Dependence on God (Mark 6:7-13)

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While I was traveling down in Florida at the end of last year, I had an opportunity to preach at Pastor Andrew Smith's church. And this was a message that I preached down there out of Mark. I hope that you will find this quite encouraging.

In the dark times that we have in our days, just a time where many people are in fear, may this be a message that at least down there, it seemed to have an impact on many to encourage them. So may you find this message just as encouraging.

Introduction and Reading of Mark 6:7-13

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to sunny Florida. I hope none of you got blinded on your way to church this morning with that sunshine. I start off my podcast that I do with Bud always mentioning that he's from the sunshine state.

And I got up this morning and said, where is it? You know, an interesting thing before we get started with the pulpit, you notice it's quite big. This is actually a Puritan style pulpit where you have a lifted up of the proclamation of God's word.

For some of you who may not have grown up in synagogue, in case you didn't, in a synagogue setting, what you'd have to your left is a pulpit for the cantor to do the singing when there is the song to God, the praising of God in song.

To the right or to your right would be another pulpit where you'd proclaim God's word. But in the center is a raised pulpit and behind it would be a closed curtain that you'd have a time that you'd open the curtain and bring out the word of God.

And the word of God is marched up and down the pews and then brought to the center pulpit where it is open and read. Everything about the service, even the way the structure of the building is designed to show the height of the service is the reading of God's word, that God's word is what we gather for.

I would encourage you to turn, if you would, to Mark chapter 6. Now, I know that Pastor Andrew is going to be preaching through Mark. Since I am older, I believe he is following me in lots of things. He took my name, Andrew.

He's trying to copy the book that I'm preaching through at our church, but I have no fear because by the time he gets to Mark chapter 6, it will be next summer or winter. So you have a good year before you get back to this text.

I do not have to worry. If you wouldn't mind, out of reverence for God's word, rising for the reading of his word, this also is a Jewish custom, by the way, is to stand for the reading of God's word. This is what Mark, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote in Mark 6, verses 7 to 13.

And he summoned the twelve and began to send them out in pairs and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. And he instructed them that they should take nothing for their journey, except for a mere staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belt, but to wear sandals.

And he added, do not put on two tunics. And he said to them, wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave town. Any place that does not receive you or listen to you as you go out from there, shake the dust off the soles of your feet for a testimony against them.

They went out and preached that men should repent, and they were casting out demons and were anointing with oil many sick people and healing them. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to your word with great lessons for us, especially in our day and age and our culture, for us to understand.

Some hard lessons in front of us that we will see. We ask, Lord, that we would look to your word as the authority and answer for our faith and practice. But Lord, we ask that at this time that you, by the person of the Holy Spirit, would illuminate your word to our understanding and to give us the application therein for our lives.

We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. What we're going to look at today is we're going to look at three elements of this. We're going to look at the summoning of the twelve. We're going to look at the instruction of the twelve.

And we're going to look at the sending of the twelve. Now, any of you astute students just realize I just gave you all the fill-in-the-blanks ahead of time. But those that weren't paying attention, we'll get to those, and you can fill-in-the-blanks as we go.

I'm one of those students who always liked to get my homework in while the teacher was teaching, because I was bored at just listening to her teach. So, as we look at this, let's start with the summoning of the twelve in verse 7.

The Summoning of the Twelve and Their Mission in Pairs

We see here in verse 7, Mark says,. And he summoned the twelve and began to send them out in pairs, and gave them authority over unclean spirits. Now, as we compare this to some of the other parallel accounts, we know in Luke 9, verse 2, it says,.

And he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and perform healing. So not only did they go out just in pairs with the authority, but they went out for the purpose of proclaiming God's word. Now, it says that they went out and organized in pairs.

And sometimes we make a very big mistake of just kind of reading over things in Scripture and not meditating upon it, not thinking it through. Why pairs? Why would he send them out in pairs? Well, there's several advantages to being paired up.

