A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

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Sermon by Josh Rice from Mark 3:13-35.

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All right, our text for today is going to be from Mark 3 13 through 35, so I'm going to read that text
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Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those he wanted and they came to him He appointed 12 whom he also named apostles to be with him to send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out
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Demons he appointed the 12 to Simon. He gave the name Peter and to Sorry and to James the son of Zebedee and to his brother
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John He gave the name Boanerges that is sons of thunder Andrew Philip and Bartholomew Matthew and Thomas James the son of Alpheus and Thaddeus Simon the zealot and Judas Iscariot who also betrayed him
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Jesus entered a house and the crowd gathered again So they were not even able to eat when his family heard this they set out to restrain him because they said he's out of His mind the scribes who had come down from Jerusalem said he is possessed by a
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Beelzebul and he drives out demons by the ruler of the demons So he summoned them and spoke to them in parables
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How can Satan drive out Satan if a kingdom is divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand?
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If a house is divided itself that house cannot stand and if Satan opposes himself and is divided
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He cannot stand but is finished But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man
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Then he can plunder his house truly I tell you people will be forgiven for all sins and whatever blasphemies they utter
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But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin
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Because they were saying he has an unclean spirit his mother and brothers came and standing outside they sent word to him and called him a
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Crowd was sitting around him and told him look your mother your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you
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He replied to them who are my mother and my brothers looking at those sitting in a circle around him
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He said here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.
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Let's pray Father we thank you for this time that we can come together and worship with fellow
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Saints Lord that we can Sing in joy to you Lord that we can hear the proclamation of your word or that later we can
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We can take the elements at the table together. And so God in all these things I pray that we would have humility of heart that our ears would be open to hear your word that we would be receptive to your
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Holy Spirit that affects to change us and to conform us into your image what I pray for Pastor Josh as he comes and proclaims the word that or the the words that he speaks
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Have power Lord that they are Lord that they're righteous by by your blessing.
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And so God I pray that this time would just be Pleasing to you that it would be a sweet aroma in your nostrils
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And so God we we ask that blessing upon our church and we submit it to you. It's in your name. We pray
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Amen Thanks, Jake.
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It's a I Want to put us in a place here so what we see in mark as we've been looking through in way of an introduction is
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I want to plant us in context because We come to a piece of scripture That I don't I don't know if you guys know this this piece of scripture has been twisted up into a pretzel
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Especially in our time and there's there's several passages here where we either put too much weight on it
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Contextually or we just entirely miss the point So what I want to do that to avoid those kind of errors
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We have to really place ourselves in the context of where we're at in mark And what we see over and over again is that Jesus has started this ministry by healing lepers by healing
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Paralytics and by casting out demons and this has created a stir It's created jealousy and envy among the religious elite
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But it's also created a gigantic following and huge crowds and multitudes that are pressing around Jesus everywhere
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He goes and so what we would think and this is this is what we do in the
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American Church And we're going to talk a lot about in -house stuff today. This one is really focused I think on the people of God and what we have to do
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That's why I've entitled it a house divide against itself cannot stand and for too long
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The house of the Christian Church in America has been strongly divided and therefore
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We've not been able to stand we've seen our influence on the culture wane We've seen that that basically our power structures give no heed to the church whatsoever
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We basically don't have a voice in our country And I think that there's a lot of reasons that you can look at as to why this has happened
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But I think biblically speaking the biggest reason why this has happened is because we're a house divided against itself.
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We are Unable to unify we're unable to get the picture and we see right off the bat that one of the things that we see where We're in stark contrast with the
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Lord and his ministry when he came is that the crowds are not the end in and of themselves Because in the
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American Church, what we would do is we would see Oh Jesus You're healing people and you're preaching the word and look at all these multitudes who are coming to you
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To hear this word preached You did it you arrived That's it.
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Because what we try to do is all of our churches in America strive to be megachurches
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That is the goal every megachurch wants to stay a megachurch and every small church wants to be a megachurch
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And we want to act like megachurches by trying to draw in the multitudes under the good
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Prescription of trying to get more people to hear the gospel But we try to emulate that by creating all the programs and by not focusing on The ministry of Christ and how the church was built in the first place
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And that is that when the crowds pressed on Jesus over and over again I hope you see it in Mark is that Jesus withdraws himself
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To a quiet place in a desolate place and he goes to pray now We don't get the prayer in this account in Mark 3, but in the parallel accounts, especially in Luke We know that in this section that what
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Jesus did is he went up to the mountain to pray And then after he had prayed he summoned those who he himself wanted
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Now there were disciples up on the hill up on the mountain. We don't know exactly which mountain there's good guesses
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But there were disciples on this mountain, but Jesus then picks 12 He picks 12 and there are good reasons for that Because this is a foundational number in Scripture and you have to understand in the context of the
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New Testament That a new thing is happening that there were 12 tribes of Israel one of which was broken into two half tribes because Joseph was the ruler of Egypt and So he becomes not a tribe and his two sons become two half tribes in Israel, right?
