Mark 6:1-29 (September 25 2022)

So Mark 6, 1 -29, let's hear the word of God to us today.

He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.

And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, Where did this man get these things?

What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon?

And are not his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them,

A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.

And he could do no mighty work there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them, and he marveled because of their unbelief.

And he went about among the villages teaching. And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics.

And he said to them, Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there.

And if any place will not receive you, and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.

So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.

And King Herod heard of it, for Jesus' name had become known. Some said,

John the Baptist has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.

But others said, He is Elijah. And others said, He is a prophet like one of the prophets of old. But when

Herod heard of it, he said, John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.

For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias.

His brother Philip's wife, because he had married her. For John had been saying to Herod, It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.

And Herodias held a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death. But she could not, for Herod feared

John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man. And he kept him safe. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly.

But an opportunity came when Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.

For when Herodias' daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests.

And the king said to the girl, Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it to you. And he vowed to her,

Whatever you ask me, I will give you up to half of my kingdom. And she went out and said to her mother,

For what should I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist. And she came in immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying,

I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter. And the king was exceedingly sorry.

But because of his oaths and his guests, he did not want to break his word to her. And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring

John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl.

And the girl gave it to her mother. And when the disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

This is the word of God to us this morning. I want to begin by asking you a question.

Have you ever looked at a leaf? We've got the leaves changing out there. It's beautiful, isn't it, with fall? Have you ever looked at a leaf and seen the whole tree in the leaf, where you have the stem that's like the trunk, and the veins are like the branches, and the green of the leaf is like the full leaves of the larger tree?

The larger is contained in the smaller. This phenomenon is called a fractal, and there's all sorts of examples of these throughout the world.

Snowflakes, river systems, nesting dolls. You have something that's the same shape, but different size, a different scale.

The Bible also has these, where you have the same basic story, the same basic plot line, but at different points in history and at different scales.

And so we see an example of this in our passage today. And to explain that, I want to start with the larger, more familiar story to you.

You see, after the resurrection of Jesus, which is told in the four Gospels, the Bible storyline then moves to the book of Acts.

And this tells the story of the church on mission, the early church. So in Acts, we see the rejection of Jesus and his

Gospel by the majority of Israel. Some within Israel, the faithful remnant, they believe, but on the whole,

Israel rejects Jesus. And then we also see in the book of Acts that the apostles and the church were sent out into the world to proclaim the

Gospel, and to preach repentance, and to do the works of Jesus, to continue on his works, first in Jerusalem, then

Judea, then Samaria, and then the ends of the earth. And then we see the apostles and the church suffering throughout the book of Acts.

Some of them are put in prison, some are beaten, some are stoned, some are killed. The advance of the

Gospel was accompanied by persecution, some of which was carried out by a king named

Herod. And so the plot line of this larger story is there's resurrection, followed by rejection, sending, and suffering.

Resurrection, rejection, sending, and suffering.

So if that's the tree, let's look at the leaf. If that's the larger story, let's look at the smaller story that we have in Mark chapter 6.

You see, in Mark 6, we see it comes right on the hills of Mark chapter 5, at the end of which we have a resurrection, where Jesus takes the hand of Jairus' 12 -year -old daughter, and he says to her, little girl,

I say to you, arise. And she does. So there's this resurrection at the end of Mark 5, and then in Mark 6 we see rejection, where Jesus is in his hometown, and he's rejected by his own people.

He could do no mighty work there because of their unbelief. Now a few people came to him, he laid his hands on them, and they were healed.

But on the whole, Nazareth rejected Jesus. We also see sending in Mark chapter 6, where the apostles are sent out two by two to preach repentance and to extend the ministry and the miracles of Jesus.

We also see suffering in the martyrdom of John the Baptist, who was killed by a king named

Herod. Resurrection, rejection, sending, suffering.

This is the plot line. The larger is contained in the smaller, and the smaller points to the larger. And so what we have in Mark chapter 6 is

God is telling ahead of time what is to come after the resurrection of Jesus.

And so what's going to come? One, well Israel is going to reject Christ. And because of that,

Israel will be cut off for her unbelief. Jerusalem will be judged and eventually overthrown.