One, if you sent them out in a dozen, could you picture being the person that has a dozen people sharing the truth of God's word with you and it's just you? That's not very comfortable, right? I'm being ganged up on.

The other thing that you see is that if it's just one person, when we go out alone, there's an advantage of having someone else with us. It gives us a greater encouragement, doesn't it? When we're afraid to say something to speak out, we're a little bit more emboldened when we know we have someone with us that is in agreement.

There's the other advantage that if you're anything like me and you tend to forget what you were going to say next, it's always good to have someone that is there to pick up where you fall. Or if they may ask a question you don't know the answer to.

So going out in pairs, it provides support. It also provides some protection as well. Having the two together will be less likely that someone's going to try to rob them or things like that, which would happen as they go from town to town sometimes.

It also gives the advantage of using their differing gifts. You see, there's differing people that you might talk to and where you may be able to talk to someone that I wouldn't have a great rapport with them, where someone else, I might have the great rapport and you might not because we're all different.

And it gives the advantage of using our differing gifts, showing some teamwork, but it also extends the gospel. You see, if Jesus said, okay, I want all 12 of you to go to this town and then this town and this town and we'll meet up in three weeks, the problem there is you only hit three towns where if they break up into groups of two, they can each go to different towns.

And that's what they would be doing at this point. They would be going out from town to town. And this expands the gospel or increases the gospel influence in that whole region. But the thing that we end up seeing here and focus on is it says that the authority was given.

Now, if we look at Matthew 10, a parallel account, Matthew 10, 8, I'm going to read 7 and 8, but we see that this authority was given not only over demons, but also to heal the sick and to raise the dead.

Matthew 10, 7 and 8 says, and as you go preaching, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leopards, cast out the demons, freely you received, freely give. So we see first that the word send, this word apostaleo is from a word we understand, apostle.

It means to be sent out. It is the idea of being sent towards a designated, with a designated purpose or goal. So this is something that we are, as we have today, we get sent out of the church. I loved when I was preaching at one church and when you enter into their sanctuary on the one side, it says, enter and worship God.

And when you walked out of the sanctuary, it has a sign on that side that says, enter the mission field. Reminding everyone that they are getting here, being fed with God's word, so that as we leave, we're going out into the mission field.

We are sent out for the purpose of the proclamation of the gospel. And so the pulpit ministry is to equip us so that we can go out into the world. But he also says an authority, the thing with this authority that in the Greek, it means the power or right to give orders or make decisions.

So Jesus was giving the twelve the power to give orders over demons. Now, I want you to note something here. Who is this that has the authority? He doesn't say to the disciples. It says to the twelve.

So note that the authority was specifically given only to the twelve, not all the disciples. Also note that this authority was given. Therefore, it was not an authority that they had of their own. This is an authority that not every Christian has, that they not every Christian has this authority.

They can command demons and heal the sick and raise the dead. This is an authority that was given for a specific purpose. The purpose is the proclamation of the gospel and the vindication thereof. It does not mean that everybody has the authority to cast out demons.

Please, someone let Benny Hinn know that the reality is, is that this is something that some people will try to take and say, well, see, we all have because we're disciples. And yet the text ends up being clear that this is to the twelve.

But there was a purpose for this. In fact, there are only three times in history that you see miraculous gifts being normative or normal. The first was in the time of Moses. It was the time of the writing of the historical books.

The first five books of Moses and then the books that followed that were the historical books. It started with Moses doing miraculous gifts. And then there was a period of silence. And then Elijah comes on the scene and we have another time where we see the miraculous, these signs and wonders.

And what is beginning with Elijah becomes the writing of the prophets. After a period of silence. What is that doing is vindicating the message of both Moses and Elijah. Then we have a period of about 400 years of silence.

John the Baptist comes on the scene preaching a message that seems quite offensive to Jewish people. Then Jesus is there and Jesus is doing these miracles and he's sending out his disciples with his authority to continue casting out demons and healing the sick.

