Thoughts from a Crosseyed Jesus Freak

Mark 12:35-44 and Intro to Mark 13

• Mark 12:35-37a
• 35 While Jesus was teaching in the temple, he asked, “How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David?  36 David himself says by the Holy Spirit: The Lord declared to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.’ 37 David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How, then, can he be his son?”
  • In the early parts of the NT Christ is never a proper name as it has since come to be. It has in fact in this passage the definite article before it and so is translated the Messiah.
    • Christos and Messiah are the Greek and Hebrew for the same word, and both mean the Anointed One
    • The reason for the use of the title is that in ancient times a man was made king by being anointed with oil—a practice that still continues in modern coronation ceremonies
    • Christos and Messiah then both mean God’s anointed king, the great one who is to come from God to save his people
  • Jesus is not directly referring to Himself in this question
    • In reality, He’s saying, “How can the scribes say that God’s anointed king who is to come the Son of David?”
    • The argument which Jesus puts forward in support is this
      • He quotes Psalm 110:1 “The Lord says to my lord, Sit at my right hand”
      • The Jews at this time assumed that all the Psalms come from the hand of David
      • They also held that this Psalm referred to the common Messiah
      • In this verse, David refers to this coming one as his lord
      • How if he is his son can David address him by the title of Lord?
  • Son of David was the most common of all titles for the Messiah
    • The Jews looked forward to a God-sent deliverer who would be of David’s line
    • Jesus was often addressed by that name, especially by the crowds
    • The NT shows the conviction that Jesus was in fact the Son of David in His physical descent
    • Matthew and Luke both show genealogies to show that Jesus was from the line of David
    • Jesus is not denying that the Messiah is the Son of David, nor is He saying that He Himself is not the Son of David
    • He is saying that He is the Son of David—and far more, not only David’s son but David’s Lord
  • The problem was the title Son of David had gotten entangled with the idea of a conquering Messiah
    • It was involved in political and nationalistic hopes and dreams, aims and ambitions
    • Jesus was saying that the title Son of David, as it was popularly used, is a quite inadequate description of Himself
    • He was Lord
      • This word Lord is the regular translation of Yahweh in the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures
      • Always its use would turn people’s thoughts to God
    • What Jesus was saying was that He came not to found any earthly kingdom, but to bring men and women to God
  • Jesus is doing here what He constantly tried to do
    • He is trying to take from people’s minds their idea of a conquering warrior Messiah who would found an earthly empire, and seeking to put into them the idea of a Messiah who would be the servant of God and bring to them the love of God
• Mark 12:37b-40
• And the large crowd was listening to him with delight. 38 He also said in his teaching, “Beware of the scribes, who want to go around in long robes and who want greetings in the marketplaces, 39 the best seats in the synagogues, and the places of honor at banquets. 40 They devour widows’ houses and say long prayers just for show. These will receive harsher judgment.”
  • This first sentence more than likely goes more with this new section than it did with the previous section
    • The verse divisions of the NT were first inserted by Stephanus in the sixteenth century
    • They are by no means always the most suitable divisions, and this seems to be one requiring change
    • It is far more likely that the mass of people listens with pleasure to the denunciation of the scribes than they did to a theological argument
  • In this passage Jesus make a series of charges against the scribes
    • They liked to walk around in flowing robes
      • These were robes which swept the ground and were the sign of a notable person
      • They were not suitable for work or for hurry
      • They were the sign of a leisured man of honor
      • Jews wore tassels at the edge of their outer robe
        • These tassels were to remind them that they were the people of God. Quite possible these legal experts wore outsize tassels for special prominence
      • At all events they liked to dress in such a way that it drew attention to themselves and to the honor they enjoyed
    • They liked the greetings in the market place
      • The scribes loved to be greeted with honor and respect
      • Rabbi means “my great one”. To be so addressed was agreeable to their vanity
    • They liked the front seats in the synagogue
      • In the synagogues, in front of the ark where the sacred volumes were kept and facing the congregation, there was a bench where the specially distinguished sat
        • It had the advantage that no one who sat there could possibly be missed, being in full view of the admiring congregation
    • They liked the highest places at feasts
      • At feasts precedence was strictly fixed
      • The first place was that on the right of the host, the second to the left of the host, and so on, alternating right and left, around the table
      • It was easy to tell the honor in which people were held by the places at which they sat
    • They devoured widow’s houses
      • This is a savage chargeAn expert in the law could take no pay for his teaching
      • He was supposed to have a trade by which he earned his daily bread
      • But theses legal experts had managed to convey to people that they’re was no higher duty and privilege than to support a Rabbi in comfort; that such support would undoubtedly entitle him or her who gave it to a high place
      • It is a sad fact that religious charlatans have always preyed upon vulnerable people, and it would seem that these scribes and Pharisees imposed on people who could ill afford to support them
    • The long prayers of the scribes and Pharisees were notorious
      • It has been said that the prayers were not so much offered to God as offered to other people
      • They were offered in such a place and in such a way that no one could fail to see how pious they were
  • This passage warns against three things
    • It warns against the desire for prominence
    • It warns against the desire for acclaim
      • Almost everyone likes to be treated with respect. And yet a basic fact of Christianity is that it ought to produce the desire to obliterate self rather than to exalt it
      • Those who enter upon office for the respect which will be given to them have begun the wrong way, and can’t, unless they change, be in any sense the servants of Christ and of their neighbors
    • It warns against the attempt to make a traffic of religion
      • It is still possible to use religious connections for self-gain and self-advancement
      • But this is a warning to all who are in the Church for what they can get out of it and not for what they can put into it
• Mark 12:41-44
• 41 Sitting across from the temple treasury, he watched how the crowd dropped money into the treasury. Many rich people were putting in large sums. 42 Then a poor widow came and dropped in two tiny coins worth very little. 43 Summoning his disciples, he said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 For they all gave out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had —all she had to live on.”
