The Gospel of Mark, chapter 7 beginning in chapter 7, verse 1. This is
lesson number 5 and it's entitled, Truth, Tradition and Other Miracles. In the
first six chapters of the book of Mark, the Gospel of Mark, Mark has clearly
established his case for the deity of Christ, because that's his
main goal. We've talked about that, basically reviewing here. He's shown that,
by his teaching, Jesus claimed to be the Messiah. It wasn't just other people were
coming to that conclusion. It was like, by His teaching, He was speaking with
authority. He has described miracles done by Jesus that could only
be performed by someone who had supernatural power, no mere mortal can do
those things. And even in describing the reaction of the people, there's the
suggestion that they were impressed and they were believing His claims, some of
them were. Mark also keeps us aware of the difficulties that Jesus was
encountering from various groups who witnessed these things, but refused to
accept, refused to believe the very things that were happening before them. Mark
is also keeping track of how the non-believers were reacting.
Some rejected Jesus and turned away, others attacked Him. And Mark talks about
this. There's also another story, another plot line going on. The sub
story is of Jesus and His apostles, how Jesus was teaching and developing them
as apostles and how He was shaping their faith, how He was preparing them to
realize the very significance of His mission in His ministry. You've got
Him doing things publicly with people, and then that second kind of line, of
that second story line of Him developing His apostles. So now we get to chapter 7
and 8, we get back into this cycle of miracles and teaching as He continues
His ministry among the people. In chapter 7, not going to read that
section, it's too long, but I think you're familiar with the story. One thing that
Jesus was teaching His apostles was the very great difference between human
religious traditions and the authoritative Word of God. These were not
necessarily the same thing. The Pharisees had made a life's work out of
creating and maintaining an intricate set of religious rules and traditions
that were based on the scriptures, but were not authorized by the scriptures.
For example, the word of God said not to work on the Sabbath, not to do your
regular job on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was there to focus your mind, your energy
on God, and also a time for rest. That was what the command was, but the Pharisees
invented torturous rules to define, well, what exactly work was. For them, for
example, lighting a fire, that was work. Carrying more than one stick of wood,
that was work. Walking further than so many paces, that became work. So they
explained and they monitored and they punished those who broke these rules, not
necessarily the command itself, but the rules that they had made up to, sort of,
protect the command. In chapter seven Mark describes a conflict between Jesus
and the Apostles and the Pharisees over these rules. We pick up the story,
chapter 7, beginning in verse 1 it says, "The Pharisees and some of the scribes
gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of
His disciples were eating their bread with impure hands, that is, unwashed." Just
verse 1 and 2 for now. So a religious - notice, they come from Jerusalem, they
send a delegation to Him to question Him about His teachings. And the question was
the morality of the apostles, because they ate their food with unwashed or
impure hands. The implication was that by extension, Jesus, the teacher, was
also impure. If you're disciples are doing impure things, it must
mean that your teacher is somehow impure, somehow teaching you these things.
Their reason for this accusation was that they believed and taught that if a
Jew came in contact with the Gentile or something touched by a Gentile, they
would be defiled or impure, because when they touched their own food and ate it
they would transfer the Gentiles impurity unto themselves like bacteria.
Being impure, of course, meant that you are not allowed to go in and
worship. You couldn't go to the temple, you couldn't practice that, you couldn't
be in mixed company with others, you had to go through a purification ceremony.
And guess who was in charge of that? So it was a big, long process.
Let's keep reading it says, "For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat
unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the
elders;" notice he doesn't say, observing the law of God. It's the tradition of the
elders. "And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they
cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in
order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots."