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There's a picture who could that be in the New Testament, right? We have one who betrayed
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Joseph didn't betray but he was a king of Egypt or he was a ruler of Egypt a prince Judas betrays the king and so his tribe gets split up and what
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I want to do here is show you that these are types and these are shadows that are coming into play and It's foundational.
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So the church the church is a new thing The ministry of Christ is a new thing that doesn't come completely out of nowhere
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What we don't do is package up the Old Testament and say, oh that was all fine and good, but that's over now we've got a new thing the
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New Testament takes those shadows and it brings them into vibrant color and so just as Abraham was the father of the nations and in a manner of speaking
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Abraham was the father of the twelve tribes Abraham himself stood outside of the twelve tribes, right?
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We don't we don't call Abraham one of the twelve tribes would call him the father Similarly as Jesus calls the twelve apostles who are going to be commissioners and heralds of his kingdom
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They are he is outside of the twelve Jesus is the fountainhead or the father of the twelve in a spiritual sense and so these twelve are going to be the first commissioners of Jesus and there's all kinds of stuff we miss and This is this is one of those editing exercises where I've got to get out of this point quicker than I usually do in The first point but there's there's a thing you have to understand here and that is that Jesus did not go up the mountain and pray to God so that he could get 12 bros and they could hang out and drink coffee
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Together every day and talk about all the Theo stuff and just have so much fun together and be the best of friends
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Ever know what you need to think of it is Jesus marshaling his generals for the war that's about to come and if you don't believe me just Listen to the text that Jake read because immediately after the
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Apostles are called we are engaged in a spiritual war Against real enemies and those enemies have flesh and blood
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People who are progressing the war of Satan and that is the scribes from Jerusalem in this text
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So Jesus stands outside. He is greater and he authorizes his
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His generals his commissioners his heralds of the news of the king and this is a very dangerous job as we see
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Because all of these men are going to be martyred or exiled as the time goes on And so Jesus what we often think we say the word discipleship now if we've done
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Discipleship at all in the American Church. What we've done is we've waved a program at it we have discipleship in the form of men's ministry and women's ministry and small groups and youth ministry and Children's ministry and singles ministry a young married couples ministry older married couples ministry widow ministry widower ministry
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And we said that's discipleship Go to your ministry. Oh, you don't feel plugged into the church.
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Are you going to your ministry? This is not how it works because what Jesus employs here is a discipleship
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That is deep and it's rooted and it doesn't happen fast It's not a thing that you can check off on a checklist an hour a week
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It's a thing where you are heavily embedded in someone else life So you don't just get theological facts from someone who's more mature in the faith than you you are seeing someone live their life
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That's more mature than you in the faith And so we cannot package discipleship is having coffee once a week with somebody and talking about the
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Bible That has some benefit, but that's not what's in view in this passage
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Jesus is calling these generals and they're gonna go through training with him for three years And they're gonna be put in danger and these young men have left their professions
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And they are gonna go turn the world upside down when they are released when they see the power of the resurrected
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Christ before that they are peons in training They don't really know how to handle the heat and some of them like the sons of commotion the sons of thunder
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They think themselves great when they are not great and some of them like Peter He lets his mouth get way ahead of him and Mark is gonna give us that in his gospel many many times
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In fact, some people think that Mark didn't like Peter because of how he starts to write about him in this narrative
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But I think what's important is see that Peter was the chief of the Apostles But Peter was a man, right
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Peter was a was a regular man But he was called to this task and he's given the power of the
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Holy Spirit in church Church if you hear nothing else today hear this Hear this the entire
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Christian life and the faithfulness and the effectiveness of the Christian life is
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Entirely dependent on the Holy Spirit's power in your life. There is no other way.
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It's not through doctrinal Learning it's not through practical wisdom It's not through anything other than the
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Holy Spirit empowering righteousness in your life If that doesn't happen We have no power and we might as well pack up our bags and go home because we're wasting our time and the
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Holy Spirit Is the the pivotal Player in this text this morning because these men are called and when
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Jesus leaves who does he give them? He gives them the comforter the Holy Spirit to teach them so that they can teach the masses
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So in the church today, how do we model this and I don't want to I don't want to bag on the church anymore
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I love the church. And what I want to do is I want to see the church's Reformation and repentance So what do we do in this place?
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How do we model? Sending out ambassadors. How do we model discipleship? And I think there's there's several ways to do this
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Number one we take the pattern that we have to spend time to know one another's minds We don't get this through podcasts.