  • Between the Court of the Gentiles and the Court of the Women there was the Beautiful Gate
  • In the Court of the Women there were thirteen collecting boxes called “the Trumpets” because of their shape
    • They were for contributions for the daily sacrifices and expenses of the Temple
    • Many people were throwing large contributions in
    • Then came a wide who put in two coins
      • The coins were called a lepton, which literally means a thin one. It was the smallest of all coins
      • And yet Jesus said that here tiny contribution was greater than all the others, for the others had thrown in what they could spare easily enough and still have plenty left, while the wide had given all she had
  • The real lesson in giving
    • Real giving must be sacrificial
      • The amount of the gift never matters as much as its cost to the giver
      • Not the size of the gift but the sacrifice
      • Real generosity gives until it hurts
    • Real giving has a certain recklessness in it
      • The woman might have kept one coin. While it wouldn’t have been much, it would have been something. Yet she gave everything she had
      • There is a great symbolic truth here
      • We rarely make the final sacrifice and the final surrender
    • It is a strange and lovely thing that the person whom the NT and Jesus hand down to history as a pattern of generosity was a person who gave the gift of so little value in monetary terms
      • We may feel that we have little in the way of material gifts or personal gifts to give to Christ, but if we put all that we have and are at His disposal, He can do things with it and with us that are beyond our imagination
• Mark 13 Intro
• This is one of the most difficult chapters in the NT for modern readers to understand. That is because it is one of the most Jewish chapters in the Bible. From beginning to end it is thinking in terms of Jewish history and Jewish ideas
• The difficulty about the doctrine of the second coming is that today people are apt either to completely disregard it or to be so completely unbalanced about it that it becomes the only doctrine  of the Christian faith. It may be that if we study this chapter with some care we shall come to a sane and correct view about this doctrine
• The Day of the Lord
  • This whole chapter must be read with one thing in mind
  • The Jews never doubted that they were the chosen people, and they never doubted that one day they would occupy the place in the world which the chose people, as they saw it, deserved and were bound to have in the end
  • They had long since abandoned the idea that they could ever win that place by human means, and they were confident that in the end God would directly intervene in history and win it for them
  • The day of God’s intervention was the day of the Lord
  • Before that day of the Lord, there would be a time of terror and trouble when the world would be shaken to its foundations and judgment would come
  • But it would be followed by the new world and the new age and the new glory
    • In one senes this idea is the product of unconquerable optimism
      • The Jews were quite certain that God would break in
    • In another sense it was the product of bleak pessimism
      • It was based on the idea that this world was so utterly bad that only its complete destruction and the emergence of a new would would suffice
    • They did not look for reformation. They looked for a recreating of the entire scheme of things
    • OT References
      • Amos 5:16-8, 20
      • Isaiah 13:6, 9-10
      • Joel 2:1-2, 30-31
    • Between the OT and NT there was a time when the Jews knew no freedom. It was only natural that their hopes and dreams of the day of the Lord would become even more vivid
    • In that time a kind of popular religious literature sprang up
      • The writings which this literature consisted of were called the Apocalypses (An unveiling)
      • These books were dreams and visions of what would happen when the day of the Lord came and in the terrible time immediately before it
      • They were never meant to be taken prosaically as maps of the future and timetables of events to come
  • Different Strands
    • Here Mark collects Jesus’ sayings about the future
      • Even with a cursory reading, with no special knowledge, shows that though all these sayings were about the future, they were not all about the same things
    • 5 Different Strands
      • There are the prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem
        • 1-2 and 14-20
      • There is the warning of persecution to come
        • 9-13
      • There are warnings of the dangers of the last days
        • 3-6, 21-22
      • There are warnings of the second coming
        • 7-8, 24-27
        • The imagery of the day of the Lord and of the second coming are inextricably mixed up. It had to be so, because no one could possibly know what would happen in either case
        • The only pictures Jesus could use about His second coming were those which prophets and apocalyptists had already used about the day of the Lord. They are not meant to be taken literally. They are meant as impressionistic pictures, as seer’s visions, designed to impress upon people the greatness of that even when it should come
      • There are the warnings of the necessity to be on the watch
        • 28-37
  • This chapter will make far more sense if we remember these various strands in it and remember that every strand is unfolded in language and imagery which go back to the OT and apocalyptic pictures of the day of the Lord

Mark 12:18-34

• Mark 12:18-27
• 18 Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and questioned him: 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife behind but no child, that man should take the wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 There were seven brothers. The first married a woman, and dying, left no offspring. 21 The second also took her, and he died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. 22 None of the seven left offspring. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be, since the seven had married her?” 24 Jesus spoke to them, “Isn’t this the reason why you’re mistaken: you don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. 26 And as for the dead being raised—haven’t you read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God said to him: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? 27 He is not the God of the dead but of the living. You are badly mistaken.”
  • This is the only time in Mark that the Sadducees appear and their appearance is entirely characteristic of them
    • They were not a large Jewish party. They were aristocratic  and wealthy. They included most of the priests; the office of high priest was regularly head by a Sadducee
    • Being the wealthy and aristocratic party, they were not unnaturally  collaborations, for they wished to retain their comforts and their privileges. It was from them that there came those who were prepared to collaborate with the Romans in the government of their country
    • They differed very widely from the Pharisees in certain matters
      • They accepted only the written Scriptures and attached more importance to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the OT, than to all the rest
        • They did not accept the mass of oral law and tradition, the rules and regulations which were so dear to the Pharisees
        • It was on the written Mosaic law that they took their stand
      • They did not believe in immortality, nor in spirits and angels
      • They said that in the early books of the Bible there was no evidence for immortality, and they did not accept it
  • The Sadducees came to Jesus with a test question designed to make the belief in individual resurrection look ridiculous
    • Jewish law from Deuteronomy 25:5-10
      • 5 “When brothers live on the same property and one of them dies without a son, the wife of the dead man may not marry a stranger outside the family. Her brother-in-law is to take her as his wife, have sexual relations with her, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law for her. 6 The first son she bears will carry on the name of the dead brother, so his name will not be blotted out from Israel. 7 But if the man doesn’t want to marry his sister-in-law, she is to go to the elders at the city gate and say, ‘My brother-in-law refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel. He isn’t willing to perform the duty of a brother-in-law for me.’ 8 The elders of his city will summon him and speak with him. If he persists and says, ‘I don’t want to marry her,’ 9 then his sister-in-law will go up to him in the sight of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. Then she will declare, ‘This is what is done to a man who will not build up his brother’s house.’ 10 And his family name in Israel will be ‘The house of the man whose sandal was removed.’
      • If a group of brothers lived together—a point that the Sadducees omitted from their quotation of the law
      • Theoretically this would go on as long as there were brothers left and as long as no child was born
      • When a child was born, the child was held to be the offspring of the original husband
      • The whole point of this law was to ensure two things
        • The family name continued
        • The property remained within the family
        • As a matter of fact, strange as it seems to us, there were certain similar regulations in Greek law
        • The whole thing, again, is designed to maintain the family and to retain the property within the family
  • The question that the Sadducees asked may have presented an exaggerated case, but it was a question founded on a well-known Jewish law
    • If in accordance with the regulations governing this law, one woman has been married in turn to seven brothers, if there is a resurrection of the dead, who’s wife is she who that resurrection comes?
    • They thought that by asking that question they rendered the idea of resurrection completely ridiculous
  • Jesus’ answer really falls into two parts
    • He deals with what we might call the manner of the resurrection
      • He lays it down that when a person rises again, the old laws of the physical life no longer obtain
      • The risen are like the angels (Not angels), and physical things like marrying and being married no longer enter into the case
      • Jesus was saying nothing new
      • Jesus’ point was that the life to come cannot be thought of in terms of this life at all
    • He deals with the fact of the resurrection
      • Here hi meets the Sadducees on their own ground
      • They insisted that the Pentateuch showed no evidence of immortality
      • It’s from the Pentateuch that Jesus draws His proof
        • Exodus 3:6
        • 6 Then he continued, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.
        • If God is the God of these patriarchs even now, it means that they must still be alive, for the living God must be the God of living people, and not those who are dead
        • And if the patriarchs are alive then the resurrection is proved
        • On their own grounds, and with an argument to which they could find no answer, Jesus defeated the Sadducees
  • This passage show two eternally valid truths as well
    • The Sadducees mad the mistake of creating heaven in the image of the earth
      • There has always been a tendency to create in thought a heave to suit human desires
      • We do well to remember that Paul was right when he took the words of the prophet Isaiah (64:4) and made them his own
        • I Corinthians 2:9
        • 9 But as it is written, What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived—God has prepared these things for those who love him.
        • The life of the heavily places will be greater than any conception this life can supply
    • In the end, Jesus based His conviction of the resurrection on the fact that the relationship between God and a good man or a good woman is one that nothing can break
      • Psalm 73:23-24
      • Yet I am always with you; you hold my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me up in glory.
      • It is inconceivable that a relationship with God can ever be broken
• Mark 12:28-34
• 28 One of the scribes approached. When he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which command is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. 31 The second is, Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these. 32 Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, teacher. You have correctly said that he is one, and there is no one else except him. 33 And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, is far more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And no one dared to question him any longer.
