Summary 

The nature of true discipleship goes far beyond seeking spiritual benefits or religious advantages. While crowds gathered around Jesus from various regions seeking healing and power, He called for a more profound commitment - one that would completely reorder every aspect of life around His lordship. This radical call challenged the existing religious and social structures, symbolized by His appointment of twelve disciples, which suggested a complete reformulation of Israel's tribal structure. People responded to this all-encompassing call in various ways - some claimed He was crazy, others accused Him of being demonic, and many simply hardened their hearts against His message. The only appropriate response to Jesus is doing God's will and fully embracing life as part of His family. This commitment isn't about earning salvation through works, but about surrendering every area of life to Christ's authority. There can be no middle ground - Jesus must either be recognized as truly Lord of all or rejected entirely.

Transcript

Lord in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this mark. And we pray that we would listen. We would be those who have ears to hear. So we're going to hear even next week how your word goes out like seed that's being sown and sometimes it falls on different kinds of soil.

We pray that we would be so that receives the Word and bears much fruit. So speak to us, Lord, we are listening. And we. And we desire to be brought more and more into the life of Christ, whose name we pray. Amen.

All right, this is the first Sunday in Lent, as has been mentioned, and so I might give you a little bit of a history lesson, both because it's interesting and because it will lead into my sermon. Okay, so lent as a 40 day practice didn't really spread into the known Christian world until probably the early 4th century. I'm actually going to get to why that was at the end of my sermon. But it really didn't develop until widely as a practice the 40 days preceding Easter, other than Sundays, until about the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325. We know that actually it wasn't something that was sort of encouraged to the whole church more broadly, actually until the late 6th century with Pope Gregory I. 

And I know some of you are saying, aha, I knew it. The Roman Catholic practice of works, righteousness, these kinds of things. And I want to say, well, not exactly. There are concerns we should have. Some of you know, the great Puritan theologian in England, John Owen, writing in the seventh century, and he warned people how even good things that we do to seek to put to death sin can be those things that we actually say, look at, look, God, look what I did. 

And Jesus of course, tells us that that's the same temptation that we should always be careful of in the Sermon on the Mount that we heard on Ash Wednesday, if you were here anyway, that kind of approach certainly is not good. But what you have to understand is that from the earliest days, and many of you have heard me say this, Easter was really the great day of Christian baptism. That does not mean that there were not other days in which Christians were baptized. There were, but that was the practice of the early church was to primarily have baptisms on Easter and fasting before baptisms was practiced, as far as we know from the earliest Christians, fasting as a way of preparation. Are you going to give yourself to the life of Jesus? 

So this is kind of interesting. We know that the early church, Father Irenaeus, wrote about the practice of Fasting before Easter because he actually talked how there was a debate going on about when that started, when that, and actually to what extent he would fast before Easter. Here's an interesting thing. The debate at the time when Irenaeus was writing was not whether or not you fasted before Easter, it was for how long you fasted before Easter. And so he wrote in a letter, he wrote this, variations in observance did not originate in our own day, but very much earlier in the time of our forefathers. 

Anybody know what our own day for Irenaeus was?

Well, people think he was born in the year 130 and he died in the year 202. We do know that much. So our own day is Mid Latin, late 2nd century for Irenaeus. So when he talks about the forefathers, who's he talking about? Well, we know Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, and we know Polycarp studied under anybody John, the Apostle John.

So it is very likely that when Irenaeus is talking about the debate around how long you fast before Easter did not originate with him in his day in the mid second century. He's saying the forefathers, he very likely could be meaning the Apostle John. Pretty interesting.

That also makes sense, actually, of why we find the practice of fasting commanded before baptism in the Didache. The Didache is one of the earliest church documents that we have. The Didache is also known because this is how it begins as the Lord's teaching through the twelve apostles to the nations. We don't really know exactly when it was written, but people think that it was written either as early as AD 70, meaning before probably the Gospel of John in the Book of Revelation, or possibly up to like AD150. Either way, it's one of the earliest documents we have of the life of the church. 