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We don't get it through listening to sermons We don't get it from having coffee together. We get this through being in each other's lives over Years and seeing the way we adapt and seeing the way that works out.
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That's how the ongoing qualifications for an elder Continue on I have to have people in my house and they have to see the pattern of my life over time
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And can't a man fall into unrighteous Righteousness absolutely can and it requires people being involved because discipling is not microwavable
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It's not going to happen in a week. You're not going to be freed from this besetting sin usually in 10 days
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Sometimes that battle can take 15 years and so we know at the end of it who delivered it's not our willpower
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It's not our want to it's not our stick to itiveness and same it is with discipling Remember what
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I said the most important thing for you Remember, we will not disciple anyone if it's outside the power of the Holy Spirit and the
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Holy Spirit knits people together Understand this from Christ Jesus did not have the limitations that we have
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Jesus God Jesus is the Son of God and yet he chose us this pattern to pick 12 men
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To invest heavily in their life and that there were three of them that he invested even more in Peter John and James and these were the inner circle because hierarchies are built into Nature but also because Jesus is modeling that there's going to be concentric circles of influence in our lives
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I can't disciple a thousand people. I Can disciple 12 and I can disciple 3 at a higher level than the 12 and we have to understand this
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So that's another thing that we have to stay on mission. We have to understand that disciples don't get punched out in one year
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Okay Disciples take time they take process they take intentionality
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It takes a lot of time together and there's inefficient. We have long conversations. We're at the end of the conversation
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We don't understand each other. I was listening to a debate on my way here this morning and The two guys just don't understand each other
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You can tell they're trying to get to the root of the disagreement and they just can't quite get there and it's frustrating for the listener
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But it's also frustrating for them and that is discipleship Do you think that all of the disciples understood what
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Jesus was teaching? No, we know half the time they had no idea what he was talking about And I I am sure that in this text this morning.
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They didn't know what he was talking about Okay, but is he impatient? No, he continues to teach he continues to work with them
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And then when they see the power of the resurrected God He teaches them all the things that the Old Testament had to say about him and how he was the fulfillment of all scripture
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And then they were ready to go and make disciples It was a process We can't do it a multitude of time we do it in small waves and Understand most of all it's not a checklist
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Making disciples is intentional, but it's aggressive and we've lost this thing
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Christian life get this it's fun It's fun. Did you know it's okay for Christians to have fun?
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Did you know that there's joy and having relationships with each other and that it's really fun to be able to have these things out?
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And even to disagree I've said it before disagreement is the spice of conversation It's not fun to talk to somebody if they agree with everything you say that's ridiculous.
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We want to disagree with people We just want to do it inside of a box, okay? I love the people
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I love to talk to the most or the people argue with me all the time I love to argue. That's why I married my wife
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She told me one time that Narnia wasn't very good. She was just playing a game She was very smart, and I was very angry for a time until I learned her game
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So disciple we have to make disciples and and let's let's tie this back. What did Jesus do before he?
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Had these disciples before he called them he prayed have you ever prayed? That you would have good discipling relationships with people and that you would know who to invest in I Don't want to get mystical and ethereal on here on you here
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I don't think it is is that God gives us natural desires and God gives us natural Proclivities and natural inclinations toward people and so we should listen to that and we should invest in the people that God has put in our path
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That it that it makes sense for us to invest in and that's how the kingdom grows. That's how it's always grown
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It's not through drawing 15 ,000 people here that we don't know It's through having these tight concentric circles that start to web together
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This was one of the first messages in this church when we had holes in the wall I think it was cool in here at that point
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We had an air conditioner But there was all kind of there wasn't paint and all this stuff and I said our communities have to be like this
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Like webs of this because it can't be me with everyone I don't have that capacity but every person if they have three people they're really close to and 12 people that they're kind of close to guess what happens all
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These connections and everybody feels firmly attached in the body and that's the way the church is supposed to be
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How are we supposed to love one another if we don't have these kinds of connections? And there I went I waxed along on part one
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I knew it it is the ground game of the church And it's good that I did that because I really need to restrain myself for the last section here
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Which is like right in the middle of my hobby horse kind of stuff. I like to talk about So let's talk about the scribes.
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So what Jesus has done is he's called these 12 and then immediately what happens? He can't even stand to be in his own house, right?
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Like they're pressing on him again. The multitudes are all over him Can you imagine it would be like having the paparazzi on you right now?
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we all want to be famous but nobody really wants to be famous because it would be terrible like you try to try to go get
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A coffee at McDonald's and all of a sudden the whole restaurants full of people trying to get your picture That would not be very fun.