  • There was no love lost between the expert in the law and the Sadducees
    • The profession of the scribes was to interpret the law in all its many rules and regulations
    • Their trade was to know and apply the oral law, while the Sadducees did not accept the oral law at all
    • The expert in the law would no doubt be well satisfied with the defeat of the Sadducees
  • This scribe came to Jesus with a question which was often a matter of debate in the Rabbinic schools
    • There was a tendency to expand the law limitlessly into hundreds and thousands of rules and regulations
    • But there was also the tendency to try to gather up the law into one sentence, one general statement which would be a say of its whole message
      • Rabbi Hillel was once asked by a convert to Judaism to instruct him in the whole law while he stood on one leg. Hillel’s answer was, “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole law, the rest is commentary.”
      • Rabbi Akiba had already said, “Go and learn, you should love your neighbor as yourself”; “This is the greatest general principle of the law”
      • Simon the Righteous had said, “On three things the world stands; the law, the worship, and works of love”
      • Sammlai had taught that Moses received 613 laws on Mount Sinai, 365 according to the days of the sun year, and 248 according to the generations
      • David reduced the 613 to 11 in Psalm 15
        • Lord, who can dwell in your tent?Who can live on your holy mountain? 2 The one who lives blamelessly, practices righteousness, and acknowledges the truth in his heart—3 who does not slander with his tongue, who does not harm his friend or discredit his neighbor, 4 who despises the one rejected by the Lord but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps his word whatever the cost, 5 who does not lend his silver at interest or take a bribe against the innocent—the one who does these things will never be shaken.
      • Isaiah reduced them to six (Isaiah 33:15)
        • The one who lives righteously
        • and speaks rightly,
        • who refuses profit from extortion,
        • whose hand never takes a bribe,
        • who stops his ears from listening to murderous plots
        • and shuts his eyes against evil schemes—
      • Micah reduced them to three (Micah 6:8)
        • Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you:
        • to act justly,
        • to love faithfulness,
        • and to walk humbly with your God.
      • Isaiah again brings it down to two (Isaiah 56:1)
        • This is what the Lord says: Preserve justice and do what is right, for my salvation is coming soon, and my righteousness will be revealed.
      • Finally Habakkuk reduced them to one (Habakkuk 2:4)
        • Look, his ego is inflated; he is without integrity. But the righteous one will live by his faith.
  • It can be seen that Rabbinic ingenuity did try to contract as well as to expand the law. There were really two schools of thought
    • There were those who believed that there were lighter and weightier matters of the law, that there were great principles which were all important to grasp
    • But there were others who were much against this, who held that every smallest principle was equally binding and that to try to distinguish between their relative importance was highly dangerous
    • The expert who asked Jesus this question was asking about something which was a living issue in Jewish thought and discussion
  • Jesus took two great commandments and put them together
    • Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
      • That single sentence is the real creed of Judaism
      • It had three uses. It is called the Shema. Shema is the imperative of the Hebrew verb to hear, and it is so called from the first word in the sentence
        • It was the sentence with which the service of the synagogue always began and still begins
          • It is the declaration that God is the only God, the foundation of Jewish monotheism
        • The three passages of the Shem were contained in the phylacteries, little leather boxes which devout Jews wore on their foreheads and on their writs when they were at prayer
          • As they prayed they reminded themselves of their creed
          • This is founded in Deuteronomy 6:8
        • The Shema was contained in a little cylindrical box called the Mezuzah, which was and is still affixed to the door of every Jewish house and the door of every room within it, to remind Jewish families of God as they went out and as they came in
    • Love your neighbor as yourself
      • This is a quotation from Leviticus 19:18
        • Jesus did one thing with it. In its original context it has to do only with fellow Jews. It would don’t have included the Gentiles, whom it was quite permissible to hate. But Jesus noted it without qualification and without limiting boundaries
        • He took an old law and filled it with new meaning
  • The new thing that Jesus did was to put these two commandments together. No Rabbi had ever done that before
  • No one until Jesus put the two commandments together and made them one
    • Religion to Him was loving God and loving one another
    • He would have said that the only way to prove love for God is by showing love for others
    • The scribe actually willingly accept this, and went on to say that such a love was better than all sacrifices
      • I Samuel 15:22
      • Then Samuel said: Does the Lord take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? Look: to obey is better than sacrifice, to pay attention is better than the fat of rams.
      • Hosea 6:6
      • For I desire faithful love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
  • But it is always easy to let ritual take the place of love. It is always easy to let worship become a matter of the church building instead of a matter of the whole life
    • The priest and Levite could pass by the wounded traveller because they were eager to get on with the ritual of the Temple
    • This scribe had risen beyond his contemporaries, and that is why he found himself in sympathy with Jesus
  • There must have been a look of love in Jesus’ eyes, and a look of appeal as He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Will you not come further and accept my way of things? Then you will be a true citizen of the Kingdom.

Mark 12:1-17

• Mark 12:1-12
• He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug out a pit for a winepress, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenant farmers and went away. 2 At harvest time he sent a servant to the farmers to collect some of the fruit of the vineyard from them. 3 But they took him, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent another servant to them, and they hit him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 Then he sent another, and they killed that one. He also sent many others; some they beat, and others they killed. 6 He still had one to send, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenant farmers said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill the farmers and give the vineyard to others. 10 Haven’t you read this Scripture: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. 11 This came about from the Lord and is wonderful in our eyes?” 12 They were looking for a way to arrest him but feared the crowd because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. So they left him and went away.
  • We’ve talked about how a parable must never be treated as an allegory and that a meaning must not be sought for every detail 
  • Originally, Jesus’ parables were not meant to be read but to be spoken and their eating was that which flashed out when they were first heard
    • This parable is kind of a hybrid, however, a cross between an allegory and a parable
    • Not all the details have an inner meaning, but more than usual do
    • And this is because Jesus was talking in pictures which were part of Jewish thought and imagery
  • The owner of the vineyard is God
    • The vineyard itself is the people of Israel
    • This was a picture with which the Jews were perfectly familiar
    • Isaiah 5:1-7
      • I will sing about the one I love, a song about my loved one’s vineyard: The one I love had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2 He broke up the soil, cleared it of stones, and planted it with the finest vines. He built a tower in the middle of it and even dug out a winepress there. He expected it to yield good grapes, but it yielded worthless grapes. 3 So now, residents of Jerusalem and men of Judah, please judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more could I have done for my vineyard than I did? Why, when I expected a yield of good grapes, did it yield worthless grapes? 5 Now I will tell you what I am about to do to my vineyard: I will remove its hedge, and it will be consumed; I will tear down its wall, and it will be trampled.
      • This vineyard was given every equipment.