Again, after a period of silence. And what are we going to have after this? The third time that we have after a period of silence, scripture being written in the New Testament. So we end up seeing is that when we see these miraculous gifts, it is a time when it's to vindicate the message that God is proclaiming after a period of silence.

How would you know that someone is speaking for God? Well, I can tell you one way you don't. For all the people that said that, you know, Romney was going to be a two-time president, they were wrong.

For all those people that said that Trump would win by a landslide and it would be declared on an election night. Well, they were wrong. For, you know, the guy who stood up and decided that he was going to blow COVID away and it was gone.

Okay, well, we can move on from there, right? Those are what we can clearly know are not, okay, people that are speaking for God. Those miracles are not real miracles because they're wrong. But you have after a period of silence, you have this miraculous.

Why? Because that vindicates the message now being proclaimed after a period of silence. Anyone can come up and say here, I've spoke for God. How do you prove that? Well, this was the way to vindicate that.

And that's why you'd see it. So what we see here is that this was a specific authority given to a specific people for a specific time and a specific purpose. So we should not use this text and say that we should all be commanding demons and we should all be looking to heal the sick and raise the dead.

That's not what the text is teaching. By the way, what you always want to do whenever you come to a historical narrative, and that's what this is a historical narrative, each, each different type of genre or literature of scripture has different rules for interpretation.

One of the things with this, when we come to historical narrative is historical narratives tell you what did happen, not what should happen. Okay. One of the things that you'll find is that many people read something that's historical narrative and go, well, it's in the Bible.

That's right. It is in the Bible. You know, Solomon had a lot of wives. It doesn't mean you should, right? Just because it's in the Bible, it's recording what actually happened. And there's a lot of things people have done wrong in the Bible.

So as we look at this, let's look, we see the authority that is given by the way, that authority is only given if you have the authority to give. Okay. That authority is Christ's to give. He didn't get it from someone that he had to, he had to borrow it.

Okay. So this is, and this ends up flying again in the way that some people will teach that well, the father gave Christ the authority. He gives it to us so we could give it to others. Okay. This authority is one that we are, that they, uh, that Christ gives as we continue on to the instructing of the 12.

Dependence on God for Protection and Provision

We'll spend the bulk of the time here in verses eight through 11, the instructing of the 12 Mark chapter six, verse eight to 11 says this. And he instructed them that they should take nothing on their journey except a mere staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belt, but to wear sandals.

And he added, do not put on two tunics. He, and he said to them, wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave town. Any place that does not receive you or listen to you as you go out from there, shake the dust off the soles of your feet as a testimony against them.

Now, I must say here, I must let you know a little bit of frustration that I do have with this text. There is a issue here, a textual issue that we have here between Mark chapter six, eight. And if you end up looking at the parallel passages in Matthew 10, nine and 10 and Luke nine three, because in this text, it clearly says that they were told to take nothing except a mere staff.

Yet, if you look at Luke chapter, uh, Luke nine three, it will say there not to take a staff. If you look at Matthew 10, it says not to obtain a staff, not to obtain anything. And so there's an issue here.

Now, sometimes we have these issues and what we do is we will find often that there's some textual variant. In other words, where someone was making a copy, they made, they added something in, maybe they left out a word, not or added a word.

Not the frustrating thing is as I've done my research, there's not a single textual variant in any of these three, which is, which is frustrating. So one argument of a friend of mine, Matt Slick makes the argument that not that he holds to it.

He, he says, this is the best argument that he has found for it is that some will say that because of the use of the word take in Mark and the word acquire in Matthew, that what Jesus may be saying, and some make this argument is to say that he's saying, don't you could take a staff, just don't acquire one as you go.

The problem is, is that Luke also uses the word take. So that's not a very good argument. And so you say, well, how do we resolve this? Some will say, well, there's maybe there's a textual variant that we just haven't found yet.

That's not a good argument to make because that's, that's an argument without evidence. We don't want to make arguments without evidence. So the only answer I can give is it's frustrating because I can't find a very good way of, of trying to reconcile these two.