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That is the life that Jesus is living as he is healing people and he's casting out demons but now in this backwater up in northern
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Israel the word has gotten out and the Pharisees and the scribes have sent word down south and Now the big guns are coming because now the scribes the highest level of the religious elite are coming to see what's going on from Jerusalem So these are the big boys and they come up here and they're ready and let's pick it up It says in verse 22 the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying he is possessed by Beelzebul And he cast out demons by the ruler of the demons
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So what does Jesus do? He starts to talk in parables. Why? Because he's insanely brilliant Okay, and also because he knows what we would do with kind of up playing discourse here and what he's doing is engaging the people who come to him and he's tying them in knots because Jesus is smarter than them and Because Jesus is going to put them in a position once again where they don't really know the way out
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And this is what he does He exposes their accusation as being wild and nonsensical and he's doing a lot here a lot of complicated stuff
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Okay, so he says first in parables. How can Satan cast out Satan?
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That's a good question Is it and then he says if a kingdom is divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand and if a house is divided against itself
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That house will not be able to stand and if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided
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He cannot stand but he is finished in other words If I'm doing what you're saying that I'm doing the kingdom of Satan is finished
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Hallelujah Do you see what Jesus has done? He has put them in the rhetorical lockbox here if he's actually doing what they're saying he's doing
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He is defeating Satan even as they speak But if he's not doing what they say he's doing then he is
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God and he is casting out demons by the power of God So, what do you do with that? What the scribes do is they get mad, right?
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They get angry and they they are bitter and they double down in their hearts So let's let's look here and and you'll notice
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I skip past first 21. We're gonna come back to that later I want to say here that the scribes have already made up their minds
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Right, they were supposedly on a fact -finding mission from Jerusalem to see what's going on with this
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Jesus But when they come off the scene, the first thing they're doing is making wild accusations Is this not the insanity of being darkened in our understanding of God?
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This man is healing people he's casting out demons and You're saying that he's
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Satan Well with with a Satan like that who even needs enemies of God, right?
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He's doing all these good things and he's offering forgiveness So what is
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Satan's goal? So so here we go If a house divided against itself cannot stand I think it's important for us to look at what is the goal of Satan?
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and we know this because Jesus was already tempted in the desert and Satan through his temptations of Christ give us a window into what
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Satan thinks is important and to what is valuable to him And what is valuable to Satan is food and kingdoms and Safety from death right falling down that sort of thing
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So he wants to own the nations to enslave the people to destroy God's people and to establish his own everlasting throne
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So how can any kingdom do that if they want to punish and outcast their own people for doing that work?
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in other words if America's goal if the Kingdom of America is about Liberty and What we do is we throw people in jail for exercising
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Liberty. How can that kingdom stand? The answer is it can't because the division is not about people not understand here.
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There's a lot going on, right? Remember who the last person that Jesus called to himself. He wanted him
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Judas Iscariot, right? Jesus wants him and so in a manner of speaking what
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Jesus has done is he has brought division into his own inner circle Except we have to understand that Jesus who knew everything knew that the purposes of God which is the mission
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The mission is always about the purpose, right? The mission is always about the telos It's about the place that we're trying to arrive the mission of God is that the
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Sun would be lifted up that he would be crucified and that he would ascend and Judas is integral to that mission
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And so Jesus doesn't bring division because there's somebody who goes against the other disciples Jesus brings completion because he knows all the thoughts of men and he brings you to sin
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Satan is not omniscient and Satan is not going to be able to operate if he brings people in who are trying to overthrow
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His own purposes his purposes are to build his own kingdom to own the nations and to enslave people
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And so if he is freeing people of the enslavement of demons then
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Satan cannot stand he's done It's over his telos is to be gone
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His kingdom will be abolished and what Satan understands that the Scribes don't is that his kingdom is in grave danger even as they speak and So in a very real way the
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Scribes are actually doing the work of Satan all the while accusing Jesus of being
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Satan That's what's going on here So what do they want to do? What do they want to do?
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They want to cast disparagement on Jesus For doing the work of the kingdom and I told you it's more provocative than you know when
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I said at the start of the sermon today in the introduction that we are not united as a church and we have not stood and Then we have to repent of that and start to stand because what we do today is that we cast
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Disparagement and discouragement upon others who preach the gospel That's insane and it's dangerous
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That is behavior that not even Satan would engage in in his own ranks
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We are in a very real way in a very real way doing the work of Satan when we cast
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Discouragement and disparagement on other people who are preaching the true gospel and we do this all the time
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We are see Satan Satan's goal is being accomplished and he's happy to do this in the church
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Satan enlists his agents just like the scribes to try to discourage and slander the good work that's being done in the kingdom
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So he's alive and well working in the church today Because he is an accuser of the brothers and when we accuse the brothers we are acting exactly like him
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Understand that's what the scribes are doing They were accusing God of being
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Satan Because they wanted to divide Jesus from the people who were following him
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Who else would want to divide Jesus from the people who are following him? Satan that's the only one who would really want to do that and Ephesians Paul gives us real clarity of this in Ephesians 2 when he says that we were all once Enslaved following the prince of the power of the air that means every person
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When they were born and when they grow up outside of being transferred into the kingdom of Christ We are against all of God's mission.