        • There was a wall to mark out its boundaries, to keep out robbers, and to defend it from the assaults of wild boars
        • There was a wine vat. In a vineyard there was a wine press in which the grapes were trodden down with the feet. Beneath the wine press was the wine vat into which the pressed-out juice flowed
        • There was a tower. In this the wine was stored, the workers had their lodging, and watch was kept for robbers at harvest time
      • The workers stand for the rulers of Israel through the history of the nation
      • The servants who the owner send stand for the prophets
        • Servant or slave of God is a regular title
        • Moses was called this in Joshua 14:7; David was called this in II Samuel 3:18; and the title occurs regularly in the books of the prophets
      • The son is Jesus 
      • Even on the spur of the moment the hearers could have made these identifications because the thoughts and pictures were so familiar to them
      • The story itself is something that might actually take place in the time of Jesus in Palestine
        • The country had much labor unrest and many absentee landlords
        • If the owner followed the law, the first time for collecting the rental would be fiver years after planting the vineyard (Leviticus 19:23-25)
        • In such a case the rental was paid in kind
          • It might be a fixed and agreed percentage of the crop, or it might be a flat rate, no matter what the crop came to
          • The story is by no means improbable and tells of the kind of thing that actually happened
  • It tells us certain things about God
    • It tells us of the generosity of God
      • The vineyard was equipped with everything that was necessary to make the work of the cultivators easy and profitable
      • God is generous in the life  and in the world that He gives to men and women
      • It tells us of the trust of God
        • The owner went away and left the workers to run the vineyard themselves
        • God trusts us enough to give us freedom to run life as we choose
      • It tells us of the patience of God
        • Not once or twice, but many times the master gave the workers the chance to pay the debt they owed
        • He treated them with a patience they didn’t deserve
      • It tells us of the ultimate triumph of the justice of God
        • We might take advantage of the patience of God, but in the end come judgement and justice
        • God may bear disobedience and rebellion for a long time, but in the end, He acts
    • It tells us something about Jesus
      • It tells us that Jesus regarded Himself not as a servant but as a Son
        • He deliberately removes Himself from the succession of the prophets
        • They were servants. He was Son
        • In Him God’s last and final word was being spoken
        • This parable was a deliberate challenge to the Jewish authorities because it contains the unmistakable claim of Jesus to be the Messiah
      • It tells us that Jesus knew that He was to die
        • The cross did not come to Him as a surprise
        • He knew that the way He had chosen could have no other ending
        • It is the greatness of His courage that He knew that and still went on
      • It tells us that Jesus was sure of His ultimate triumph
        • He also knew that He would be maltreated and killed, but He also knew that would not be the end, that after the rejection would come the glory
    • It tells us something about human nature
      • There could be only one reason why the workers thought they could kill the son and then enter into possession of the vineyard
        • They must have thought that the owner was too far away to  act, or that he was dead and out of the way
        • Some people still think they can act against God and get away with it
        • But God is very much alive
        • Human beings seek to trade on their own freedom and Hiss patience, but the day of reckoning comes
      • If people refuse their privileges and their responsibilities, they pass on to someone else
        • The parable has in it the whole idea of what was to come
        • The rejection of the Jews and the passing of their privileges and responsibilities to the Gentiles
  • The parable closes with an OT quotation which became very dear to the Church
    • The stone that was rejected was from Psalm 118:22-23
    • The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. 23 This came from the Lord; it is wondrous in our sight.
      • The rejected stone had become the stone that bound the corners of the building together, the keystone of the arch, the most important stone of all
      • This passage fascinate the early Christian writers
      • It is quoted or referred to in Acts 4:11, I Peter 2:4-7, Romans 9:32-33, and Ephesians 2:20
      • Originally it was a reference to the people of Israel
      • The Christian writers saw in the psalmists dream something which was perfectly fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus
• Mark 12:13-17
• 13 Then they sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to Jesus to trap him in his words. 14 When they came, they said to him, “Teacher, we know you are truthful and don’t care what anyone thinks, nor do you show partiality but teach the way of God truthfully. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” 15 But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.” 16 They brought a coin. “Whose image and inscription is this?” he asked them “Caesar’s,” they replied. 17 Jesus told them, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were utterly amazed at him.
  • There is history behind this shrewd question
  • Herod the Great had pulled all Palestine as a Roman tributary king. He had been loyal to the Romans and they had respected him and given him a great deal of freedom
  • When he died in 4 B.C., he divided his kingdom into three
    • To Herod Antipas he gave Galilee and Peraea
    • To Herod Philip he gave the wild district up in the north-east around Trachonitis and Ituraea and Abilene
    • To Archelaus he gave the south country including Judea and Samaria
    • Antipas and Philip soon settled in and on the whole ruled wisely and well
    • Archelaus was a complete failure
      • The result was that in 6 AD the Romans had two step in and introduce direct rule
        • Things were so unsatisfactory that southern Palestine could no longer be left as a semi-independent tributary kingdom 
        • It had to become a province governed by a procurator
          • Roman provinces fell into two classes
            • Those which were peaceful and required no troops were governed by the senate and ruled by proconsuls
            • Those which were trouble centers and required troops were the direct sphere of the emperor and were governed by procurators
            • Souther Palestine fell into the second category and tribute was in fact paid directly to the emperor
  • The first act of the governor, Cyrenius, was to take a census of the country in order that he might make proper provision for fair taxation and general administration
    • The calmer section of the people accepted this as an inevitable necessity
    • But one Judas the Gaulonite raised violent opposition
    • He stated that “taxation was no better than an introduction to slavery”
    • He called on the people to rise, and said that God would favor them only if they restored to all the violence they could
    • He took the high ground that for the Jews God was the only ruler
    • The Romans dealt with Judas in their customary efficiency, but his battle cry never died out
    • “No tribute to the Romans” became a rallying cry of the more fanatical Jewish patriots
  • There were three actual taxes imposed
    • A ground tax, which consisted of 1/10 of all the Granin and 1/5 of the wine and fruit produced
      • This was paid partly in product and partly in money
    • An income tax which amounted to one percent of a man’s income
    • A poll tax, which was levied on all men between the ages of 14 and 65, and on all women from the ages of 12 to 65
      • This poll tax, which was levied was one denarius, the daily wage of a working man
      • It was the tax which everyone had to pay for the privilege of simply existing
  • The approach of the Pharisees and Herodians was very subtle
    • They began with flattery that was designed to do two things
      • To disarm the suspicions Jesus might have had
      • Make it impossible for Him to avoid giving an answer without losing His reputation completely
    • In view of all the circumstances the question which they asked of Jesus was a masterpiece of cunning
      • If He said that it was lawful to pay tribute, His influence with the people would be gone forever, and He would be regarded as a traitor and a coward
      • If He said that it was not lawful to pay tribute, they could report Him to the Romans and have Him arrested as a revolutionary
    • Jesus said, “Show me the money!” Actually, “show me a denarius”
      • He asked whose image was on it
        • The image would be that of Tiberius, the reigning emperor
        • All the emperors were called Caesar
        • On the coin there would be the title which declared that this was the coin ‘of Tiberius Caesar, the divine Augustus, son of Augustus’, and on the reverse would be the title ‘pontifex Maximus’, ‘the high priest of the Roman nation’
  • In regard to coinage the ancient world held three consistent principles
    • Coinage is the sign of power
      • When anyone conquered a nation or was a successful rebel, the first thing he did was to issue his own coinage
      • That and that alone was the final guarantee of kingship and power
    • Where the coin was valid the king’s power held good
      • A king’s sway was measurable by the area in which his coins were valid currency
    • Because a coin had the kin’s head and inscription on it, it was held, in some sense, to be his personal property
      • Jesus’ answer therefore was, “By using the coinage of Tiberius you in any even recognize his political power in Palestine. Apart from that, the coinage is his own because it has his name on it. By giving it to him you give him what is in any even his own. Give it to him but remember that there is a sphere in life which belongs to God and not to Caesar.”