I have tried. So is it a contradiction? No, I would say, I don't say that it's a contradiction. It says that we just haven't resolved it. Right? This is a thing that we just have to be honest and recognize that there's sometimes things we don't understand.

Maybe it, maybe there is a textual variant we haven't found. But the reality is, is that we, I just bring it to your attention for further study. Maybe you'll find me the, the way of solving it. And you let me know, give, give Pastor Andrew some homework this week.

But, and maybe next year or two, when he gets to Mark chapter six, he'll, he'll have resolved it for you. So let's look at, at the main part of what we want to focus on though, is the instruction that Jesus gives.

And that is the idea of dependence upon God. We're going to see this in several different areas that God wants us to depend on him. And then we're going to see that this is from the instructions he gives to the, the twelve.

He gives these instructions to them. First is one that I list as protection. He tells them to carry a staff. And these are going to be broken into, into two broad categories, protection and provision.

And reason I put it down on those two is what we're going to see as we go through these, that God gives them instructions to bring protection, but bring no provision. And we're going to see why I think that is in, in a few moments.

But we come to the first is the staff. Now we think of a staff, a staff would typically be just a limb from a tree. Maybe it would be, you know, carved down. But the idea of a staff is one to offer support, especially as they're traveling from town to town.

Now you have to remember, yes, they had the Roman roads at this time. The Roman roads would be basically just dirt packed down. All right. But most people didn't travel from town to town on the Roman roads.

Those would be the main thoroughfares. But you'd often have to go off the Roman roads to where it's just a path maybe of dirt. You're going to have, you're going to have rocks. You're going to have hills.

You're going to have roots of trees, all kinds of things that you're walking through. And so a staff offers support. The other thing that a staff would do is offer protection. A staff was not only a protection against falling, but it was also protection against robbers and thieves.

Because you have a weapon you could use. It's also protection against wild animals, which you'd come across as you're going from town to town. We don't often think about this. And this is something I really always will stress to people to do.

Don't just read your Bible. Think it through. Because we are not in the culture that they were. We get into our, go into our garage. We hop into our car. We open a garage by this little remote control.

We don't even get out. We pull our car out. We never even see our neighbor. We drive to where, you know, three towns over. And then we go wherever and come right back. And usually it's town, the one town buds up right against the other town.

And what you end up seeing is that we don't have the concept too much of where you have a town and maybe several miles away is the next town. And you're walking through the woods and the open fields and wherever.

That's how they would get around. So put yourself in the mindset of what the 12 were doing. They're going from town to town. And this is their means of travel. And so they're, as they're going, they're sitting there and a staff is going to help protect them from falling.

It's going to protect them against would be thieves or robbers. It would protect them against animals. So this is a means of protection. But then we get to some of the provisions. And we're going to get to a second protection later with that.

We'll get to in a moment, but we get to provisions. First is food. Now he says to them, do not take any bread. Bread is your basic necessity of substance. In those days, we, we, they, they would have always be carrying bread with them.

Especially if you're traveling. If you're traveling, you need something to keep your energy levels up. Remember, these are people that are going to be traveling about 12 miles a day. For us, it's like, you know, we think one mile on a treadmill might be too much.

This is, this is how they would go. They would be traveling for several miles. They need the bread to keep their energy levels up. And Jesus is telling them, don't take any. He is telling that for a reason, though.

He does not want them to rely on the resources that they may have, but to rely upon God. God will provide your need. This is a strange thing for you and I in America. Because we don't think of bread as our basic necessity.

In fact, we usually think of bread as something we have before the meal. Just to tide us over until we get the real meal. I remember speaking to a man that was here from Africa. He was trying to explain to us how filthy rich us Americans are.

Some of you are going, you don't know my life. I'm not filthy rich. Well, you are when you consider that here's someone that, you know, when the pastor would take a team down to this town in Africa, the village in Africa, they would like to bring some colorful shirts.