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Even if we're on a moralistic self -interest course We still try to separate people from their true faith in Christ But when we're saved when we are redeemed we don't do that anymore
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So we have to stop church. We're gonna be tempted and especially in our reformed camp
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We're gonna be more tempted than most because we're more Fundamentalist and we're more arrogant frankly than most and what we like to do is we like to think all of this boxed -in doctrine in the 1689
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Until lesser it sent to Westminster But all of this this puts us in this box and if you don't believe all of these things
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Then you're out. You're probably not a real church and we don't trust you and Friends that is doing the work of Satan full stop period period
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Because the gospel is that Jesus has come to save what was enslaved and what was lost and There are many many other
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Baptists assemblies of God some Methodists Frighteningly little in America now, but there's a lot in the world
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Okay, some Lutherans. There's there are a lot of denominations that still preach a true gospel in these individual churches
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And they are our friends They are clearly our friends. So what what operational benefit is there in us?
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Dividing over our preferences and secondary interpretations and throwing other people out of the kingdom of God Do you realize what
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God has done is his kind in his kindness as he has given us individual local churches To where we can we can kind of narrow down these doctrines, right?
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We really can like we do ascribe to the 1689 here and you're gonna hear that preached from the pulpit
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You're not gonna hear things contrary to that confession preached from this pulpit but that doesn't mean that the
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Assembly God Church down the road that doesn't ascribe to the 1689 in all of its particulars is out of the kingdom of God, but the enemy would love us to think that they are
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They would love he would love that because what that does is it puts a sharp division in between the people of God?
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Who are united under the banner of Jesus Christ and it makes us fight against each other and guess what we're doing when we're?
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Fighting against each other. We're not fighting the enemy and It's more fun to fight against our friends because I remember
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I fought with my brother all the time We were growing up and it was fun to fight because what I knew was that Jake was not gonna pull out a shotgun and Cut me in half with it
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Right, there were rules to fighting amongst friends. And so we like fighting amongst friends and brothers Because at the end of the day, we know they're not gonna burn our church down But fighting against the enemy draws all kinds of aggression and the church in America has been
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Divided so long that we have no voice and we're actually laughed at in the culture because there's no threat
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The culture doesn't care if we come in here and worship Jesus What they care about is when we go out there and start messing with their stuff
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They really care about that and so we have to ask ourselves Church, are we together? Are we a united front?
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Do you have that in your life because it works both ways if it's held individually It's gonna flow out of us corporately and if it's held in us corporately
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It's gonna infect every individual and that's part of my accountability as the elder of this church
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Is that if I hold that kind of stuff in my heart, it's gonna start leeching out of here Right, and we're going to start looking at other churches with a side eye thinking that they may do some cute stuff in there
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But they're not really of God Dangerous, it's very very dangerous And we don't have to worry about Satan when we're doing that We're just going about his work gleefully every day and all the while thinking that we're holier than all the people we're throwing out
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Who does that sound like? It's the scribes. They think that they're much holier than the
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Son of God. That's a really really bad place to be I hope you can see that. I hope it's self -apparent and then
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I think we get to the key text here today and That is verses 27 through 29 I'm gonna read them really quickly
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It says but no one can enter the strongman's house and plunder his prosperity unless he first binds the strongman
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Then he will plunder his house Truly I say to you all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men and whatever blasphemies they utter
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But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness But is guilty of an eternal sin
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So there's two characters in the parable, right? This is very interesting two characters in the parable there is the strongman and there's the thief and this is the rhetorical genius of Jesus is that he cast himself in this parable as the thief and Satan is the strongman and here's the idea
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Think of a picture of a house and you got a strongman Who's very dangerous very very dangerous.
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Everybody's afraid of him. Are you gonna walk in his house? When he's fully alert and start taking his things
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No, he will kill you Okay, that's what he's gonna do Everybody knows that everybody understands you have to either be sneaky and wait for him to be asleep or you're gonna have to neutralize him and because Satan Is not asleep because he's prowling around like a roaring lion
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What's gonna have to happen is if the thief wants to take what's inside the strongman's house
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He's gonna have to neutralize the strongman who can tie up the strongman Relatively speaking.
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What does the thief have to be in order to tie up the strongman? You ever tried to tie up a grown man who was resisting you?
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It's gonna be pretty tough, right? You're either gonna have to drug him or you have to knock him out So what's gonna happen is
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Jesus binds the strongman So what that means in context is that Jesus has come in and he has neutralized
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Satan and now he's gonna steal all his stuff So what is this stuff? We know because Satan offered to Jesus the kingdoms of this world, right?