  • Never did anyone lay down a more influential principle
    • It conserved at one and the same time the civil and religious power
    • At one and the same time thees words asserted the rights of the state and the liberty of conscience
    • The NT lays down three great principles with regard to the individual Christian and the state
      • The state is ordained by God
        • Without the laws of the state life would be chaos
        • Human beings cannot live together unless they agree to obey the laws of living together
        • Without the state there are valuable services that no one could enjoy
        • The state is the origin of many of the things which make life livable
      • No one can accept all the benefits which the state gives and then opt out of all the responsibilities
        • It is beyond question that the Roman government brought to the ancient world a sense of security it never had before
        • For the most part, except in certain notorious areas, the seas were cleared of pirates and the roads of robbers, civil wars were changed for peace and tyranny for Roman impartial justice
        • It is still true that people cannot honorable receive all the benefits which living in a state confers upon them and then opt out of all the responsibilities of citizenship
      • But there is a limit
        • E. A. Abbot, the NT scholar: The coin had Caesar’s image upon it, and therefore belonged to Caesar. Human beings have God’s image upon time—God created them in His own image (Genesis 1)—and therefore belong to God. The inevitable conclusion is that if the state remains within its proper boundaries and makes its proper demands, the individuals must give it their loyalty and their service; but in the last analysis both state and human beings belong to God, and, therefore, should their claims conflict, loyalty to God comes first. But it remains tru that, in all ordinary circumstances, our Christianity should make us better citizens.

Mark 11:1-14;20-21

• Mark 11:1-6
• When they approached Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2 and told them, “Go into the village ahead of you. As soon as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. 3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here right away.’” 4 So they went and found a colt outside in the street, tied by a door. They untied it, 5 and some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6 They answered them just as Jesus had said; so they let them go.
  • We have come to the last stage of the journey
    • There had been the withdrawal to the north, to the territory around Caesarea Philippi
    • There had been the journey south, with a brief stop in Galilee
    • There had been the way to Judaea and the time in the hill country and beyond the Jordan
    • There had been the road through Jericho
    • Now comes Jerusalem
  • We have to note something without which the story is almost unintelligible
    • When we read the first three gospels, we get the idea that this was actually Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem
      • The gospels, however, are short, and crammed into them is the work of three years
    • John’s gospel we find Jesus frequently in Jerusalem. In fact we find that He regularly went up to Jerusalem for the great feasts
    • The first three gospels are specially interested in the Galilean ministry
    • John is interested in the ministry in Judea
    • The first three all of indications that Jesus was frequently in Jerusalem as well
      • There is His close friendship with Lazarus, Martha, and Mary at Bethany, which speaks of many visits
      • There is the fact that Joseph of Arimathea was Hi secret friend
      • Jesus’ own words in Matthew 23:37
        • 37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!
        • Jesus could not have said that unless there had previously been more than one appeal which had been met with a cold response
      • This is one explanation of the incident with the colt
        • Jesus did not leave things until the last moment
        • He knew what He was going to do and possibly long ago, He had made arrangements with a friend
        • The disciples being sent ahead may have been pre-arranged
        • In any case, this was not a sudden, reckless decision of Jesus. It was something to which all His life had been building up
  • Bethphage and Bethany were villages near Jerusalem
    • Bethphage means house of figs
    • Bethany means house of dates
    • Jewish lawed that Bethphage was one of the circle of villages which makes the limit of a Sabbath day’s journey, less than a mile
    • Bethany was one of the recognized lodging places for pilgrims to the Passover when Jerusalem was full
  • When words failed to move people the prophets of old idd something dramatic as if to say “If you will not hear, you must be compelled to see”
    • These dramatic actions were what we might call acted warnings or dramatic sermons
    • Jesus’ action was a deliberate dramatic claim to be the Messiah
      • But we must be careful to note just what He was doing
      • Zechariah 9:9
        • Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout in triumph, Daughter Jerusalem! Look, your King is coming to you; he is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
      • The whole impact s that the King was coming in peace
      • In Palestine the donkey was not a despised animal, but a noble one
      • When a king went to war he rode on a horse, when he came in peace he rode on a donkey
      • In the time of Jesus, a donkey was the animal used to bear kings
      • But we must note what kind of a King Jesus was claiming to be
        • He came meek and lowly
        • He came in peace and for peace
        • They greeted Him as the Son of David, but they did not understand
        • They were looking for a king who would shatter and smash and break
        • Jesus knew it—and He came meek and lowly, riding on a donkey
  • When Jesus rode into Jerusalem that day, he claimed to be King, but He claimed to be King of peace
  • His actions were a contradiction of everything that was hoped for and expected
• Mark 11:7-10
• 7 They brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes on it, and he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their clothes on the road, and others spread leafy branches cut from the fields. 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted: Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!
  • The colt they brought Jesus had never been ridden
  • That was fitting, for an animal to be used for a sacred purpose must never have been used for any other purpose
    • It was so with the red heifer whose ashes cleansed from pollution (Numbers 19; Deuteronomy 21)
  • The whole picture is of a people who misunderstood
    • It shows a crowd thinking of kingship in the terms of conquest in which they had thought of it for so long
      • It is reminiscent of how Simon Maccabaeus entered Jerusalem 150 years before, after he had blasted Israel’s enemies in battle
      • It was a conqueror’s welcome they sought to give Jesus, but they never dreamed of the kind of conqueror He wished to be
    • The very shouts the crowd raised to Jesus showed how their thoughts were running
      • When they spread their garments on the ground before Him, they did exactly what the crowd did when the man of blood, Jehu, was anointed king (II Kings 9)
      • They shouted “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” Which is a quotation from Psalm 118:26, and should read a little differently, “Blessed in the name of the Lord is the one who is coming”
      • There are three things to note about that shout
        • It was the regular greeting with which pilgrims were addressed when they reached the Temple on the occasion of the great feasts
        • The one who comes was another name for the Messiah. When the Jews spoke about the Messiah, they talked of Him as the One who is coming
        • But it is the whole origin of the Psalm from which the words come that makes them supremely suggestive
          • 167 B.C. Syrian king Antiochus conceived it his duty to be a missionary of Hellenism and to introduce the Greek way of life, Greek thought, and Greek religion wherever he could, even by force
            • He tried to do this in Palestine
            • To possess the law or circumcised a child were crimes punishable by death
            • He desecrated the Temple courts
            • Instituted the worship of Zeus in the Temple
            • Opened brothels in the chambers around the Temple
            • Offered pig’s flesh on the great altar of the burnt offering
            • He did everything he could to wipe out the Jewish faith
          • It was then that Judas Maccabaeus arose; and after an amazing career of conquest, in 163 B.C. he drove Antiochus out and repurified and reconsecrated the Temple, an even which the Feast of the Dedication, or the Feast of Hanukkah, still commemorates
          • And in all probability Psalm 118 was written to commemorate that great day of purification and the battle which Judas Maccabaeus won
          • It is a conqueror’s psalm
  • Again and again we see the same thing happening in this incident
    • Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah, but in such a way as to try to show that the popular ideas of the Messiah were misguided
    • But the people could not see it Their welcome was one which befitted not the King of love but the conqueror who would shatter the enemies of Israel
      • In verses 9 and 10 there is the word Hosanna
      • The word is consistently misunderstood
      • It is quoted and used as if it meant praise; but it is a simple transliteration of the Hebrew for “Save now!” It occurs in exactly the same form in II Samuel 14:4 and II Kings 6:26, where it is used by people seeking for help and protection at the hands of the king
      • When the people shouted Hosanna it was not a cry of praise to Jesus, which it often sound like when we quote it
      • It was a cry to God to break in and save His people not that the Messiah had come
  • No incident shows the sheer courage of Jesus as this does
    • In the circumstances one might have expected Him to enter Jerusalem secretly and to keep hidden from the authorities who were out to destroy Him
    • Instead He entered in such a way that the attention of every eye was focused upon Him
    • One of the most dangerous things that anyone can do is to go to people and tell them that all their accepted ideas are wrong
    • Here see Jesus making the last appeal of love and making it with a courage that is heroic
• Mark 11:11
• 11 He went into Jerusalem and into the temple. After looking around at everything, since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.