These rules for washing, that Mark makes a parenthetical statement about, were
invented by the elders or the Jewish teachers over the years. Of course, the
Old Testament had rules about washing for the priests, yes, but there were no
rules for the people. The priests had to walk when they went into the temple, when
they had to perform their duties, they had to wash. They had to put on the tunic,
they had to put on their priestly robes and, yes, there were rules
for them, but the common people didn't have those rules. These things
were invented by the scribe. In verse 5 it says, "The Pharisees and the scribes
asked Him, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders,
but eat their bread with impure hands?" They challenged Jesus by accusing Him of
setting aside these rules and traditions established over the years. Listen how
Jesus responds, "And He said to them, "Rightly did Isaiah
prophecy of you hypocrites, as it is written: this people honors Me with their
lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching
as doctrines the precepts of men." Neglecting the commandment of God, you
hold to the tradition of men." Jesus doesn't even answer the question, He
makes no apologies, He accuses them of being hypocrites. Interesting the word He
uses here, hypocrite. This word is only used in the Gospels in this way, when
referring to these guys. The word means, especially religious hypocrisy, refers to
an actor under a mask. The hypocrite, he tries to act,
before man, the way he ought to be before God, and yet he is not. The worst form
of hypocrisy is when you begin to believe the act yourself.
My mother used to say that. He's such a liar, that he's believing his own lies.
This is pretty much what Jesus is saying. Jesus quotes Isaiah 29:13 to describe
the two types of hypocrisy: one, those who honor God only with their lips, but not
with their actions; and two, teachings that are invented by men, but are presented as
being from God. And that's what they were doing. Let's keep reading, verse 9
it says, "He was also saying to them, "You are experts at setting aside the
commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, "Honor your
father and your mother"; and, "He who speaks evil a father mother, is to be put to
death;" but you say, "If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have
that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God)," you no longer permit
him to do anything for his father or his mother; thus invalidating the word of God
by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that."
After denouncing them as hypocrites for saying and not doing, and teaching
human doctrines as coming from God, Jesus gets specific. He gives them an actual
example of this type of hypocrisy as practiced by the Pharisees. He even adds
one more condemnation, saying that the only way they
succeed in their imposing of human traditions is by first removing God's
laws. In other words, the only way you can impose these things is by, first of
all, removing God's laws. So there's two accusations. Not only are you a hypocrite, but
you're also removing God's laws in order to be a hypocrite. The example he
gives has to do with the responsibility of honoring one's parents and then
caring for them, probably in old age. The fifth commandment, honor your father and
mother is - honor your father and mother is not just, don't say bad things about
your mother and father, it's also honoring them in the way you care for
them when they are in need. Their responsibility by God's command
was to honor and care for their parents. What they did is they created a rule
that if you pledged your money to God, that was Corban, then you wouldn't
have that money for anything else, like, to be able to help your parents. It
doesn't mean they actually gave the money to the Lord, just that their money
was devoted to the Lord and thus couldn't be used to help their parents.
In other words, it was in trust. In other words, I've set aside this money
here, and this money is in trust for the Lord. And the help
that you need from me, well, I can't give it, because the only extra
money I got is in trust, but that money being in trust didn't mean that it
actually went to the Lord, it meant it was frozen for a time. And then when it
was convenient, they would unfreeze it and take it back. That was the point. That
was the hypocrisy. So in this way they kept their money, they didn't help
their parents, but they felt good because in doing so they convince themselves
that they were honoring God. Look at me, I've put money in trust for the Lord. It's
different if they said, well, I had money, and there was a need, and I gave it away
and I'm sorry, I don't have any for you. That wasn't the case here. It was a
systematic way of preventing and buffering themselves for taking
care of the needs, not only of their parents, but needs in their
family. Corban, by itself, was not a bad thing. Making a pledge to leave
money in one's will to donate to the temple, it was a good thing; but
not when it outweighed the more important need of caring for one's
parents. Jesus says that they had a lot of things backwards, like this. He
doesn't name them, He just uses that one example. In verses 14 to 23, Jesus
gives another example of this inconsistency by responding to the
earlier accusation concerning the washing and the defilement. Notice, He
hasn't talked about that yet. That was the original accusation. Now He talks
about that. And He explains that food does not have the power to make a person
pure or impure. Morality has to do with a person's heart, not with the
stomach. Food is good. A familiar passage, He tells them,
the food that goes into the mouth, it goes out, it passes through
your body. So food is consumed and voided. It has no moral effect, in and of itself.