And the Didache says this regarding baptism. But before the baptism, let the baptizer fast, meaning the one who's doing the baptizing fast and the baptized, the one who's being baptized and whoever else can. So as a community, consider what is taking place in baptism. This person is giving their life to following Jesus, which is, say, they're putting off an old way of being in their penting and turning and giving their life to Jesus and he and. And the Didache.

Again, one of the earliest documents we have from the life of the church says the person doing the baptizing should fast. The person being baptized should fast, and the whole community should, if possible. And it says specifically a fast of One or two days, which goes along with Irenaeus saying the amount of time is not necessarily specified. Anyway, the earliest church writings. These earliest church writings encourage fasting before baptism and specifically before Easter. 

And that developed. And I'm going to get to why this developed to mirror our Lord's own fasting in the temptation in the wilderness of 40 days. Okay, why am I sharing this? To introduce to you this incredibly long passage from Mark. It's for this reason there was a connection from the earliest life in the church of giving up some level and for some period of time of earthly comforts before being baptized, because you were to count the cost of following Jesus. 

Is it worth it? Do you really believe that to do the will of the Father in following Jesus is worth it? You were to ask yourself whether or not you would follow Jesus to the end. Will you give your life, all of your life over to him? And as is often the case, Will you give your life, all of your life over to him? 

When your friends mock you, when you might lose your jobs, and frankly, when you might lose your life when you have so much taken? So we have this long passage before us, and I mean, genuinely, it almost feels like it's too long to give a sermon on. And it's already 10:56. Right. Just think of it as 9:56. 

And I have a lot longer. Okay. Yeah. All right. Somebody's clapping.

Maybe that was to keep awake. 

We have a song passage before us, and so I want you to open up those Bibles, okay? Grab a pew Bible in front of you if you did not bring one. And don't do this with your phones as much, because I do think you're not gonna be able to see some of the stuff that's going on if you have it on your phone. I think there's a great gift of the technology that we have in having our Bibles on our phones. But we lose something, I think, with being able to see things and how they work together at times.

Okay, so please have your Bibles open. And let's just jump into the first paragraph there. Okay. The first paragraph begins in verse seven. And what we see, it says, Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed him. 

And then it says specifically from Galilee and Judea. So Galilee. Think of Galilee as the northern part around the Sea of Galilee. Right? Sea of Galilee kind of off to the west and to the northwest.

That's Galilee. And then Judea is on the other side of Samaria, right down near where Jerusalem is. It's A way it's down south. And so you have the immediate region, then you have a farther region that's down to the south. And it says, and Jerusalem and Idumea. 

So Jerusalem's the main capital city that's been important to mention, the capital city of the history of Israel. And Idumea would have been actually the region across from the Dead Sea from Jerusalem, more or less. It was the whole region. Sort of think of Judea on the western side of the Dead Sea, Idumea on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. Okay?

And then it says, and from beyond the Jordan, that's the Transjordan. That's like the region across largely from the Jordan river, going from the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea, that region over there. And then it says, and from around Tyre and Sidon. Tyre and Sidon are sort of all the way on the west coast, then the northwest coast from Galilee, the region of Galilee. Which is to say, in some ways, what he's doing is he's saying from all over the place, all of the sort of. 

What am I thinking of? Orientations of the compass. But here's what's even more important actually, for you to understand. He is describing all of the region of the twelve tribes of Israel, right? Because a couple of the tribes were on the other side of the Transjordan, right?

I mean, he's describing all the regions of. Of the twelve tribes of Israel in this description here. Okay? So there's such a large crowd around Jesus here that Jesus tells the disciples to get in the boat because they might be crushed. All these people are coming to him.

And why are they doing this? Because he had healed many. He had done great, miraculous things. He had done what nobody else had possibly ever done. And people had heard. 

And of course, if you heard that somebody was, you know, healing somebody, especially before any kind of modern medicine, you would have. You would have done all you could to go and to see that person. And actually, it says specifically even that they might touch him. Right, verse 10. Yeah, they. 