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That was a real offer He offered him the kingdoms of this world. And so what Jesus is doing is Jesus comes in he ties up He binds the strongman and he's gonna plunder the kingdoms of this world
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That is people and then Jesus gives us a very clear idea of what he's stealing, right?
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Who's he taking all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men So what's
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Jesus gonna do? He's gonna go inside Satan's house He's gonna tie up Satan because he's a stronger man
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And he's gonna take all the people from Satan's kingdom and he's gonna take them by forgiving them of all their blasphemies and all their sins
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What an amazing thing aside aside
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These are dangerous right for my for my post -millennial friends We have done violence to this text
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Okay, you have to understand first this is a parable right this is a parable we have to be careful what we do with parables
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Parables are not one -to -one about every single thing in life We don't mind them and draw every possible thing that they dig down.
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I've heard it said many many times see obviously Obviously Satan's bound forever because Jesus said he was gonna bind the strongman
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No, look, I do think that there's an essence of this But if that is the weight of your argument, this is a tenuous place to make that argument what has happened here very clearly in context is that Jesus has bound up Satan and Stopped him from being able to keep
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Jesus from taking his kingdoms All of us agree all of us no matter your strife
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All of us agree that when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to the throne that he owns all of the nations
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We all agree with that. That is Orthodox Christianity that Jesus is the king of the nations.
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Okay When that plays out physically is where we start to disagree, okay, so be careful when you look at parables
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Jesus is saying right here. I've neutralized Satan to take his kingdoms Okay, and how did
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I take his kingdoms by forgiving men? now This this verse has caused no small problem even from when
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I was a child in verses 28 and 29 Whoever whatever blasphemies they utter are going to be forgiven
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Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty in an eternal sin. And here's what we do
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It's the unpardonable sin, right? What is the unpardonable sin? That's gonna make you burn in hell for eternity
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Blaspheming the Holy Spirit and the next obvious question is what does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Spirit? Okay, so let's answer that in context because I've heard that asked many times, but people don't read verse 29
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Do they they don't read the whole thing? They cut it off because he says He says Let me find it.
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It's guilty of eternal sin verse 30 because they were saying he has an unclean spirit So who's
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Jesus talking about here? He's talking about the scribes Right. What is it?
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Why is their sin unpardonable? Because they've taken the Son of God Who is in eternal communion with the
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Holy Spirit and they have said Holy Spirit. You're Satan Every word that this man is speaking is from Beelzebul Okay, it's from hell
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And so is there forgiveness is there forgiveness when someone takes the message of God?
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the empowerment the illumination of the Holy Spirit and says that's satanic and The answer is clearly there is no forgiveness for that There is no forgiveness for that you can blaspheme against the people of God You can blaspheme against the works of God in history.
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There are many in here I think who are Christians who have said at one point. Yeah, I don't think the Red Sea was literally parted
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That's just like a poem right people say stuff like that in their disbelief And then they come to Christ and they start to understand and obviously those blasphemies against God's work are forgiven
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But when Jesus is talking to the scribes here Well, he's giving them is a stern warning Just like is mentioned many times in Hebrews that says if you're holding on to this old thing
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Remember this old wineskin that's gonna bust with the new wine if you're holding on to this then you are damned forever
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There is no salvation here There's no salvation in the old garment or the old wineskin because it's been demolished by the new covenant
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That's what Jesus is saying. If you don't believe this new covenant, then you're gone There is no hope for you and his his audience is distinctly
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Jewish here and distinctly religious understand that Religious people who think they know oh so much are in the greatest danger of blaspheming the
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Holy Spirit Because what they do is they take the clear gospel message and they look at it and go
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It's really not quite good enough for me in my sophistry and in my philosophy I will tailor this and understand it better and in a deeper way so I can throw all these rubes out of the kingdom who
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Don't understand the intricacies of Scripture because I've studied them my whole life And if you're in the pastoral work like I am you read a lot of these commentaries, right?
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You read a lot of these these philosophical musings by people who will not just simply take the clear meaning of the passage
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The clear meaning of the passage is this Christ is defeating Satan He bound him up He saved men of their blasphemies by forgiving them and we've already established remember in Mark who can forgive sins
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Remember that Jesus healed the man by forgiving his sins, right? And they didn't like that very much.
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And so he's saying not only am I forgiving sins, but I'm binding up Satan I'm defeating him
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So do the scribes have any doubt about who Jesus is claiming to be? No doubt whatsoever
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No doubt So they were saying that he had an unclean spirit. And so he's telling them if you say that I have an unclean spirit
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Then you have no hope You have no hope to deny the message of the
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New Covenant in the gospel is to have no hope So from one Misinterpreted Scripture to another right?
