from them. That's out of control.

The apostles themselves expected that the kingdom of God was imminent, that the glory was about to come. None of them were even beginning to remotely comprehend the cross, the blood of Christ shed under the wrath of God. They all would've joined Peter in rebuking Jesus about that. Now, if Peter, James and John come down off that mount of glory, and they start telling the other nine apostles what they had just seen and then start telling the crowd what they had just seen, the stunning transfiguration of Jesus and heavenly glory, Moses and Elijah talking with him, the glory cloud, the voice of God, Oh my. Their faulty expectations of imminent glory would've been inflamed, greatly inflamed, like pouring buckets of kerosene on a fire.  They do not yet understand the whole message and the primary need for his atoning bloodshed on the cross before they could be fit for a kingdom of glory. 

J. I. Packer, the great theologian, wrote the classic Knowing God. He wrote these words, “A partial truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth.” A partial truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth. The apostles had only part of the equation at that point. Jesus is powerful, more powerful than they can possibly imagine. Jesus is a physical healer from every disease and sickness. Jesus is absolutely powerful over the demons with effortless power. He can drive them out anytime He chooses. Jesus is radiantly glorious. He is the son of the living God. He will reign on David's throne and He will make it more glorious than they can possibly imagine, and it will extend from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth.

Yes, that's all true, but that's only part of the truth, and if they tell that partial truth as the whole truth, it becomes a complete untruth. Before any of that can happen the incarnate son of God must die on the cross. He must die under the wrath of God. He must shed his blood. For without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sins. So the cross must come before the glory. The cross must come before the kingdom and the subjects of the kingdom have to have that work done. Hence the prohibition. Verse 9, “As they're coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the son of man had risen from the dead.”  This sparked a continued discussion. Verse 10, “They kept the matter to themselves discussing what rising from the dead meant.”

They did obey. They did keep the matter to themselves in the short term, but they couldn't understand this “Son of Man rising from the dead” phrase. They discussed it among themselves, and they're talking about what rising from the dead could mean here. The issue is not that they had no idea how a dead person could rise from the grave. Jesus had risen dead people, Jairus's daughter and others. They knew that and the general Jewish expectation was of some kind of life beyond the grave; the Pharisees definitely, the Sadducees did not. But there was a general expectation of some kind of resurrection.

 But the issue is the Son of Man rising from the dead. What is that? The Son of Man is a title of glory that they almost certainly had underestimated before Jesus came along and showed them the glory of the Son of Man from Daniel chapter 7:13-14.  How the Son of Man comes into the presence of the Ancient of Days and receives from him sovereign glory and power to rule over every nation on earth and all the peoples of the earth will worship.  The Son of Man who comes on the clouds of glory, and then Jesus again and again and again and again called himself the Son of Man. They knew He was talking about himself, but how could that glorious, radiant, kingly Son of Man rise from the dead? That would mean He would have to die first, so they stumbled over the stumbling stone. They stumbled over the cross, so they changed the subject. 

We have a question burning in our mind right now. What's this whole thing about Elijah coming before the Messiah? [Verse 11] Why did the teacher of the law say that Elijah must come first? The topic is the return of Elijah, the prophet before the coming of the Messiah. This was the clear teaching of the Scribes, the teachers of the law, that was indeed based on a prophecy at the very, very, very end of the Old Testament era.  It was among, if not literally the last word, spoken of in written scripture by the Old Testament prophets, Malachi. Malachi 4:6. There God says through the prophet Malachi, "Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes, he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers or else I will come and strike the land with a curse." I always thought it was interesting that in our English Bibles, the last word in the Old Testament is a curse, and the first word in the New Testament is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of David. It's pretty powerful. There it is. There's the prediction about Elijah. Remember that Elijah had never died but had mysteriously ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire sent by God himself.

So now I want to bring your minds to the final conversation that happened between Elijah and Elisha. We try to understand this connection here, this Elijah prophecy as they were walking along together. Elijah had anointed Elisha as his successor prophet after him as God had told him to do, and they're walking and talking along, and there's a school of prophets that are kind of hanging out. Some young guy prophets that are, it's like a little seminary, and they're walking along. Elijah and Elisha are ahead of them, and they come to the Jordan River and Elijah takes off his cloak and strikes the Jordan River with it, and it parts like the red sea. Wow. Elijah's an exciting person to be around. The two of them walked over, and as they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Wow. 