Washing before eating did not increase or decrease one's standing with God from a
moral perspective. Morality, impurity was not like bacteria, that could be
transmitted by touch or contact. It was things that stem from a
person's heart. In saying this, Jesus deems all foods clean. In other words,
there's not a moral value in eating or not eating. And for the Jews at this time,
this would mean pork. He wasn't changing the laws of Moses. If you were a
Jew, you were under those laws, but He was talking to the heart of
the matter about food in itself. The commandments for the Jews not to eat
certain foods wasn't about, that food is bad for you, this food is good. It was to
make a distinction between the Jews and the rest of the people. The Sabbath, the
command for the Sabbath day, what was especially important about that, from
looking at it from the outside? Well the Jews were the only people who had,
who set aside a particular day for the worship of God. Today we take that for
granted, right? But back then they were the only nation that actually set aside
an entire day. Even their slaves did not work on that day. That was very
peculiar, because no other nation had a thing like that - slave seven days a week.
They work from sun up to sun down. People, they didn't consider one
day higher than the other. So all these things were given to the Jews to make
them a distinct people, religiously and socially and culturally.
Jesus also clarifies that the things that cause impurity are the
things produced by what the heart thinks of and what the lips speak
and what the hands carry out. What you think, what you say, what you do, these
are the things that make you impure in God's ways. Of course, now,
starting Pentecost, the gospel is preached, the Christian era begins.
Christians, we're not under food laws. We can eat pork
if we want to or not want to. We can be vegetarians if we choose or we can be
meat eaters if we choose. There's no law. Those
things don't make us more or less pleasing to God. If you choose not to eat
certain foods because you feel it makes you more pleasing in God's
sight, fine. You can't impose that on somebody else. I'll tell you one
thing, usually, false religions, the very first two things they try to
control: what you eat; and marriage. Who you can marry or not marry.
Or you've got to be single. If they can control
what a person eats and if they can control their sex life, and I don't mean
from a moral perspective, but from who they can marry or not marry or when they
can marry or not marry, if they control those two things, they control that
person. You take a look at the various religions and you'll see they all have
very specific food laws and so on, but not Christianity. Why? Because of what
Jesus taught right here. So once again Jesus shows that substituting
man's word for God's Word or God's rules is
hypocritical and it's dangerous. Hypocritical because we believe our
traditions are more important and more effective than God's laws. And we have
that in the church sometimes, right? People get into a big tizzy
because we change the hour of bible school or we cancel a Sunday night service or
it's wintertime and on Wednesday night we cancel Wednesday
night service, because we're all going to go worship or have a sing-along at a
particular church in another community or something. Most people go along with
it, but there's always people - oh, boy. They get really bent out of shape
over that. Why? Because they think that our tradition and Wednesday night church,
it's a good tradition, I'm not saying that it's bad, it's a good tradition, it's healthy
and I encourage it. We need fellowship. We need teaching. We need encouragement, but
it's still a tradition. It's not a law of God. There are a lot of -
there are many churches of christ that don't even have a Wednesday night
service. Did you know that? Not here in the Bible Belt, but in a lot of
mission countries. They don't have Wednesday night church. They don't have
Sunday night church. They have a Sunday service to take communion and to share
and so on and so forth, why? Well, because, that's something that is commanded in
the Bible, but Wednesday night - some people they don't do
Wednesday night, they do Friday night. So we need to always be careful not to
raise up our traditions and put them at the same level as God's Word. They don't -
our traditions usually are there to facilitate are doing God's will, but when
we make them as important as God's will, we run into the same problem that the
Jews do, and it's dangerous, because we lose the power to change and
affect our lives when we exchange the simple word for tradition, and we lose
sight of what's important. We focus on the rules and keeping the rules instead
of focusing on God's Word and His real laws. And we lose salvation because Jesus
tells us that only those who do the Word of God will enter the kingdom. So as
far as our study of Mark is concerned, when we get to chapter 7 here
in this episode, we see that now Jesus has made a mortal
enemy of the Pharisees, because He has not only answered them, but He has
denounced and exposed them as hypocrites, publicly. So now, the worm is
going to turn now. Now it gets very, very dangerous. In the meantime, we
have another episode that takes place. The syrophoenician woman, chapter 7,
verse 24. We see that Jesus has now earned the wrath of the religious
leaders by exposing them through His teachings. Now He is going to earn their
undying opposition by performing a miracle on behalf of the persons that
they had originally complained about. Remember what the original complaint was.