This happened in the year AD 70 when the Romans came in and destroyed the temple. Jesus, as we have seen throughout the book of Mark, is one of the major themes.

He's establishing a new kingdom. He's establishing a new kingdom that will include a remnant of Israel that had faith, but is also now expanded to include all nations.

And so on this point, I want to say something that's a little bit of a side note, but I think it's an important side note for us to consider.

What this means is that modern Judaism is not the ancient faith of Abraham.

Modern Judaism is not the Old Testament faith simply paused and mistakenly still awaiting the

Messiah. Rather, modern Judaism is younger than Christianity, for it sprang up in the aftermath of Jesus' resurrection when

Israel rejected God, and God judged and cut off Israel. And I say it's an important side note because I've seen where confusion over this very issue leads to aberrations and views about end times, politics, and missions.

And so we want to be clear that God's chosen people is the church. Those who are united by faith to Jesus Christ, they are the true children of Abraham.

Those who, like Abraham, believe God, and it was counted unto them as righteousness.

And so it's helpful to keep those categories straight in our minds. Now back to where we were.

God is telling ahead of time here in Mark chapter 6 of what is coming after the resurrection of Jesus. The first thing is this rejection.

Israel is going to reject Christ. The second thing is sending. Jesus is going to commission the church to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded.

After His resurrection, Jesus will ascend into heaven to the right hand of God the

Father. But His work on earth will continue as the Father and the

Son send the Spirit to indwell believers who are then representatives and witnesses to Jesus Christ in all of the world.

And so we have rejection, we have sending, and then the third thing that God is telling ahead of time is that God's people will suffer.

As they go out into a hostile world to speak the words of Jesus and do the works of Jesus, God's people will meet opposition and carry the sufferings of Jesus.

But in doing so, they will point the world toward Jesus, showing that He is greater.

He's greater than anything that life can give, anything that the world can give. And He's greater than anything the world can take away.

Resurrection, rejection, sending, and suffering. That's the plot line.

We live in this church age that Mark was foretelling. We live in the church age that begins in Acts and then continues on to this present day.

And so, from these stories that Mark tells us, from these three stories, what can the faithful church on mission learn?

What can the faithful church on mission today take away from these three stories?

That's what I want to answer today, this morning. And the first thing is that the faithful church on mission should fan into flame the gift of God.

The faithful church on mission should fan into flame the gift of God. And here's what I mean. I mean that those who are most familiar with Jesus, those who are most familiar with the things of God, face a particular danger.

Maybe a better way to say that is a particular temptation of coldness towards Jesus and towards the things of God.

Jesus comes to His hometown, but He can do no mighty work there. Why? They're too familiar with Him, and it clouds their vision, and it clouds their belief.

We see it in verses 2 and 3. And on the Sabbath He began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard Him were astonished, saying,

Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?

And they took offense at Him. You see, they knew Him. They knew He didn't have formal education to be a rabbi.

They knew Him as just the local carpenter. They knew His siblings. They knew His family. They knew

His father was not His biological father. You see it in verse 3. They say, Son of Mary. Normally, you would designate a son by, you know,

He's the son of, put His father's name. It's used as kind of an insult, as if He didn't have a father.

You know the old saying, familiarity breeds contempt? It's that kind of dynamic that's going on here in Nazareth.

Alistair Roberts talks about how Jesus said things that challenged

His former neighbors, that unsettled them. And so, using this familiarity and using naming, they tried to domesticate and tame what

Jesus says and what Jesus does. They tried to negate the threat that He poses to the order of their lives.

There's kind of going on with their normal lives there in Nazareth, and the teachings of Jesus kind of butt up against that, and they try to tame it, domesticate it, blunt the sharp edges of it.

We need to be on guard against doing the same. We need to be on guard against trying to tame Jesus and to blunt the force of His teaching.

We need to be on guard against being so familiar with the Bible that we never actually get around to following it.

We know what it says, but we don't do what it says. We need to guard against this because it's possible to hear the teachings of Jesus so often that we actually begin to not hear them at all.

Some of you have probably been in church since nine months before you were born, and that is a profoundly good thing.

There are tremendous blessings that come with that. And very specific blessings that come with that. But there are also some specific temptations that we need to at least be aware of so that we can be on guard against them.