Scholars date that event sometime around the year, 852 BC. Malachi the prophet, made his prediction over four centuries later, somewhere around 440 to 400 BC. The prophecy said that that God would send Elijah back as a forerunner before the day of the Lord, which the Jews understood as the coming of the Messiah. The Jews were waiting for Elijah before the Messiah. First Elijah, then the Messiah. The prophecy took on vigor we’re told in the intertestamental period. So much so that Bible-believing Jews who were serious about the scripture were expectingly waiting for the Messiah, but they were expectingly waiting Elijah first. They'd actually put out an empty chair for Elijah at the Passover. They're waiting for him to come. That's a symbol of their belief in the prophecy. The apostles are curious about this whole thing.  It's acute. They're absolutely utterly convinced Jesus is the Messiah. That's done, especially now that they've seen Jesus' transcendent glory and God speaking about him out of a glory cloud. But they just had seen Elijah on the mountain, and it seemed like he went back up to heaven.

So it seemed like Elijah has been up in heaven and he's still there, but Jesus is definitely the Messiah. They’re just interested in this one scripture. I like the attitude. I think we need to take scripture seriously. I'm going to do that in this text. They want to know about this. Were the scribes wrong about the prophecy? What about Malachi 4? How do we understand that? 

Jesus seizes the moment to teach them about his own suffering. That's his priority here. The real issue is the cross. They're going down off the mound of glory to the cross. They need to understand that. He  answers them immediately about Elijah 12, to be sure Elijah does come first and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected? We go back to his own sufferings. Jesus tells them that Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished just as it is written about him. Jesus' priority is the suffering and rejection of the Son of Man, His own suffering.  

But first, let's talk about this Elijah prophecy. Jesus teaches the fulfillment of the Elijah prophecy to be sure Elijah does come first. The scribes had Malachi right, and he says "He restores all things." That's an interesting statement. He's come to restore Israel to bring it to a greater place of spiritual health. Think what Malachi said, “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the hearts of the children to the fathers.” That's a work of restoration, bringing the hearts of the Jewish people together, beginning with the family, father, son relationship, and the union there. Malachi's words are not comprehensive about what “restore all things” means, but they do refer to the striking of the land with a curse, and anyone who knew the old covenant, it's blessings for obedience to the laws and curses for disobedience. The idea is I'm going to turn the hearts of Israel in repentance back to God and back to the laws of God.

That would be Elijah's work of restoration, comprehensive turning of the hearts of the Jewish nation, repentance of the laws of God. But before speaking the rest about Elijah, Jesus brings their minds back to the cross. Verse 12, “Why then is it written that the son of man must suffer much and be rejected?” Jesus is going to talk about Elijah with the real issues, the cross. Now verse 13, "But I tell you, Elijah has come and they have done to him everything they wished just as is it is written about him." Unless we have any doubt whatsoever about what Jesus is talking about, Matthew elucidates it very plainly, not left to wonder. Matthew 17: 12-13, "But I tell you, Elijah has already come and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wish in the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.”  Matthew 17: 13, "Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist." John the Baptist. In another place, Jesus also makes this connection perfectly clear. Matthew makes it clear in the text, but Jesus himself says it in Matthew 11:11-15, "I tell you the truth", Jesus said about John the Baptist, "I tell you the truth, among those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist, yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing and forceful men lay hold of it for all the prophets and the law prophesy until John, and if you're willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. He who has ears let him hear."

That settles it, John the Baptist is the fulfillment of the Elijah prophecy. There's a clear connection between John the Baptist and Elijah. Remember his godly parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, they were way past childbearing years, and Zechariah was a priest. He was chosen by lot to go in and offer incense. He's in there and then an angel appears to Zechariah and tells him. "Your prayers have been heard." "What prayers were that you wanted a child, right?" "Oh, we left that behind a long time ago." "Doesn't matter. God heard your prayer." The angel said, "Do not be afraid Zechariah, your prayer has been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth will bear you a son and you are to give him the name John." Four verses later, "and he will go on before the Lord in the Spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." Clear.

What does this mean “in the spirit and power of Elijah”, not Elijah himself. Remember that this is the exact thing that Elisha, his successor had asked him for in 2 Kings 2:9-14. When they crossed over, remember Elijah struck the Jordan with the cloak. It parted like the Red Sea. They crossed over. When they had crossed over, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me, what can I do for you before I'm taken from you?" "Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit.” Elijah replied, "You have asked a difficult thing." Elijah said, "Yet, if you see me when I'm taken from you, it will be yours, otherwise not." Elijah's an interesting guy. It's like, “I don't know. We'll see if you'll get it. If you don't, you won’t." Wow. As they're walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this. Stop right there. The conditions were met, he saw it and he cried out, "My father, my father, the chariots and horseman of Israel", and Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them apart. He picked up the cloaks, sometimes KJV gives us mantle.” You pick up the mantle”, it's like picking up someone's work after they're done with it. He picks up the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the cloak that had fallen from him and struck the water with it. "Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?" he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over. Wow, what did he ask for? I want a double portion of your spirit. It's not Elijah coming back down to do that, Elisha’s going to carry on. “In the spirit of Elijah" and the school of prophets watching it saw it and said these words, "The spirit of Elijah is now resting on Elisha." It's a transferrable spirit, a transfer of spirit and power to another man who carries on that kind of ministry.