The original complaint is you don't wash your hands before you eat, you may have
touched something that a Gentile has touched and therefore made yourself
impure, right? So now, Mark says, the next thing that Jesus does is what?
He performs a miracle for a Gentile, the very persons that the Pharisees
were all upset about. They argued that you could defile
yourself simply by touching something that a Gentile touched. So, as I say, Jesus
is going to do a miracle that will heal a Gentile, and this, in their eyes, would
be a major breach of their laws. It wasn't a breach of God's laws, believe it
or not, because the Jews were supposed to be a light and a blessing to the
Gentiles. They were supposed to, kind of, open their eyes to the true God and
that's exactly what Jesus was doing, but the Pharisees had so many rules to avoid
falling into idolatry, of the Gentiles, that they completely cut off any
opportunity to witness to them or to be any influence to them, by the way that
they acted. Imagine, you think you could influence someone to be converted to
your religion if when they approached you and their shadow crossed your shadow,
you crossed the street so their shadow would not cross your shadow. You think
you have a big chance of sharing the gospel with them or sharing your faith
with those people? I don't think so. So let's read the story, it's interesting,
chapter 7, verse 24, "So after this episode, Jesus got up
and went away from there to the region of Tyre. And when He had entered a house,
He wanted no one to know of it; yet he could not escape notice. But after
hearing of Him, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit
immediately came and fell at His feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of the
Syrophoenician race. And she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her
daughter. And he was saying to her, "Let the children be satisfied first, for it
is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." But she
answered and said to Him, "Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on
the children's crumbs." So verse 24, Jesus leaves Capernaum and He goes to
the extreme border of the country, to avoid the crowds and to avoid the
enemies. And so the woman that comes to Him, a Gentile, a pagan, but she believed
in His power. Note how her approach was different than that of the Jewish
leaders. They came to Him with an accusation, she comes to Him with the
request in humility. Jesus responds to her request by describing His primary
mission. And his primary mission is to feed the children, God's chosen people,
the Israelites. And to preach the good news to the Jews first, according to the
word. We need to understand, when we talk about dogs, it sounds awfully
insulting, what He says. I want to feed the dogs, like you're
calling her a dog. Dogs, in the culture of those days were wild and they
survived as scavengers and few people owned them and they were not
welcomed in those days. Today, everybody and
their brother has a dog, but in those days, no, that was not something you did.
Really? Take your good food and feed it to a dog, have the dogs sleep with you in
bed? No, I don't think so. That was not their culture. Some families,
however, kept smaller dogs, I guess, as pets, but again, this was exceptional, and
they were fed scraps from the table. Gentiles were considered like dogs by
the Jews, and if they were friendly, they were friendly no
more than a person would be to a pet. So Jesus uses the word for pets, not dogs in
this passage and He's saying, let the children eat first, as is proper, because
it wouldn't be right to feed the pets with their food. That's what He said.
It''s like the same thing, you've made a nice a
meatloaf and veggies and, yeah, you have your
beloved pet there - shoo shoo, your little pet -
would you really take a plate and make a portion for shoo shoo, and with
bread and butter and the meatloaf and the veggies and take that and
give that to shoo shoo before you gave it to your kid? Well, no. First I'll
feed the family and then what's left I'll give to shoo shoo, that's how it
works. And basically, He's using that imagery. She understands this. She
knows that there's animosity between the two
people. She knows how the Jews see her. It took a lot of courage for
her, a woman, to go see a man on top of that. She understands that
righteousness must be fulfilled. First things first, but when they're
done, she says, couldn't the, don't the pets get the leftover? She's using His
imagery and saying, hey, according to your story the pets still do get some
food, don't they. She understands her position in the community and she asks
only for a small portion. So in verse 29 and 30 it says, "And He said to her,
"Because of this answer, go; the demon has gone out of your daughter." And going back
to her home, she found the child lying on the bed, the demon having left."