And one of those is that you can become dull to the things of God if you've been around church all your life.

We can become cold towards the things of God by the sheer force of familiarity.

You can become forgetful of God's majesty and power. You can forget what it's like to have your sins washed away like you're standing underneath Niagara Falls and the water's just gushing over you and washing away every bad thing you've ever done down the river.

You can lose sight of His holiness, God, who is perfect in His holiness and in His righteousness.

And the living and active Word that is sharper than any double -edged sword piercing to the vision of soul and spirit of joints and marrow, well some days it just cuts a little bit duller than it used to.

And the commands of God don't bear as much weight in our lives as they used to.

And we can begin to realize we're just going through the motions. So brothers and sisters,

I would encourage you, fan into flame the gift of God. Don't let it become dull.

Don't be among those so familiar with Jesus that they forget to believe

Jesus or to follow Jesus. You'll notice something here in the

Gospels that Jesus, He really doesn't go out of His way to heal anybody. He heals plenty of people, but He doesn't go out of His way necessarily to do it.

They come to Him in faith that He will heal them, and He does. But the disinterested, those who don't come to Him, He doesn't track them down.

The disinterested, those without faith, well they stay in their sickness, and they stay in their sins. The reason

He could do no mighty work in Nazareth wasn't because there were no mighty works to do, and it wasn't because He lacked the power to do them, it was because of their unbelief.

Few in Nazareth came to Him. So you want to see the work of God in your life, fan into flame the gift of God in your life, your faith.

Second thing that the faithful church on mission can learn is that we should see that we are sent into the world as representatives of Jesus.

God's people are sent into the world as representatives of Jesus. You see the one who is commissioned is as the one who does the commissioning.

And so you have an ambassador of the United States sent to a foreign country. He's given authority to represent our country and our government, and so what

He says our government says, what He does our government does, it's just the way representation works. And so here what we have is that type of sending, that type of delegation of authority, that type of representation, where Jesus gives

His apostles authority to go out two by two to preach, to heal, to cast out demons as His representatives.

Basically, He's sending them out to say what He has been saying and to do what He has been doing.

What we have here is the great commission in seed form. It starts with the twelve apostles, this very specific mission that has some very specific instructions, not all of which is binding on the church today.

And then later, what we'll see, if you read in the gospel of Luke and Luke 10, it spans this very similar type mission, but in this case,

He gives it to the seventy that He sends out two by two. And seventy is a significant number in scripture, it refers back to Genesis chapter 10, the table of nations, there were seventy.

And so what we see here is that the scope of the sending is now getting bigger and bigger. And it's expanded to the church in Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20, the great commission.

And so, in a very real way, we are the heirs of what Jesus started in Mark chapter 6 when

He sent the apostles out two by two. We too are sent by Jesus to represent Him in the world.

John chapter, I think it's 20, Jesus says, as the Father has sent me, so I send you. We are sent out into the world to represent

Him, to say what He said and to do what He did. To say what

He said and to do what He did. That statement raises an important question because of what we see that Jesus does in the gospel.

Does it not? Because we can't do everything that Jesus did, right? We can't go and do some of the miracles, you know, walking on water, things like that.

We certainly can't die an atoning death in the place of someone else. He sent the apostles out to cast out demons and to work healing miracles.

So what are we to make of that? Are we supposed to be doing that? There's a lot we could say on the subject that we don't have time for today, but I want to summarize briefly in case that question comes to your mind.

The miracles and the signs of the apostolic age were given to authenticate the message of Jesus, to authenticate the message of the gospel, to prove that His message of repentance and forgiveness of sins, that that message was true.

And so by and large, those signs and miracles are confined to this particular point in history when the gospel is being introduced.

And by and large, I'm speaking in generalities here, but by and large, where we've heard reports of similar things in times since the time of the apostles, they have occurred in similar circumstances where the gospel is being introduced into a new area of the world, to a new people for the first time.

And so does God still work miracles and healings and all sorts of supernatural things today?

Yes, God does. But the works of healings and exorcisms are not bound up in being a representative of Jesus in the same way today that it was in Mark chapter 6.

But we do still carry on the work of Mark chapter 6, and we do it in this way. You see, the signs and the wonders and the healings and the exorcisms that we read about in the gospels, they're bound up with the idea of forgiveness of sins.