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This one's been a really bad one in our day and age I'm gonna pick this up and I'm Maria's entirety and we'll end here Verse 21 will on a backtrack when his own people that's his family when his own people heard this
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They went out to take custody of him For they were saying he has lost his senses his own family is saying we got to restrain
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Jesus. He's crazy He's insane. Is he really?
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What has Jesus done to demonstrate that he's insane here? He has cast out demons
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He has healed people He has preached the word with authority like the people had never heard before and his own family's reaction is he's crazy
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Why does his family have that reaction? I'll tell you why right now It's because the religious leaders who could make life very difficult for them have decided they're his enemies
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And so he is a shame on the family Because he's going to be thrown out of the temple and in the
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Jewish life if you get thrown out of the temple you were dead Essentially, you're just like the lepers who can't come in because they're unclean and Jesus's family wants nothing to do with that Nothing at all.
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And so they agree with the scribes. You see why Mark puts that verse there He puts in 21 leaves it goes to the scribes and then comes back to the family
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Right because what we're to understand very clearly is the family believes just like the scribes do
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They think he's insane They think he's insane, you know, who else is insane people who have demon possession
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Right, you see what they're doing there. You see what's happening moving on verse 31 Then his mother and his brothers arrived and standing outside They sent word to him calling him why to restrain him or to dress him down Who knows and a crowd was sitting around him and they said to him behold your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you
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And answering them. He said who are my mother and my brothers and looking about those who were sitting around him
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He said behold my mother and my brothers For whoever does the will of God.
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He is my brother and sister and mother and thus we get Probably the most misinterpreted scripture of the last three years.
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I have seen it twisted to know about let me ask you this Guys guys that I've followed and listened to they will say this
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I am more related to a Christian in Nigeria than I am to my lost sister
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Is that true? Let me ask you. Is that true? Are you more related? To a person to a
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Christian in Nigeria that you can't even talk to because you don't speak the same language Then you are to your sister
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Who doesn't believe in Christ? What does that mean? Is that and then what they'll say is if you don't think so What did
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Jesus say who are my mother and brothers but those who do the will of God Understanding contract context though what's going on here?
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Why are his mother and his brothers and sisters? Why are they not the ones to be brought to him and a set ahead of his disciples?
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The answer is because they think he's crazy and they want to restrain him They are against the kingdom of God.
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This whole section is about unity and division, right? Who has unity the disciples they're on a purpose casting out demons the scribes are against this purpose they say you are a demon and then his family says yeah, he is a demon and then
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Jesus says Don't bring them before me bring the people who are on my side
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Before me because what Jesus says is he says that he has come to divide families, right?
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Does that mean that we're actually to hate our family? No, it doesn't mean that it means that there's a higher good
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Which is following Christ and then there's lower goods that are loving our family and loving our neighbors and if the love of neighbor and love of our family starts to Transplant the love of God then we have to hate our family and cast that aside
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But when it does not get in the way of us loving God, then we're to love our family and we're to love
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God Okay at the same time we can do both of those things if your parents tell you you will not be in this house anymore if you profess this
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Jesus, then we must hate our parents and leave that house and Pray for them and every time we talk to them speak to them of the gospel
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But if our parents do not love the Lord, but they let us have Christmas dinner with them and we hang out together
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That is not saying that we are now closer to the to the Christian in India than we are to our own parents
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That's not the way this works So the family thinks he's crazy That's the context and the family was looking to restrain him for shaming them and what happens is
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God's commands never turn against themselves Remember, this is a house divided if you are at odds with your family.
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Can your house stand? No, your house will be destroyed if your kingdom is divided
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It cannot stand so outside of the kingdom of God if we love our natural family more than Jesus This has severe and real implications
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Even today, but do you know where it has the highest implications among the people that Jesus was talking to in this passage?
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Because if you are a Jew and you claim to follow the name of Jesus Christ, guess who's out of the family
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You are so Jesus is saying You have to love me more than you love your status here and love your own
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Name of your family because his own family had valued their standing in the society above him
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You understand what's happening and how we take these so horribly out of context, right? You're not to hate your family
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You're only to despise your family if it comes between you and the worship of the one true God But these things exist in harmony because we have natural obligations to care physically for our families
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We are commanded to do that. Even if we are banished from them, we still have some responsibilities
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Okay, we don't get to wipe our hands and this hate other people and it's really not that complicated
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But it has led to a big problem Misunderstanding of this text has led to a big problem in the church and that is this we have continually
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Continually continually over the last 100 years spent all of our money overseas to try to make converts in other countries while our own place is
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Killing babies is gone to hell in a handbasket Sarah can tell you is it easier to raise money for a mission in India or to save babies in America?