  • This simple verse shows us two things about Jesus which were typical of Him
    • It shows us Jesus deliberately summing up His task
      • The whole atmosphere of the last days was one of deliberation
      • Jesus was not recklessly punting into unknown dangers. He was doing everything with His eyes wide open
      • When He looked at everything, He was like a commander summing up the strength of the opposition and His own resources preparatory to the decisive battle
    • It shows us where Jesus got His strength
      • He went back to the peace of Bethany
      • Before He joined battle with the world, He sought the presence of God
      • It was only because each day He faced God that He could face the world’s challenge with such courage
  • This brief passage also shows us something about the disciples
    • They were still with Him
      • By this time it must have been quite plain to them that Jesus was committing suicide, as it seemed to them
      • Sometimes we criticize them for their lack of loyalty in the last days, but it says something for them, that, little as they understood what was happening, they still stood by Him
• Mark 11:12-14;20-21
• 12 The next day when they went out from Bethany, he was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree with leaves, he went to find out if there was anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for it was not the season for figs. 14 He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” And his disciples heard it…20 Early in the morning, as they were passing by, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up. 21 Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”
  • Although in Mark’s gospel the story of the fig tree is divided into two, we take it as one
  • The first part of the story happened on the morning of one day, and the second part on the morning of the next day, with the cleansing of the Temple in between. But, when we are trying to see the meaning of the story, we are better to take it as one
  • There can be no doubt that this, without exception, is the most difficult story in the gospel narrative. To take it as literal history presents difficulties which are almost impossible to overcome
    • The story of does not ring true. To be honest, the whole incident does not seem very worthy of Jesus
      • Jesus had always refused to use His miraculous powers for His own sake. He would not turn the stones into bread to satisfy His own hunger. He would not use His miraculous powers to escape from His enemies. And yet here He uses His power to blast a Tre which had disappointed Him when He was hungry
    • Worse, the whole action was unreasonable
      • This was Passover Season, that is, the middle of April
      • The fig tree in a sheltered spot may bear leaves as early as March, but never did a fig tree bear figs until late May or June
    • The whole story does not seem to fit Jesus at all. What are we to say about it?
      • It we are to take this story as something that actually happened, we must take it as an enacted parable
      • We must in fact take it as one of those prophetic, symbolic, dramatic actions
      • If we take it that way, it may be interpreted as the condemnation of two things
        • It is the condemnation of promise without fulfillment
          • The leaves on the tree might be taken as the promise of fruity, but there was no fruit there
          • It is the condemnation especially of the people of Israel
          • All their history was a preparation for the coming of God’s chose one. The whole promise of their national record was that when the chosen one came they would be eager to receive Him. But when He did come, that promise was tragically unfulfilled
          • If this incident is an enacted parable it is the condemnation of unfulfilled promise
        • It is the condemnation of profession without practice
          • It might be taken that the tree with its leaves professed to offer something and did not
          • The whole cry of the NT is that we can be known only by the fruits of our lives
          • We cannot claim to be followers of Jesus Christ and remain entirely unique the Master whom we profess to love
        • If this incident is to be taken literally and is an enacted parable, that must be the meaning. But, relevant as these lessons may be, it seems difficult to extract them from the incident, because it was quite unreasonable to expect the fig tree to bear figs when the time for figs was still six weeks away
      • Luke does not relate this incident at all, but he has the parable of the fruitless fig tree (Luke 13:6-9)
        • Now that parable ends indecisively. The master of the vineyard wished to root up the tree. The gardener pleaded for another chance. The last chance was given; and it was agreed that if the tree bore fruit it should be spared, and if not it should be destroyed
        • May it not be that this incident is a kind of continuation of that parable?
        • The people of Israel had had their chance. They had failed to bear fruit. And now was the time for their destruction
        • It has been plausibly suggested that on the road from Bethany to Jerusalem there was a lonely withered fig tree. It may well be that Jesus said to His disciples, “You remember the parable I told you about the fruitless fig tree? Israel is still fruitless and will be blasted as that tree.”
        • It may well be that that lonely tree became associated in people’s minds with a saying of Jesus about the fate of fruitlessness, and so the story arose
    • It seems to us to be in some way connected with the parable of the fruitless tree. But in any event the whole lesson of the incident is that uselessness invites disaster

Mark 10:32-52

• Mark 10:32-34
• 32 They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. The disciples were astonished, but those who followed him were afraid. Taking the Twelve aside again, he began to tell them the things that would happen to him. 33 “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death. Then they will hand him over to the Gentiles, 34 and they will mock him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him, and he will rise after three days.”
  • Jesus and His disciples were entering upon the last scene. Jesus had set His course definitely and irrevocably to Jerusalem and the cross
    • There had been the withdrawal to the north, to the territory around Caesarea Philippi
    • There had been the journey south, with a brief stop in Galilee
    • There had been the way to Judaea and the time in the hill country and beyond the Jordan
    • And now the final stage, the road to Jerusalem
  • This story tells us of the loneliness of Jesus
    • They were going along the road and He was out ahead of them, alone
    • There are certain decisions which can only be taken alone
    • There are certain decisions which must be taken and detain roads that must be walked in the awful loneliness of our own souls
    • Yet in the deepest sense of all, even in these times, we are not along, of never is God nearer to us
  • This story tells us of the courage of Jesus
    • Three times Jesus has foretold the things that were to happen to Him in Jerusalem, and each time they grow grimmer and some further detail of horror is included
    • There are two kinds of courage
      • The courage which is a kind of instinctive reaction, almost a reflex, the courage of those who are confronted out of the blue with a crisis to which they instinctively react, scarcely having time to think
      • The courage of those who see the grim thing approaching far ahead, whole have plenty of time to turn back, who could, if they chose, evade the issue, and who yet go on
      • There is no doubt which is the higher courage; this known deliberate facing of the future. That is the courage Jesus showed
      • If no higher verdict was possible, it would still be true to say of Jesus that He ranks with the heroes of the world
  • This story tells of the personal magnetism of Jesus
    • The disciples were sure that Jesus was the Messiah
    • They were equally sure that He was going to die
    • To them these two facts did not make sense when put together
    • Yet they followed. To them everything was dark except one thing—they loved Jesus, and however much they wished to, they could not leave Him
• Mark 10:35-40
• 35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, approached him and said, “Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask you. 36 “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked them. 37 They answered him, “Allow us to sit at your right and at your left in your glory.” 38 Jesus said to them, “You don’t know what you’re asking. Are you able to drink the cup I drink or to be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” 39 “We are able,” they told him. Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink, and you will be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with. 40 But to sit at my right or left is not mine to give; instead, it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”
  • This story tells us something about Mark
    • Matthew puts the request at the mother of James and John, Salome
    • This story shows us the honesty of Mark
      • It’s Mark’s aim to show us the disciples, warts and all. And Mark was right, because the disciples were not a company of saints
      • They were ordinary men
      • It was with people like ourselves that Jesus set out to change the world—and did it
    • This story tells us something about James and John
      • They were ambitious
      • They had completely failed to understand Jesus
        • The amazing thing is not the fact that this incident happened, but when it happened
        • It is the juxtaposition of Jesus’ most definite and detailed forecast of His death and this request that is staggering
        • Words were powerless to rid them of the idea of a Messiah of earthly power and glory. Only the cross could do that
      • But when we have said all that is to be said againset James and John, this story tells us one shining thing about them
        • Bewildered as they might be, they still believed in Jesus
        • Misguided James and John might be, but their hearts were in the right place. They never doubted Jesus’ ultimate triumph
    • This story tells us something of Jesus’ standard of greatness
      • He was telling these two disciples that without a cross there can never be a crown
      • The standard of greatness in the kingdom is the standard of the cross
      • It was true that in the days to come they do go through the experience of their Maser, for James was beheaded by Herod Agrippa, and John suffered much for Christ
      • They accepted the challenge of their Master—even if they did so blindly
    • Jesus told them that the ultimate issue of things belonged to God
• Mark 10:41-45
• 41 When the ten disciples heard this, they began to be indignant with James and John. 42 Jesus called them over and said to them, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave to all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
  • Inevitably the action of James and John aroused deep resentment among the other ten
  • Jesus called them to Him and made quite clear the different standards of greatness in His kingdom and the kingdoms of the world
  • In the kingdoms of the world, the standard of greatness was power
    • How many people does a man control
  • In the kingdom of Jesus the standard was that of service
    • Greatness consisted not in reducing others to one’s service, but in reducing oneself to their service
    • The test was not what service can I extract, but what service can I give
    • The basic trouble is that it is human nature to want to do as little as possible and to get as much as possible
    • It is only when we are filled with the desire to put into life more than we take out that life for ourselves and for others will be happy and prosperous
    • The world needs people whose ideal is service—it needs people who have realized what sound sense Jesus spoke
  • He had come, He said, to give His life as a ransom for many
    • This saying of Jesus is a simple and pictorial way of saying that it cost the life of Jesus to bring men and women back from their sin into the love of God
    • It means that the cost of our salvation was the cross of Christ
    • Beyond that we cannot go
    • We know only that something happened on the cross which opened for us the way to God
• Mark 10:46-52
• 46 They came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd, Bartimaeus (the son of Timaeus), a blind beggar, was sitting by the road. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 Many warned him to keep quiet, but he was crying out all the more, “Have mercy on me, Son of David!” 49 Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called the blind man and said to him, “Have courage! Get up; he’s calling for you.” 50 He threw off his coat, jumped up, and came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus answered him, “What do you want me to do for you?” “Rabboni,” the blind man said to him, “I want to see.” 52 Jesus said to him, “Go, your faith has saved you.” Immediately he could see and began to follow Jesus on the road.