Those who were healed were forgiven of their sins, and their healing authenticated, or we might even say, their healing made visible to all who were around the reality of Jesus' declaration of their forgiveness.

And so we carry on the work, we carry on this work of Jesus by proclaiming forgiveness of sins through the blood of Jesus Christ.

That is how we carry on the words and works of Jesus. We proclaim forgiveness of sins by the blood of Jesus.

And so like the apostles in verse 12, we go out and we proclaim that people should repent. We teach the nations to obey everything that Jesus has commanded, everything that God has commanded in His word.

That's how we carry on the work and the words of Jesus. And so from the story of the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth, we learn to feign and deflame the gift of God.

And from the story of the sending out of the apostles, we learn that we too are sent out into the world as representatives of Jesus to proclaim the message of Jesus, the message of forgiveness of sins.

But what about the story of John the Baptist here, of his imprisonment and death? We learn that bold preaching and kingdom expansion, the spread of the gospel, are often accompanied by suffering.

John was a forerunner of Jesus. He went about preaching repentance and pointing to the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

But we see here in Mark chapter 6, he also preached about ethics. Herodias was both

Herod's niece and his sister -in -law married to his brother Philip, and he seduced her to marry him. And John boldly told the king,

No, you may not. It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife, he said.

No. That is a powerful word. It's two letters and it can set everything on fire, because people hate being told no.

Yet God sometimes says no. God gives us a lot of yeses. I mean, think about Adam and Eve in the garden.

He puts them in the garden and it's a garden of yes. There's one no. Don't eat the tree in the middle of the garden.

Everything else, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. There's no. God gives us lots of yeses, and in comparison, relatively few noes.

But it's important that we see that God does sometimes clearly say no. He has given us limits.

He has set up boundaries. He has put lines that we may not cross and things we may not do. He has told us no.

No other gods. No carved images. No taking of the Lord's name in vain. No Sabbath breaking. No dishonoring of father and mother.

No murder, adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, or coveting. Those are just the top ten. There are more. And the reason

He tells us no, the reason He gives us limits and lines and boundaries is for our good.

It's the same reason you tell your young child, no, you can't go past this line in the driveway because if you do, you're going to be too close to the road, and if you get in the road, you're going to get hit.

We say no. So God's rules, God's no's are not arbitrary. Rather, He knows that those things on the other side of the line lead to death and destruction and He wants to spare us from that.

He wants us to flourish in our lives and these things on the other side of that line will destroy us.

Still, people chafe at being told no, don't they? Herodias did.

She held a grudge against John and when an opportunity presented itself, she manipulated Herod through her daughter into cutting

John's head off. John said God's no. You may not have your brother's wife and he suffered for it and he was killed.

Jesus likewise preached boldly and he was crucified. The apostles likewise preached boldly and some were in prison and some were beaten and some were killed.

And if you read church history, you're going to find account after account after account of people who proclaim the

Lordship of Christ and proclaim the ethics of Christ. They're fed to lions, they're exiled to prison, or they're murdered.

If you read missionary biographies, you will find bold preachers, those who go out into foreign lands to spread the gospel, to boldly proclaim forgiveness of sins through Jesus, and you'll find them tortured and killed.

For you see, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Jesus, they will persecute his followers.

Second Timothy 3 .12 says this, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

The spread of the gospel, the expansion of the kingdom is often accompanied by suffering.

And so I want to make three comments about that fact as we end this morning. One, suffering or persecution shouldn't surprise us.

It's normal. In the course of history, suffering accompanying the gospel and the spread of the gospel and the preaching of the gospel is normal.

It's just what we see. I'm not saying it's good, I'm not saying it's desirable, I'm not saying we seek after it.

I'm simply just noting that it's been normal throughout the history of the church going back to Jesus.

And a servant is not greater than his master. And if we proclaim Christ as Lord and Christ as the only way to heaven, then we are necessarily saying no to other gods, to other lords.

We're necessarily saying no to other supposed ways to heaven. And once you begin saying no, opposition is at hand.

Especially if you begin saying no on ethical issues. No, you may not sleep with that person.

No, you may not marry that person. No, you may not dress like that, it's immodest. No, you may not pretend to be the opposite sex.