So that He. So that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him, which is to say they wanted his power. I could just touch, right? They wanted to get something from Jesus. They wanted something out of him.

Listen. Okay, 45% of high school students say they are persistently hopeless and despondent. 45% of high school students. That is a sobering statistic. 

Since the year 2000, the number of Americans without one close personal friend has gone up four times. We've gone up four times without One close personal friend, somebody that knows that since the year 2000, the same year, the number of Americans who say they are in the lowest category of happiness has increased 50%. 

Those are just deeply sad statistics. Interestingly, maybe some of you know this, but in 2019, the Pew Research center did a large, large study looking at eight different indicators of happiness and specifically was asking the question, does religious practice and belonging to a religious community influenced these eight indicators of happiness? And you probably heard it's kind of news at the time, and maybe you still know this, that they asked, are these indicators negatively affected, positively affected, or neutrally affected by religious adherence? All of them were positively affected. All of them. 

It was just overwhelmingly positive. People are more likely to have friends, they are more likely to live healthier lives, they are more likely to be generous with their time and with their money. All these things that actually promote happiness and a better life. It's actually kind of amazing. I'll say this. 

In fact, if you're not a Christian, I would strongly consider you just go to church. I mean, like, even if you think it's all a joke, like you're likely to live longer, you're likely to have better friendships, you are actually likely to be happier. Okay. It's a weird kind of apologetic for sort of Christian practice, but, you know, just try it on.

And that's kind of what is happening here, right? That just like, hey, maybe I can get something out of this dude. All go check him out. Let's go see what's happening. He'll heal me if I just touch him.

I have to fall down and worship him. I have to give my life over to him. I just reach out and touch. They're going to Jesus because of what he can give them. But an interesting thing happens in this.

It seems as though Mark makes this big shift, actually, in this story near the end, I want to hopefully show you how these all, all these sections here tie together. But what happens is that Jesus then moves from the sea and he goes up to the mountain, and of course there's a bunch of people with him, but there he appoints his disciples. And all the people are listed there, right? The sons of thunder and all the rest are listed there. But there's a phrase that he mentions twice and it's this, that he appoints the 12 that's mentioned in both 10 or, sorry, verses 14 and verse 16. 

And he appointed 12, beginning of 14 and then 16, he appointed the 12. And why does Mark have to draw this out for us? He says it twice. He's like, this is part of the point of the whole thing. Well, to a Jewish ear, that would have been absolutely radical. 

You know, you better go up to the mountains, flee to northern Idaho, where no one will know what kind of craziness is happening. You know, the pointing of the 12 for a Jewish audience would have been like saying all of Israel, all of this life where all of these tribes lived and that have been so disparate, all of their life together is being reformulated around me. I mean, Jesus is doing something in naming these 12, and Mark is highlighting for it for us, for this to us by mentioning it twice. He's saying, all of your sort of political endeavors, all your social endeavors, all your economic life, all of your life is now under me. Now, this is interesting, actually. 

I literally, I just learned this. So there's a group of us, you know, and I would encourage you to maybe jump in. You don't have to jump in at the beginning, but there's a group of us who are trying to read the Bible through together. Over the course of two years, we're getting together for a monthly breakfast. So some of us did this yesterday and Will had a great question when we were talking about Genesis, about some of the genealogies. 

And so I was reading a little bit about some of the genealogies, and he and I were talking yesterday before the breakfast with others, and it's really interesting. What I learned was that actually for quite a few of the major figures in the book of Genesis, 12 of their descendants are listed afterwards. Okay, so this is the case not just for Israel, of course, who is Jacob is renamed Israel because he wrestles with God, which is how we get the name Israel for the tribes of Israel, the twelve sons of Israel. But this is also the case for Esau, for Nahor, and for Ishmael. And what's happening is that 12 at least appears to have been sort of a cultural thing. 