Jesus performs a great miracle. This time, at a distance, exercising His will
only in casting out the demon. Now, another example of Jesus' dealing with
this common problem of that era. Interesting to note that Jesus deals
with demons and related problems 80 times in the gospel. It was a tremendous
issue in those times. Another interesting thing that you see about the demons that
are spoken of quite often here in the New Testament,
demons never manifest themselves as monsters. Never in the Bible. Not
like the movies. The movies, the demon comes out and it's some funky looking
thing. Whatever the Hollywood artists can
figure out, but in the Bible, the demons are real, they cause trouble, they're
evil, they are of Satan, but they never materialize as some sort of monster
looking thing. They never manifest as monsters. They never manifest as persons
either, outside of the people that they possess. Their presence is only known
because of the suffering that they cause, because the Bible writers say this
suffering was caused by a demon and the writers make a distinction between
the suffering that was caused by a demon possession, and the suffering that was
caused by an illness. The woman, for example, who had the issue of blood, they
didn't say she was possessed by some demon, that was causing - no, she had a
disease. A bodily disease that Jesus healed. The writers, in every instance,
always make a clear distinction between the suffering caused by demon possession
and suffering caused by illness, or suffering caused because someone
is born lame or handicapped or whatever, always a clear distinction between those
types of things. Jesus now returns to the area where
the demoniac had lived. Remember, we talked about that demoniac when it
wanted to come with Him and he said, no. Go back to Decapolis, go tell your
people the things that I have done. Jesus goes back to this area and we read
what happens there, it says, "Again He went out from the region of Tyre, and came
through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, within the region of Decapolis." That's
the deca, the ten cities. "They brought to Him one who was deaf and spoke with
difficulty, and they implored Him to lay His hand on him." A crowd gathers and
wants to see a miracle and they tell Jesus to lay His hands on the man, to
heal him. Jesus does miracles to prove who He is, not to put on a show.
Let's keep going, verse 33, "Jesus took him aside from the crowd, by himself, and
put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, He touched his tongue with the
saliva; and looking up to heaven with the deep sigh, He said to him, "Ephphatha!" that is,
"Be opened!" And his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was
removed, and he began speaking plainly. And He gave them orders not to tell
anyone; but the more He ordered them, the more widely they continued to proclaim it."
What an interesting healing this is. I mean, in one instance he says to the
person, yeah, go home, the demon is gone. He didn't even go there. Here,
He's interacting with the individual. You have to understand, deaf and dumb,
can't hear, can't speak, so the man is confused. He's facing this strange rabbi.
Jesus takes him aside, first of all. The crowd is there, messing with
him and the shouting and so on and so forth. He can't hear, he
can't talk, so Jesus takes him aside, one-on-one, and He needs to communicate
to the man what is about - what He's about to do. Well, how do you communicate to a
deaf and dumb man you're about to heal him. How do you tell them that? What do
you do? Well, you use some kind of sign language, right? I mean today we don't say
deaf and dumb. I guess we say hearing-impaired, that's it, hearing
impaired. But he was completely hearing-impaired, couldn't hear, couldn't
speak, right? So what does He do? He uses sign language: the fingers on the ears to
signal that the problem is in your ears, right, you can't hear. He spits
and touches the tongue, why? To signify it, what, you can't speak. A sigh and a look
up to heaven to show where the solution is going to come from. It's a way to
communicate that the man's own prayers, the sighing, are now going to be answered.
He looks at him and he says, "be opened". And the fact that the man hears
and responds is a sign the the miracle has taken place, because the
man, right, speaks. Verse 37 says, "They were utterly astonished saying, "He has
done all things well; He makes even the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."
Once again, Mark comments that the reaction of the people demonstrates that
they were convinced that these were legitimate miracles. All right, feeding of
the four thousand. We need to move a little bit here, feeding of the four
thousand. Chapter eight, verse 1 to 21. Here verse 1 to 10. This is the second time
that Jesus performs this miracle. If you read some commentary, sometimes, some of
the scholars, they say, oh well, this is - it only happened one time.