Because see, they only have one color, gray. You have anything that has color, that's like a sign of wealth. They would go there and, you know, the thing that was so interesting is that they said, the definition of you and I as being filthy rich is that we can have three meals a day.

That's rich. Filthy rich is that we can have three meals a day for a whole month and not have the same thing twice. That's filthy rich. We don't think about that. Have you ever considered that your food supply makes you filthy rich?

Maybe it's something to think about the next time you go to eat. The thing is, is we in America don't understand what it is to live without. We, when we run out of food, we just go to the local grocery store and pick more up.

For many of us, we don't understand what it is to live without knowing where your next meal is coming from. There was a time in my life when I was homeless. There was a time in my life where I had no job.

I had no income, had no place to live, and I had no means to provide my next meal. Even though I was hungry, I was also prideful. I was a deacon at the church in charge of the deacon's fund, where at the time we had several thousands of dollars in the deacon's fund to care for those in need.

But I was too prideful to let anyone else know that I had a need. I also wasn't about to just go into the deacon's fund and take it out for my own use. So I went without. You know, the amazing thing is, even in my pride, I never went more than two days without food.

God always seemed to provide food one way or another. He would provide food, I'd have friends that would stop by the house. You know, just, hey, my mom baked, you know, made this, can you use it? Yeah, sure, let's eat.

You know, or I had friends that would take me out. The reality is, you and I do not know the feeling of having an empty stomach and not knowing whether I'm going to be able to eat next. One thing I rested for sure on was that God would always take care of my need.

And he always did. Not maybe my wants, but always my need. Sometimes a friend would stop by with food, sometimes someone would take me out. One such time, a beautiful young woman, who forced me to explain why I was not eating, found out that I had no food and no money and went out the next day and bought me groceries, enough that lasted two weeks.

By the way, I married that beautiful young lady, and she's here with you today. So food is a basic thing. And when we are without food, I could tell you from personal experience, when you are hungry and you don't have any means of providing food, you do pray a lot more.

You do depend upon God. It was a very, very valuable lesson. And though I would never want to experience again, I'll tell you this, I would never want to give up the lessons I learned during that time either.

That's what Christ wants the disciples to learn. Go without any food. Trust that God will provide. Another thing he wants them to do is to not take anything to have for storage. He doesn't want them to bring a bag.

A bag would be what we think of as a purse today. It's a bag would be a bag or a pouch used for storage that would often be made of leather from an animal skin or a linen cloth and would have a drawstring to tie it.

It'd be used to put money in. It'd be used to put food in to store maybe something that would hold water for long journeys. And they were told not to bring any. And you're thinking, well, of course, why would you need to bring a bag?

If you're not going to be told to bring any money or any water, right? You have no need for a bag. Why would he say not to bring a bag? Well, I think for a very simple reason, Jesus is telling them not to bring these things.

But as they go to the first house, getting ready for the journey of the next house, what do you think people are going to do? Here's some food for your journey. If you have no bag, guess what? You have no way to store that for the trip.

In other words, Jesus isn't just sending them out and saying, I don't want you to take any food or money with you to start. He doesn't want them to have anything to be able to hold it. So they can't go from one town to another.

He wants them to depend upon God at every step of their trip, at every city that they enter. They were to have no means of carrying. They were to trust upon God in every town that they come in. So they would need to rely on God's reserves to provide for them.

They would have no way to store stuff. So he didn't want them to start off on the travel and then grab reserves later. This would be consistent with what we see in Matthew 10, 9 and 10. But another thing he doesn't want them to bring is money.

Now, when we think of money, we think of the thin, light paper bills that we have. That's not the money they would have. They would have coins and not the light coins that we would have. They'd be a heavier coin.

Now, remember, they would typically take money and put it in a bag and tie it around their belt. They don't have that bag. They're told not to carry any money. Why would they not want to carry? Why would Jesus not want them to carry any money?

Again, if you have no money, you have no reserves to just go to the town and buy food. You're going to rely upon God's provision as you enter into the town, that he's going to provide everything for you.