  • For Jesus the end of the road was not far away
    • Jericho was only about fifteen miles from Jerusalem 
    • Jesus was on His way to the Passover
    • When a distinguished Rabbi or teacher was on such a journey, it was the custom that he was surrounded by a crowd of people, disciples and learners, who listened to him as he discoursed while he walked
    • It was the law that every male Jew over 12 years old who lived within 15 miles of Jerusalem must attend the Passover, but this simply wasn’t feasible
    • Those who were unable to go were in the habit of lining the streets of towns and villages through which groups of Passover pilgrims must pass to bid them godspeed on their way
    • So then the streets of Jericho would be lined with people
  • Jericho had one special characteristic
    • There were attached to the Temple over 20,000 priests and as many Levites
    • Very many of these priests and Levites resided in Jericho when they were not on actual temple duty
  • At the northern gate sat a beggar, Bartimaeus
    • To those listening to Jesus’ teaching as He walked, the uproar of Bartimaeus was offensive
    • They tried to silence him, but on one was going to take from him his chance to escape from his world of darkness, and he cried with such violence and persistence that the procession stopped, and he was brought to Jesus
      • In this story we see the sheer persistence of Bartimaeus
        • In the mind of Bartimaeus there was not just a vague, wistful, sentimental wish to see Jesus
        • It was a desperate desire, and it is that disparage desire that gets things done
      • His response to the call of Jesus was immediate and eager, so eager that he threw off his coat to run to Jesus
        • Many people hear the call of Jesus but say in effect, “Wait until I have done this or have finished that.”
        • Certain chances only happen once
        • So ver often we do not seize the moment to act on it—and the chance is gone, maybe forever
      • He knew precisely what he wanted—his sight
        • It should be so with us and Jesus
        • And that involves the one thing that so few people wish to face—self-examination
        • When we go to Jesus, if we are as desperately definite as Bartimaeus, things will happen
      • Bartimaeus had a quite inadequate conception of Jesus
        • Son of David was a messianic title, but it has in it all the thought of a conquering Messiah, a king of David’s line who would lead Israel to national greatness
          • Bartimaeus had faith though
          • The demand is not hat we should fully understand Jesus
          • The demand is for faith
      • Bartimaeus may have been a beggar by the wayside but he was a man of gratitude
        • Having received his sight, he followed Jesus
        • He did not selfishly go on his way when his need was met
        • He began with need, went on to gratitude, and finished with loyalty—and that is a perfect summary of the stages of discipleship

Mark 10:13-31

• Mark 10:13-16
• 13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me. Don’t stop them, because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 After taking them in his arms, he laid his hands on them and blessed them.
  • It was natural that Jewish mothers should wish their children to be blessed by a great and distinguished Rabbi. Especially they brought their children to such a person on their first birthday
  • We will fully understand the almost poignant beauty of this passage only if we remember when it happened. Jesus was on the way to the cross, and He knew it
    • Even with such a tension in His mind as that, He had time to take them in His arms and He had the heart to smile into their faces and maybe to play with them for a while
    • The disciples were not necessarily rude and uncivilized. They were simply trying to protect Jesus
      • They knew quite clearly that tragedy lay ahead and they could see the tension under which Jesus labored
      • They didn’t want Him to be bothered
      • They could not conceive that He could want the children around Him at such a time
    • Jesus said to let the children come to Him
      • This tells us that He was the kind of person who cared for children and for whom children cared
      • He could not have been a stern and gloomy and joyless person
      • He must have smiled easily and laughed joyfully 
      • This small story throws a flood of light on the human kind of person Jesus was
    • What is it about children that Jesus liked and valued so much?
      • There is the child’s humility
        • Ordinarily children are embarrassed by prominence and publicity
        • They have not yet learned to think in terms of place and pride and privilege
        • They have not yet learned to discover the importance of themselves
      • There is the child’s obedience
        • Their natural instinct is to obey
        • They have not yet learned the pride and false independence which separate us from one another and from God
      • There is the child’s trust
        • It is seen in the child’s acceptance of authority
          • Children often believe that their parents can do no wrong and know everything
          • Instinctively children realize their own ignorance and their own helplessness and trust the ones they think know
        • It is seen in the child’s confidence in other people
          • Children do not expect people to be bad
          • Children have not yet learned to suspect the world; they still believe the best about others
      • The child has a short memory
        • Children have not yet learned to bear grudges and nourish bitterness
        • Even when they are unjustly treated, they forget, and forget so completely that they do not even need to forgive
• Mark 10:17-22
• 17 As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: Do not murder; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness; do not defraud; honor your father and mother. 20 He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these from my youth.” 21 Looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, “You lack one thing: Go, sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 22 But he was dismayed by this demand, and he went away grieving, because he had many possessions.
  • We must note how the man came and how Jesus met him
    • He came running and flung himself at Jesus’ feet
    • There is something amazing in the sight of this rich, young ruler falling and the feet of the penniless Jesus, who was on the way to being an outlaw
    • Good Teacher!
      • Jesus answered back basically, “No flattery! Don’t call me good! Keep that word for God!”
      • It looks almost as if Jesus was trying to pour cold water on that young enthusiasm
    • It is clear that this man came to Jesus in a moment of overflowing emotion
      • Jesus basically said, “Stop and think! Don’t get carried away by your excitement. I don’ want you swept to me by a moment of emotion Think calmly about what you are doing.”