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And the answer is much easier to raise money to send to missions in India than it is to save our own babies
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Why because sending missionaries to India does not cause problems here at home But sending but us going out on the street and us standing up for the unborn is gonna cause problems for us here
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And that's what Jesus is talking about You have to love the people around you and then that starts to ebb out
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Start with the 12 That goes to the 70 that goes all the way up into Asia Minor and to Europe and even today in the
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Americas We have a generation of people who decide that what's what's good is to spend all of our inheritance
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Because it would ruin our kids anyway to give it to them Even the even the
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Pharisees were doing that right we'll get there It was the Corbyn laws around the Sabbath. You don't have to honor your father and mother you can give it all to the church
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That's stupid It's so unrighteous right and Then today we see our we've taken this person.
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We said who are my brothers and sisters That's anybody who says they're a Christian, right? so I don't even need to worry about the people
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I really know when I can send money to people I've never heard of and Who really needs connection to the local body when
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I can mass public theologians on the internet for myself and guess what? I can curate my podcast list to where I always agree with everything.
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The person I'm listening to says It's amazing. It's amazing how the greatest theologians agree with everything
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I think Or maybe I'm not getting out enough Right.
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Is that possible? Is it possible that Jesus's family had ignored what was right in front of their face?
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To curry the approval of the religious elite and that's a very dangerous thing to do They knew
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Jesus's righteousness better than anyone sitting there because can you imagine what it would have been like to parent and grow up with Jesus?
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Christ He never sinned Can you imagine they think he's crazy and he never sinned
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Man the spiritual blindness is real It's real. So don't don't let us get involved in the false allure of Loving everybody which really means loving nobody.
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It really does right we are finite creatures and We know people who are around us and it is our job to disciple and invest in people that we know and to build those
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Relationships and sure they will branch and network and our life will be rich from doing that. That's the blessings of God Remember, this is fun, right?
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It's fun We we should take on the attitude of Christ did Jesus immediately take the disciples and say go
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Therefore now to England No, they started in Jerusalem they started in Israel and then they went to Samaria and Then they went to the ends of the earth why because you start with who you know you build that you build strength and then you branch out and before long before, you know, even 25 years is out
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Paul is writing to Titus to go and and Curate and to start to tame the wild island of Crete Jesus knew that was going to happen, but he didn't start in Crete.
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He started in Galilee. He started in Capernaum That's where he lived So here our main mission at this church.
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It's the Northwest Arkansas unapologetically why Because we know people here and we know the culture here and it is unacceptable.
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The babies are being killed here. It's unacceptable that Pride marches are happening on our streets.
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It's unacceptable that we accept lawlessness in our own domain and no amount of money that we send to Africa is going to change our
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Responsibility as the church in that the church has to unite in this area
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And the way we do that friends is by making friends with other faithful churches around here
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I can't know everybody and you can't know everybody but by God's grace. We have relationships with several of the churches around here
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There's an amazing thing happening that could be happening here through a sidebar networking relationship with a guy from UBC God is working in a way that we can't possibly understand because he is infinite and we are finite but we pray for his hand in these things and for us
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Guys I say that we should look to Christ and we should pattern our discipleship after what he did and not make up our own innovations
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Let's pray Lord Jesus we we thank you That that you don't you don't throw us to the wolves that you have given us
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Patterns and Lord you you give us a pattern that I didn't even address this morning about speaking boldly
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To those who would come against your name But Lord you did you you stood up against that power structure and you shut their mouths
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Lord and they did not take you until your time had come But Lord today we found her and we are confused and we've had poor teaching for a long time where we don't understand where our central
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Responsibilities are so Lord. I pray is the church that you would give us a heart to disciple Lord that you would give us bountiful opportunities and that we would invest deeply and richly in the lives of the people
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That you have brought around us Lord, I pray that we would be tired that we would stretch our capacity
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Lord for the glory of your kingdom that as you said in the parable and Luke Lord that we would spend our lives and our treasure
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Making spiritual friends who are gonna greet us in eternity and Lord. These are going to be people that we know
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So Lord, I pray that we would not shirk off our responsibility to those who you have placed us with In order to sell it off overseas, but Lord that we would do it all
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But that we would start here Lord, I pray that you would keep this church faithful That we would be serious about the mission
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Or that we would not have division Either in this body or with other fellow brothers and sisters who are about the mission of making disciples
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Lord I pray that you would further Their plans that you would advance them that you would strengthen them that you would give them courage
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Lord, I pray that we would love our brothers and that you would draw us together and unite us in the
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Holy Spirit Or that we would never blaspheme him, but instead that we would depend entirely on him or it is his power
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That pushes the Christian life. He is the fount of life So Lord, we we trust that you have given him to us
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Or that we would listen to him that he would not have to tug us along that but we would follow