There's 12 descendants, and that would have been the people of that kind of main leader, and their descendants would have fallen under that main leader. This is what Jesus is grabbing onto. All of your life is reordered now around me. It would have been a massive statement to make in the community in which he found himself. Everyone would have understood this. 

Many would have known that the prophecies of the Old Testament said that when God acted definitively, Israel would be reunified. How many of you have heard of the prophecy of the valley of the dry bones being brought back to life? I bet, I bet a lot of you have heard that story. Maybe you've heard of when the Holy Spirit would descend and be given right? Talking about Ezekiel 36 and Ezekiel 37. 

Well, the second half of Ezekiel 37 is saying, when this happens, when God works to bring new life to the dead, when the Holy Spirit comes, there's this image that Rebecca read for us that probably was lost on us, these two sticks being brought together. What he said that the 12 tribes will be reunified. That's what that image is talking about. And Jesus is saying, I am doing it. And it demands all of your life. 

All of your life is to be given over to this new reality of what God is doing in this new community formed around Christ. Now, there's a big difference between coming to Jesus and just wanting to be healed of your diseases and just being willing to come out and kind of touch him and see if he gets some power. And Jesus is saying, no, all of your life is now under me. I'm creating a new community that touches on every aspect of your being, and it is under my lordship, my kingship. And what do you do with that? 

I mean, some of us want to go to Jesus and say, can you just give me some stuff? And Jesus says, you better give me all of your life.What do we do with that? There's a few responses. Okay, There's a few responses that we can have from that. And there's a few responses here in this text. Let me walk through some of them. 

Okay, so keeping your Bible open first, the first response to this is, you're crazy. He's crazy, right? This is literally the next thing. Okay, so verse 20, when he went home and the crowd gathered again so they could not even eat, when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, he's out of his mind. 

Right? So there's this response to what Jesus is doing that comes immediately after the appointing of the 12. That is first, you're crazy. This is crazy. He's out of his mind. 

Maybe this is going too far, Jesus. Maybe what you're inviting us into is too much. And of course, this is really wild because we have, of course, very, very good reason to believe that in the context of Mark, chapter three, his family means his mother and his brother and his sisters, right? Or at least his mother and his brothers, because that's who's mentioned later on at the end of the chapter, which is to say Mary even is there, who we know at the birth of Jesus was highly favored, whom all generations were to be called blessed we also know that she follows Jesus to the end at the cross there. But at least she's saying, jesus, maybe you've gone too far.Maybe you're asking too much. His family together says, he's out of his mind. 

And that's a real response that of course, people have when. When you hear Jesus say, hey, I'm ordering all things. This whole life is now ordered around me. All of your life is to be given over to Christ. 

Sometimes we go, that's a little too much.You're a little crazy. Okay, the second response is this.He's a demon. Okay, so verse 22. Look with me down there. The scribes who came from Jerusalem were saying, he is possessed by Beelzebul and by the prince of demons. Cast out.

He casts out the demons. He's demonic. Now, of course, we've already seen the last number of weeks that the scribes and Pharisees were in opposition to Jesus, right? They weren't in favor of him. But what I also do want you to see is that this is kind of a real response even today still, right? 

He's demonic. He's gone too far in what he's demanding and this whole reordering life around himself. So there's many Christian or many religious folk and even many folk who claim the Christian religion, who look at Jesus even today, and they'll say, I like Jesus, but don't. Can't ask me to do that, right? Like, I'll give you. 

I'll give you Sunday morning, but don't. Don't ask me to allow my Christian faith to touch my work life. Don't demand that I kind of go to you and say, here are my kids and I don't know how to parent them. So I'm going to actually study the Scripture and say, what does it look like to follow Jesus here? You know, don't you know? 

I'll give you this much, Jesus, but don't. This part's mine, right? These religious leaders, the scribes here from Jerusalem actually say, when Jesus says this much, you've got to say, no way, you're not of God.