John the Baptist picked up this approach. It went down to the manner of his dress. There are two verses and only two verses in the entire Bible that mentioned a leather belt. One of them is connected with Elijah the Tishbite where he's identified 2 Kings 1:8, "He was a man with a garment of hair and a leather belt around his waist." He wears a hair garment, a rough kind of garment of hair and then a leather belt around his waist. Mark 1:6, "John wore clothing made of camel's hair with a leather belter on his waist." It's not acting him, he's dressed the same way.  Furthermore, their personalities seem about the same. I don't feel like it'd be an enjoyable dinner conversation with them. I feel like I'm going to want to repent the whole evening and that would be a good work. But I mean, it's not a comfortable field to be around them. The same thing with John the Baptist. It's the style of his preaching, the manner of his personality, and then where he lived, he's out in the desert. They were eating strange food. Elijah, the foods brought by ravens little at a time and then locus and wild honey for John the Baptist. Interesting.  John the Baptist was actually not Elijah. John 1:19-21, "When the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levis to ask him, they asked him, ‘Who are you? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ But John went on in front of the people of Israel to tell them, to call them to repentance and faith, faithfulness to the law and to prepare the way for the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah." 

Now, let's talk about the most complex part of this whole thing. The sufferings of the Elijah who was to come, the sufferings of the Elijah who was to come. What are we talking about? It's not, what are we talking about? What was Jesus talking about? Look again at verse 13 and look carefully at it.  “Jesus said, ‘But I tell you, Elijah has come and they have done to him everything they wished just as it is written about him.’" Now, I have to tell you, that statement perplexed me for about three weeks when I was memorizing the Gospel of Mark. I was like, "I don't know what Jesus is talking about." Jesus never says anything wrong and He never says anything that's a throwaway. What does it mean? That's the way it is with scripture. We need to study every phrase. Not everything's equally important, but everything's equally true. We want to try to harmonize this. Jesus is speaking of the enemies of John the Baptist, who have done to him whatever they wished. There can be little doubt that He's talking about how John was killed, the suffering, the imprisonment and the death by beheading of John the Baptist of which account we've already walked through.

In Mark 6, you remember the story, Herod the Tetrarch arrested John and had him put in prison because John was boldly preaching against his marriage to his brother's wife, Herodias. John told the truth about that. Herodias hated him.  Mark 6:19-20 says, "Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him, but she was not able to because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled, yet he liked to listen to him."

So Herod is holding off his rage-filled wife, Herodias. He's holding her off because he likes John. He likes to talk to him. He's puzzled by him. He would set him free probably if he could, but Herodias hated him. Finally, Herodias sees the opportunity at Herod's birthday. Herod never saw it coming. In the text in Mark 6 ,”Finally the opportune time came." Opportune for what? For Herodias, like a spider, to spin a web. She sends out her beautiful daughter who dances a lascivious dance and entraps Herod. In his lust, Herod makes an oath saying, "I'll give you whatever you want after that dance, up to half my kingdom." The girl goes out to her mother Herodias. "So what should I ask for?" "The head of John the Baptist." She answered. The head of John the Baptist. At once this girl hurried into the king with the request, "I want you to give me right now, the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”  The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guest, he did not want to refuse her. So immediately he sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. The man went out and beheaded John in prison. That's what happened.

 But how was it written in scripture that that would happen? You get two verses in Malachi 4 and there's nothing there about any suffering, none of this. I'm telling you, there's no other prophecies in the 39 books of the Old Testament about the coming of Elijah before the Messiah. So what does it mean just as it is written about him? Jesus said "They did to him whatever they wished." Who was they? It was Herodias. Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. There's no verbal predictive prophecy that Elijah would die, but Jesus said it was written.

So this is my answer, John the Baptist lived in the transferrable spirit and power of Elijah and carried out that pattern in the same way. I believe the spirit and power of Jezebel, the enemy of Elijah went over to Herodias, but she got what she wanted when Jezebel didn't. Now who's Jezebel? She's the wicked woman who is married to wicked king Ahab. Ahab was very much like King Herod, a vacillating, weak kind of man, a puppet to his scheming, conniving wife. When Jezebel heard what Elijah had done on Mount Carmel and how he had killed all her prophets of Baal, she made this statement, 1 Kings 19:2-3, "May the God's deal with me, be it ever so severely if I don't make your life Elijah like one of theirs by this time tomorrow." She's not a woman of idol threats.