No, you may not kill your baby. No, you may not vote for the candidate who would make it legal to kill your baby. No, I will not treat your pronouns like they are private property.

No, you cannot steal. No, not even if the government says it's okay. No, no, no, no, no.

Saying these things out loud, if you say them out loud, expect some opposition.

But these are things that we must say out loud. Why? Because it's for the good of our neighbors.

It is not loving to let sin run rampant in society. It is not loving to our neighbors to let sin run wild and not to speak against it.

What we have been given to speak, which is the Word of God. We need to be clear that the only way for anyone to truly say no to their sins and forsake them is through Jesus Christ.

We do need to make that clear. When we preach on ethics, we are preaching the Gospel. Because it is only through Christ in whom crucified that we can be set free from the bondage of our sin in order to say no to the things

God has said no to and say yes to the things that God has said yes to. And so we preach

Christ in whom crucified, even and especially when we're speaking on ethical issues.

But we need to know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the ethics of Jesus Christ may very well lead to suffering.

And why is that? It's the second comment I want to make on this, and that is Paul's answer to this question of why is found in Colossians chapter 1.

Where he says that in his sufferings, he in his flesh is filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.

That's an odd verse to me. What do you mean something is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, Paul?

What is missing? Well, nothing as far as the atonement goes. There's nothing insufficient about Christ's death on the cross for our atonement.

His death is perfect and we were made right with God by it. And so what is he talking about? Well, what is lacking in Christ's afflictions is it being made visible.

It being made known to the world. Because we can't physically see Jesus on the cross now because it happened 2 ,000 years ago on the other side of the world.

But you can see a brother suffering faithfully now. And when he does that, when a brother or sister suffers faithfully, he is pointing to the sufferings of Jesus.

And he is testifying to the absolute sufficiency of Jesus. That Jesus is enough.

And that His grace is sufficient. And His power is made perfect in our weakness. And he is declaring the all surpassing worth of knowing

Jesus. And he is telling the world that the steadfast love of Jesus is better than life.

Jesus is better than anything life can give. And He is better than anything suffering or death can take away.

So why does God allow suffering for Christ's sake to so often accompany the advance of the gospel, the expansion of the kingdom?

Because it authenticates the message. It shows that we are not proclaiming

Christ for worldly gain. But that the world might gain Christ.

And Christ the world. And then the third thing very quickly about suffering.

What does Jesus tell us to do about it? If we suffer for the name of Christ, do we have instructions from Jesus about what to do?

And the answer is yes. Because Jesus' answer to suffering is rejoice. We see it in Matthew 5 verses 10 -12.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Look, we are entering into a time in our culture where it is no longer socially advantageous to be a

Christian. Nor is it even a neutral thing like a lifestyle choice. It is increasingly becoming socially disadvantageous to be a

Christian. And to believe and to say things that everybody accepted as true and completely normal 20 years ago can get you in trouble.

In the coming years, people in our church may get fired from their jobs for things that they believe or say or refuse to say or refuse to do.

And church members might get harassed online on social media. And community members may come against our church for things that we believe.

We may be reviled. And when that happens, what we ought to do is not revile in return, but throw a little party.

Tell a few jokes. Sing a few psalms and hymns. And rejoice.

That is what our Savior tells us to do. And to count ourselves blessed to be counted worthy of suffering for the name.

And to point to the absolute worth and glory of Jesus Christ.

Because the faithful church on mission, in all things, the faithful church on mission, that's what she does.

Points to the absolute worth of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank

You for Your Word to us. And Father, we ask that You would shape us and conform us into the image of Jesus.

Father, we ask that You would make us warm to the things of God, not cold. Sharp to the things of God, not dull. That You would stir our affection.

That You would stir our love for You. For Your Word and for Your works. That You would let us hear

Your Word and follow it with love for You and neighbor. Father, I pray that You would be with us and help us.

That we might represent You well in our community and in our homes and in our workplaces. That You would let us speak

Your words after You. That we would live godly lives in Christ Jesus and represent the name of Jesus well.

And Father, if suffering comes, let us remember that Jesus suffered first.

And we are not greater than our Master. Let us suffer well with endurance, with joy, pointing to Jesus who is better than life.