Anything that you need will be provided for you. That is a hard thing for us to understand in America. See, America was built on this idea of individualism, being able to make your own way. It's the reason that you see a lot of selfishness in America.

We could do it our way. And the thing that you end up seeing is that that flies in the face of what Jesus is trying to teach them to be dependent upon God. Trust God for your needs. He will take care of your provisions.

Where we think, well, we got to take care of it. Are we going to make sure that we have the means to take care of it ourselves? The disciples would have been no different, but it takes something different to depend upon God.

It's called trust. Who are we really trusting? Are we trusting ourselves and what we could do? Or are we trusting God and what he can do? We live in a very self-reliant culture. And therefore, it's extremely difficult for Americans to trust and rely on others, let alone God.

We want to do things for ourselves. We want to make it our way. And God wants us to rely on him, not make it our way. Sorry, McDonald's. Another thing he says, he doesn't want them to bring another element of provision is clothing.

Jesus instructed them to take sandals, but not two tunics. Now, a sandal was a common footwear in the ancient Near East that would basically consist of a sole with a little bit of a strap on it that they would have.

By the way, there wasn't a left and right foot until 1818 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, about half an hour from where I live. So they just had a flat. You didn't have to worry about if you got the right shoe on.

You always had the right one on. But not everyone always would wear sandals. But sandals were a thing of protecting your feet if you were traveling. They're walking again. They're walking on a dirt path.

They're going to hit hard rock or maybe some roots or different twigs or different things. So again, it's a protection of the foot and allows you to travel much further. So they're told to bring sandals, but not two tunics.

A tunic is basically, there was two basic forms of a tunic. You either have two pieces of cloth that are sewn together, or if someone had a special loom, they would have a seamless tunic, like the one that you end up seeing that Christ wore, that they ended up taking at the cross, they end up taking bids for.

And so you end up seeing that the tunic would be an undergarment. Okay, so typically people would have an undergarment with things outside and he's telling him not to take two. Now one thing, where are they going to carry it?

Because they don't have a bag, right? But the thing is, he's saying not to wear two tunics. There's again, this is again a little bit of a frustrating portion. I didn't see a lot of commentators mention anything about this.

There's some, but not much, that explains why he said not to take two. The best that I can see is the reason is by carrying only one, you have just the one set of clothing that you're wearing. So you're not going and changing clothes.

It's not that they can go and wash the one tunic while the other one is drying. The way of washing it would be to get into the river, wash it with you in it, and then you're wearing it until it dries, right?

Or you're putting other clothes over it. The thing is that they're not to carry extra clothing. And it's something that would mean that they would be basically, typically wearing the same set of clothes.

And you think about your day and we live in a place where we have nice showers. They were going to go to different people's homes and they don't have showers and they don't have tubs, right? So you're going to typically just keep wearing that.

How do your clothes do after a couple days if you're wearing them? I'll just let you think about that. So next we go to lodging, another provision. Now in the culture of the Middle East, we again, we have to understand the culture of the time this is written.

Okay, we are different than that culture. This may shock some people, but in the first century culture, they didn't know what the internet was. Some of you children, your parents didn't know what the internet was either when they were your age, okay?

We have to understand the Bible in the time it's written. Do not try to read the Bible for what you think it means today. When people tell me, well, I think this means, I stop them and say, I really don't care what you think.

I want to know what it actually means. That takes following the rules of interpretation. And one of the rules is you interpret something in the context of its time, not our time. So understanding the time, the first century, understanding hospitality culture of the first century, it's still very common actually in the Middle East today that there was an expected hospitality.

It would be ashamed to not house a stranger. This seems so foreign to our American selfish individualistic thinking. We think of protecting ourselves and our family. We would never let some stranger in our home.

We don't know them. Well, that's why you carry Smith and Wesson. But, however, this isn't the case everywhere, okay? I remember reading many years ago about a man who, there was an American reporter that came through a town, a village town in the Middle East, he had some car problems.