He's gone too far. Let's give our religious explanations. He hath a demon. They categorize him in religious ways. So of course Jesus again says, hey, that doesn't work. 

Houses that are against themselves, they don't stand. Houses that are divided don't last. He says, if I'm casting out a demon, why would I have one? Which has already been his practice in Mark, right? Saying this doesn't Work this way. 

Anyway, I think a significant part of Mark's point here in putting this right here is that there can be real responses to Jesus that are a rejection of what he is doing, that are religiously oriented. Right? You can be a religious person and still say, I don't want to follow Jesus there. The third response that we have here is I'll just say hardened hearts. Okay, so look with me down at verses 28 and 29, I'll read that again for us. 

Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man and whatever blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin.

Maybe you've asked this question. I've been asked it quite a bit. What is the unforgivable sin? And I've heard it said and I think this is probably true that if you're wondering if you have a soft heart to receiving the answer, then you haven't committed it. So, so don't be overcome with worry about that. 

But it's a good question. What is it, you know, does God tend to not like all sin, but man, if you do this one, you're going to really get his ire. Is there one sin that if you just happen to do it, forget it.

Well, first, what did Jesus literally just say? Right? This is what he says. All sin will be forgiven the children of men and whatever blasphemes they utter like he's. There is just an unbelievable grace, right? 

That's the first thing that's going on. So much grace. But he does give this warning. So what is it? I think the best explanation, and I also think why this is right here in the context of, of Mark, chapter three, you know, right after he was being called the Prince of Demons, is that once you have labeled the Holy Spirit's work the work of the devil, it's hard to go back on that. 

This is, this is, there's a context for Jesus saying this right here and it's this context of saying you are working for the Prince of Demons. Once you start labeling the work of the Holy Spirit as the work of the devil, it's hard to go back, which is to say there is this willful, obstinate rejection of how God has revealed himself. And that is a hard, hard heartedness towards NT Wright in his commentary suggests that we should think of this actually like conspiracy theories way of kind of us getting this, okay, which is that you can have all of the evidence presented to you that goes against your theory and still you will think that all the evidence is simply confirming what you already believed. All this evidence that is going against what you think. And you're all like, yep, I still am entirely in belief and I think all of what you're saying is crazy.

 

Think about it like this. You can see all of the images of a round earth and you can still believe that all of the nations of the world that sent people out into outer space, that at the time, by the way, during the Cold War were threatening nuclear warfare against one another, were somehow in cahoots because they didn't want you to know that the world is action flat. People believe that, right? Somehow all these nations of the world were working together some conspiracy, or it's more like this kind of conspiracy theory that you have decided firmly that the doctor who is offering to perform a life saving operation on you is in fact a sadistic murderer and there is no way you are ever going to consent to allowing him to do the operation. That's actually the analogy that works with what Jesus is doing here. 

He is offering you life and you say there's no way you are of the devil. And Jesus says if you approach God that way, with that level of hard heartedness, there is simply no hope. It is an affront against the Holy Spirit's work. Now my point is that there is a response to Jesus that is a hard hearted response that there's a way of going to Jesus and saying, I know this is what you demand. You say, hey, I'm reordering all life around me. 

And you say, no way, don't want anything to do with it, don't want it hard hearted.

Look what is said at the end of this passage, right, verse 30, it says this part ends, he has an unclean spirit. They double down on their belief. Begins with he's got a demon. They double down at the end after he says this unclean spirit. Okay, but here's the thing. 

This actually, this is part of why I think all these texts are working together is that this is said again and again. So if you go back actually earlier on verse 11, there's a response to Jesus, right? And whenever the unclean spirit saw him, they fell down before him and cried, you're the Son of God. But if we go down, we actually see this kind of reaction to Jesus repeated. We're constantly putting, being put. 

Mark is constantly giving us responses to Jesus. So you go down to verse 21 and when his family heard it, they went out to seize him for they were saying, he's out of his mind. And then if you go down a little bit farther, right, to verse 30. Sorry, to verse. Actually, let's start with verse 22. 