It only happened one time, but no, Mark records it twice, so you know
that it's the second time that He does this miracle, because Mark would not have
repeated the description of the same miracle twice. None of the Gospel writers
ever do that. Some of them describe, Mark will describe a
miracle that was in Matthew, or Luke will describe a miracle that was in Mark, but
Luke never describes the same miracle twice, in two different places in his
gospel, as Mark does. So Mark describes the first instance of the
food being multiplied, the bread and the fish being multiplied in
chapter six, and then he describes another instance, same type of miracle in
chapter eight. So it's a similar situation, a similar outcome, but
the people and the location are different in both instances. Now this
miracle actually sets the stage for teaching that Jesus will give His
disciples, after they leave this place, He warns them about the Pharisees and their
teachings. Remember this whole section started with the Pharisees showing up,
right, and challenging Him. Everything after that is all hooked back to the
Pharisees. Everything that He's done, in one way or another, points back
to them. So this miracle here, what does He teach concerning it? Look at the great
power that I have, or Jesus can take care of your needs. No, the lesson He's going
to draw from this for them is be careful of the leaven of the Pharisees. That's
the lesson. He warns them about the Pharisees and their teachings
and treachery now that He has incurred the Pharisees wrath by exposing
and condemning them publicly. And He does this using a figure of speech, comparing
their evil to the leaven that's hidden in dough. Of course, the apostles,
they misunderstand, thinking He's chastising them for forgetting to bring
along some of the leftover bread. And then He chastises them for real, not for
forgetting the bread, which was true, they did forget the bread, but for failing to
understand what was going on, failing to recognize who He was after seeing so
many miracles and teaching. So now we have another miracle here, this
time curing a blind person. Verse 22, it says, "And they came to Bethsaida. And
they brought a blind man to Jesus and implored Him to touch him." Do you
see something similar here? Before they brought Him a hearing impaired man
and implored Him to touch him. Now they bring Him a blind person, same idea.
"Taking the blind man by the hand, He brought him out of the village;"
He does the same thing, gets away from the tumult, brings the guy away from
the tumult, "Brings him out of the village; and after spitting on his eyes
and laying His hands on him, He says to him, "Do you see anything?" Next verse, "And
he looked up and said, "I see men, for I see them like trees, walking around." Then
again He laid His hands on his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored, and
began to see everything clearly. And He sent him to his home, saying, "Do not even
enter the village." In other words, not your village, don't go back to where we
were, don't stir up more chaos here. So in this passage
Jesus performs another great miracle, healing a blind man.
The miracle, like the deaf and dumb man, was done in stages so the man could
realize what was happening to him gradually. And Jesus needs time and He
needs to be free of movement to finish His ministry. So He tells the man, don't
go back to the village, don't stir up more stuff there. It's hard enough as it
is, moving around the country without the crowds
following Him. So then we get to chapter eight and it seems that the gradual opening
of the man's ears and the man's mouth and then the gradual opening of the
blind man's eyes, these miracles also serve as a, kind of, symbol or a
metaphor for the gradual opening of the eyes of the Apostles and the gradual
opening of their ears to understand and to see exactly what is going on. The
people He healed, they could talk to each other, they could now hear what people
are saying to them. The blind guy could actually see what was going on, but for
the apostles, who could already see and hear, their problem was they weren't
seeing the truth and they weren't hearing and understanding what Jesus was
trying to explain to them. So slowly but surely Mark demonstrates that
Jesus is opening them up to the truth. Jesus asks them directly, who do they
think He is and Peter acknowledges the conclusion, that all the miracles and
teachings point to, that He's the Messiah. And with this confession, Jesus, His first
goal with His apostles has finally been reached. You see the the balance there?
The healing of the blind and the deaf, and the opening of the minds and the
hearts of the Apostles. The blind and the deaf could seen the natural world, what
was going on, but the apostles, now their
eyes were open and their hearts were open. Not just to the natural world, but
to the supernatural world, because they finally say, well, you're the Messiah,
you're the Son of God. And Peter declares it. So with this confession, Jesus's first
goal has been reached. They believe the evidence before them and they confess
the conclusion. Jesus warns them not to share this just yet. To preach this
now would cause riots and there's still another important goal of His ministry
to be met. One that He now begins to explain. So even in our lives, this
is how the Lord teaches us through the spirit, through His word, through the
church. It's always in stages. Always in - we learn something that opens
our eyes to a new vista of understanding or work or service or
whatever, and that eventually will lead us to yet another level and another
level and another level. This is why it's important to just keep going.