So what do you do? He ran for his life and gets to a cave. God speaks to him in a still small voice. He gives him some final things to do, including anointing Elisha as his successor. Then he goes up to heaven. What happened to Jezebel's vow? Nothing. She didn't get what she wanted. God rescued Elijah out of her fingers, he slipped through her fingers. She didn't get what she wanted, but Herodias did. The spirit of Jezebel lived on in Herodias, and she manipulated her weak vacillating husband to do what she wanted and they were able to kill John, the messenger of the Messiah.

Now in Old Testament prophecy, there are two kinds. There's verbally predictive prophecy, and then there's acted out prophecies. They're just acted out in history and they picture something coming later. Like the building of the ark is a picture of end time and the ark is a picture of the gospel. Every animal sacrifice is a type or a typical prophecy acted out. That's what this prophecy was. This whole thing was acted out in the time of Elijah, but with a change —he was rescued, but John wasn’t, and they were able to do anything they wish to him just as it is written about him. So what? The precision, the accuracy of Jesus' words, the precision and accuracy of scripture. The real thing wasn't about the prediction of Elijah's sufferings, it was the clear prediction of the Messiah sufferings. That's the point.

Verse 12, to be sure Elijah does come first and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected? Where is that written? All over the place. Start with Psalm 22, which begins famously, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" David wrote that 1,000 years before Jesus. Then a few verses later he describes, in detail, the crucifixion. Psalm 22:14-17, "I'm poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax. It has melted away within me. They have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones, people stare and gloat over me." That's crucifixion, pierced my hands and my feet.  But even clearer is Isaiah 53:5-6, "But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. And by his wounds, we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all."  The apostles needed to understand that Christ had to die according to the scriptures for their salvation and friends, so do we. So do we. We stumble over this too. 

So what lessons can we take from this? First of all, just marvel at the perfection, the depth and detail of scripture. Let me just tell you in general what I've learned from careful study over decades. Scripture says more than you think it does, scripture's deeper than you think it is. Now that doesn't mean that a child can't understand its basic saving message, a child can. The milk of scripture is clear for everybody, but there's always, always more to learn. So let's marvel at the perfection and complexity of scripture.

Let's take every part seriously, but that's not even the point here. The point here is the centrality of the cross. We tend to stumble too. We tend to underestimate how much we need a Jesus to drink the cup of God's wrath for us. We underestimate our sins. We think they're not no big deal, and we need to go again and again in our minds to the cross. Even if we've been Christians for decades, go again and again to the cross and say, “that's what it took to save a sinner like me. That's what it took to save a sinner like me, the blood of the Messiah for me, shed from me.” That meditation has a withering effect on our lusts and our temptations and sins. Meditate on the cost of your salvation. Meditate on the blood that was shed to make you fit for the kingdom. Don't minimize the glory of the kingdom.

It's actually more glorious than the disciples ever thought it would be, more majestic, more powerful. And it's coming. The kingdom's coming. We pray for it. May your kingdom come and may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It's coming. The glories are coming. But first, the work of the cross. That's what we're called on to take to the ends of the earth. The apostles needed to understand that. By the time Jesus ascended to heaven, they understood and they preached the message of the cross. That's what we get to do here in the Raleigh/Durham/Triangle era. We get to preach the gospel, the cross, but we should not imagine, this is the final subpoint, that it will come without cost to us. 

What was the cost to Elijah to tell the truth about Baal worship? Jezebel wanted to kill him.  What was the cost to John the Baptist to tell the truth about marriage and divorce and morality and the law? It cost him his head. What was the cost to Jesus for our sins? His blood. What was the cost of the apostles to take the gospel to the ends of the earth? They would be hated, despised and rejected like He was. What's going to be the cost to us? What's the cost to you to share the gospel at your workplace this week? It may cost you something ,you may have to suffer, but that's the cost and that's what God's given us to do, to take the message to the cross to this region. Let's close in prayer.

Father, thank you for the time we've had to work through this passage deeper than we thought it was, more powerful. We thank you that shining above all of this is the price that was paid once for all, once for all, the blood of Jesus shed in the cross for us. Thank you for that. And now, Lord, give us courage, give us a willingness to suffer. Our suffering will be nothing compared to Jesus, probably less than that of Elijah and John the Baptist. But Lord, help us to be willing to pay the price to open our mouths even this week and share the gospel. Help us, oh Lord, to be willing to have the work of the cross mortify our lusts and our sins daily in our lives. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.