The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, he's possessed by Beelzebul. If you go down to verse 30 again, it says, then they were saying he has an unclean spirit. You see how each of these are being tied together around what do we do with this? What do we do with Jesus saying, all of life is under me, all of it is under me. And there's all these responses and most of them are actually saying, we don't want you.

And yet, and yet Jesus does offer us another way. And because we're using the language of this text, I'll just say it. The other way is doing the will of God. So verse 31, it says this. And his mother and his brothers came and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.

And a crowd was standing around him. And they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you. And he answered them, who are my mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother, my brothers, for whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and my sister and my mother. There is another response to Jesus. 

There's another response to Jesus. Here it says the other response is doing the will of God. This is not works righteousness, just like a fast does not need to be works righteousness, though it can be construed that way. This is saying yes to Jesus, being over all things for everything. This is saying yes to Jesus, saying, I'm reordering it all around myself and all of your life will now be under me. 

Saying yes to the will of God over the 12 tribes of Israel. But again and again they are said to be the family of God. What is baptism but entrance in to the family of God, to the life of the body of Christ? There is a response to God that is not thinking he's crazy, that's not thinking he's of Satan. That is not hard heartedness. 

There's a response to God that says, yes, I want to follow you, that my whole being, all of my life is yours, all of my life belongs to you. And here's the truth that we're learning in all this. There's just no middle way with Jesus. 

No middle way with following Jesus. He's either crazy or he's wildly wrong. So much that we've all been duped, or he's working for the devil or he's the Lord, Lord of all.And there's times in our lives when we must make a decision.

We hear, right, Jesus, reorder our lives around him. We go, I don't know, Jesus. Do I have to give you that? 

Decisions? For many, baptism is the life of entering into that. If it's a huge decision, are you going to do it? Are you going to go all the way with Christ today? Will you give all up to following Jesus, doing the will of your Father in heaven? 

Let me get back to the history of Lent and then I'll close. Earlier this week, I mentioned to some of you how the development of Lent had to do with the early controversy in the church. I actually got the name wrong. That controversy was called Novatianism. What had happened is that there were a lot of people that were baptized and a part of the church in the mid second century. 

And when the persecutions began under the Roman emperor Decius, they renounced the faith. You know, when push come to shove, when it meant their life might be taken from them, they said, I don't want anything to do with this Jesus. And then what happened is that once the persecution stopped, they were like, you know what? I read that Pew Research from 2019 in the future, and it said, my life's going to be better if I'm actually part of a church community. I kind of want to go back into that community now. 

And a lot of people said, you can't do that. You can't take Jesus when you want. And so there were some church leaders, like Novation, who was a church leader in North Africa, and Tertullian. Many of you have probably heard of Tertullian. He was the famous one that said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, who believed that once you renounce the faith in the midst of persecution, you should not be allowed back into the life of the church. Now, there were others on the other side, like the great Cyprian of Carthage or Ambrose of Milan, who baptized St. Augustine. 

And they believed that you should be allowed to be welcomed back to the life of the church. But you must actually spend some time researching, like actually saying, are you going to give your life fully to Jesus? And that was happening. That controversy was happening in the second half again after this persecution that began in the year 250 under Roman Emperor Decius. That was the controversy of the church of the latter half of the third century. 

And it was into that, out of that controversy, that actually around the time of the Council of Nicaea which happened in 325 that lent as we think of it as a 40 day sort of question of whether or not we are going to follow Jesus developed so they took the pattern of Christ giving up you know the blessings of this world like bread and his temptation and they said let's do that as a community let's enter into this life and ask one another together are we going to follow him to the end and brothers and sisters that is what Jesus is asking you this morning. Will you give your life to him entirely completely Will you we pray explored we are glad that we do not live in the time of the persecutions that happened in 250 and thereafter but God I pray that we would be those who hear the reality of what you are doing in Christ and long to do the will of God, the will of the Father and follow Jesus to the end lead us in that we ask in his precious name Amen.

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