Sometimes we fail, sometimes we see ourselves as sinful and weak and
the thing we want to do is stop or quit, because, I'll never make it, I'm
no good, I'm not good enough. And it's like the Lord is
saying to him, stop. Don't quit, keep going, because I got something else I want to
show you. I want to show you something different. Don't worry about the sins,
they've been forgiven on the cross. Don't worry, I know you're not perfect, that's
why you're under my grace. I know that just keep going. Well, this
is what He does with them. They recognize, why, you're the Messiah. Well, He says
to them, now, I got something else I need for you to understand, and
that's the cross. That's going to be a big bite. He's going to
talk to them about the cost of discipleship, all right. So he goes to
verse 31, and says, "And He began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer
many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the
scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again." So, wow! He
doesn't waste any time. Once they grasp, oh, you're the Messiah. Well great news.
Now He starts teaching in the next level, that the Messiah has to be killed,
because if you read your old testament properly, you'll understand Isaiah,
especially the suffering servant. You'll understand that this Messiah is going to
be killed. He's going to be sacrificed for the sins of men. So He begins to
describe the purpose of His ministry, the reason that the Messiah has come and the
final end. Verse 32, it says, "And He was stating the matter
plainly and Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, but turning around
and seeing his disciples and rebuked Peter and said, "Get thee behind me, Satan.
For you're not setting your mind on God's interest, but man's." Peter's
reaction is not one of acceptance and reverence, but worldly and fearful. He
dismisses Jesus's words as a bad plan, even overlooks the news of the
resurrection. His idea is that the Messiah's coming is going to bring a
blessing to the Jews, they're going to rule, as an apostle, he's going
to be on the A team. It's going to be the old days, the days of the
golden period. And he's going to be part of the leadership of
that. Peter didn't want a dead Jesus, suffering rejection. That was not his
idea of the glorious Messiah and especially his own role in bringing the
Messiah to the Jews. Jesus rebukes his selfish ambition as being motivated by
Satan, the flesh, not God, not the word. So we finish up and it says, "And He summoned
the crowd with His disciples and said to them, "if anyone wishes to come after Me,
he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes
to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake in
the gospel will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and
forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For
whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful
generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the
glory of His father and the holy angels." Jesus establishes the criteria for
those who want to be disciples, of course, that includes the apostles. You want -I'm
the Messiah. Well, this is what the Messiah is going to have to do: He's
going to suffer and die, but He'll raise again. And do you want to be the disciples
of that Messiah? Here's what you've got to do. He reads him the riot act. They
believe He's the Messiah. So as the Messiah, this is what He demands of His
followers and why He demands it. He demands that each of them choose who
they will follow. And if they follow Him, He will save them. And if they don't, well,
there's nobody else that's going to save them.
Tough choice. So until this time it's been a wonderful ride for these guys, it really
has. I mean, great teaching, He opens their eyes and their hearts, tremendous
miracles to all. And remember, their with the guy who's doing the miracles.
It's like the governor. The governor gets on the plane - I
remember once, Governor Keating, he was on the same plane as I was and he
was rushing in and I got on with the governor, the governor, his body
guard, and then I got on to a plane. He was going to Dallas, whatever,
and people were looking at him, hi governor; and then they were looking at
me. I'm a nobody, but I was walking three feet behind the governor. I was
somebody for 10 seconds. Until I went to economy and he stayed in first class.
So these men, they're with the guy doing the miracles. The
crowds, the 10,000 crowds that are following Him everywhere, they're with that
guy. So it's been a good ride. He's put down the Pharisees who had restricted
them for so long. He feeds them, He heals them, He encourages them, He takes the
brunt of criticism on Himself and protects them. So it's been a good ride,
but now, Jesus says, it's time for you to make a choice, to take a stand, you're
with me or you're not with me and your soul depends on this decision. And so,
this is the choice of every believer and every disciple and every follower and
every student of Christ: somewhere along the line you have to make a choice.
After this critical point Jesus will continue the cycle of miracles and
teaching and will open the eyes of His apostles even more as He leads them to
the climax of His ministry, and that, of course, will be His cross and of course,
that's not the end for them, they just keep on going after that, but we'll
continue this next time. So there's lesson number 5