      • Jesus wasn’t trying to brush the man off. He was telling hime even at the very outset to count the cost
    • Jesus was saying, “You cannot become a Christian by devotion to me. You must look at God
      • The danger is that the pupil, the scholar, the young person may form a personal attachment to the teacher or preacher and think that it is an attachment to God
        • Teachers and preachers must never point to themselves; they must always point to God
        • Teachers and preachers are in the last analysis only pointers to God (prophet)
  • Never did any story so lay down the essential Christian truth that respectability is enough
    • Jesus quoted the commandments which were the basis of the decent life; and all but one were negative commandments
    • The man answered “I never in my life did anyone any harm.”
    • But the real question is “What good have you done?”
    • Jesus was even more pointed with this individual
      • “ With all your possessions and wealth, what positive good have you done to others? How much have you gone out of your way tot help and comfort and strengthen others as you might have done?”
      • Respectability consists in not doing things; Christianity consists in doing things
      • That was precisely where this man, like so many of us, failed
  • Jesus confronted him with a challenge
    • Get out of the moral respectability trap; stop looking at goodness as consisting in not doing things
    • Take yourself and all that you have, and spend everything on others; Then you will find true happiness in time and in eternity
      • Sadly, the man couldn’t do it
      • True, he had never stolen and he had never defrauded anyone, but neither had he ever been positively and sacrificially generous
      • It may be respectable never to take away from anyone; It is Christian to give to someone
    • Jesus basic and essential question: “How much do you want real Christianity? Do you want it enough to give away your possessions?” Or whatever it is that is keeping you from fully following Jesus
    • We all want goodness, but so few of us want it enough to pay the price
    • Jesus looked at the man with love
      • There was the appeal of love
        • Jesus was not angry with him
        • He loved him too much for that
        • It was not the look of anger but the appeal of love
      • There was the challenge to moral courage
        • It was a look which sought to pul the man out of his comfortable, respectable, settled life into the adventure of being a real Christian
      • It was the look of grief
        • The grief of seeing a man deliberately choose not to be what he might have been and hand it in him to be
• Mark 10:23-27
• 23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 The disciples were astonished at his words. Again Jesus said to them, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 They were even more astonished, saying to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27 Looking at them, Jesus said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God, because all things are possible with God.”
  • Then Jesus turned the discussion back to His own disciples
    • How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!
    • The word used for wealth  is defined by Aristotle as, “All those things of which the value is measured by coinage.”
    • The reason for the amazement of the disciples was that Jesus was turning accepted Jewish standards completely upside down
      • It was believed that prosperity was the sign of a good man
      • If a man was rich, God must have honored and blessed him
      • The disciples would have argued that the more prosperous people were, the more certain they were of entry into the kingdom
      • Jesus’ response was basically “How difficult it is for those who have put their trust in riches to enter the kingdom.”
    • No one ever saw the dangers of prosperity and of material things more clearly than Jesus did. What are these dangers
      • Material possessions tend to fix our hearts to this world
      • If our main interest is in material possessions, it tends to make us think of everything in terms of price
        • If our main interest in in material things, we will think in terms of price and not in terms of value
        • We may well forget there are values in this world far beyond money, that there are things which have no price, and that there are precious things that money cannot buy
        • It is fatal to begin to think that everything worth having has a monetary value
      • Jesus would have said that the possession of material goods is two things
        • It is an acid test of character
          • It takes a really big and good person to bear it worthily
        • It is a responsibility
          • We will always be judged by two standards; how we got our possessions and how we use them
          • Will we use what we have selfishly or generously
          • Will we use it as if we had undisputed possession of it, or remembering that we hold it in stewardship from God
    • The reaction of the disciples was that if what Jesus was saying was true, to be saved at all was basically impossible
      • Jesus then stated the whole doctrine of salvation in a nutshell
        • If salvation depended on a person’s own efforts it would be impossible for anyone. But salvation is the gift of God and all things are possible to Him.
      • Those who trust in themselves and in their possessions can never be saved. Those who trust in the saving power and the redeeming love of God can enter freely into salvation
• Mark 10:28-31
• 28 Peter began to tell him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” 29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, 30 who will not receive a hundred times more, now at this time—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions —and eternal life in the age to come. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
  • Peter couldn’t help drawing the contrast between that man and himself and his friends
  • Just as the man had refused Jesus, he and his friends had accepted the call, and Peter with almost crude honesty of his wanted to know what he and his friends were to get out of it
  • Jesus’s answer falls into three section
    • He said that no one ever gave up anything for the sake of Himself and of His good news without getting it back a hundredfold
      • A person’s Christianity might involve the loss of home and friends and loved ones, but entry into the Christian Church brought with it a family far greater and wider than the one left behind—a new spiritual family
      • Becoming a Christian may mean sacrificing ties that are very dear, but anyone who does so becomes a member of a family as wide as earth and heaven
    • Jesus added two things
      • He added the simple words “and persecutions”
        • He’s removing the whole matter from the world of quid pro quo
        • They take away the idea of a material reward for a material sacrifice
        • He never offered an easy way
        • He made it clear that to be a Christian is a costly thing
      • This tells us that Jesus never used a bribe to make people follow Him
        • He used a challenge
        • Certainly you will get your reward, but you will have to show yourself big enough and brave enough to get it
        • He did not call men and women to win the rewards of time. He called them to earn the blessings of eternity. God has not only this world in which to repay
    • Then Jesus added a warning
      • Many who are first shall be last
      • This was a warning to Peter who may have been estimating his own worth and his own reward and assessing them high
      • The final standard of judgment is with God. Many may stand well in the judgment of the world, but the judgment of God may upset the world’s judgment. Still more; many may stand well in their own judgment, and find that God’s evaluation of them is very different
      • It’s a warning against all pride
      • It’s a warning that the ultimate judgments belong to God who alone knows the motives of human hearts
      • It is a warning that the judgments of heaven may well upset the reputations of earth.

Mark 9:30-42

• Mark 9:30-32
• 30 Then they left that place and made their way through Galilee, but he did not want anyone to know it. 31 For he was teaching his disciples and telling them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after he is killed, he will rise three days later.” 32 But they did not understand this statement, and they were afraid to ask him.
  • This passage marks a milestone. Jesus had now left the north country where He was safe and was taking the first step toward Jerusalem and to the cross which awaited Him there
  • For once He did not want the crowds around. He knew quite clearly that unless He could write His message on the hearts of His chosen disciples, He had failed
  • He had to make sure, before He left this world in the body, that there were some who understood, however dimly, what He had come to say
  • This time the tragedy of His warning is even more poignant
    • The Son of Man is being delivered into the hands of men
    • He was not only announcing a face and giving a warning, He was also making a last appeal to the man in whose heart was forming the purpose of betrayal 
    • Still the disciples did not understand. The thing they did not understand was the bit about rising again; something they never grasped the certainty of the resurrection until it had actually taken place
      • When they did not understand, they were afraid to ask any further questions. It was as if they knew so much that they were afraid to know more
        • Medical diagnosis that we know is bad, but are afraid to ask more questions because we don’t necessarily want to know more
          • Sometimes we are amazed that they did not grasp what was so plainly spoken, yet we do the same thing
          • The human mind has an amazing faculty for rejecting what it does not want to see
          • People still accept the parts of the Christian message which they like and which suit them, and refuse to understand the rest
• Mark 9:33-35
• 33 They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” 34 But they were silent, because on the way they had been arguing with one another about who was the greatest. 35 Sitting down, he called the Twelve and said to them, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be last and servant of all.”
  • Nothing so well shows how far the disciples were from realizing the real meaning of what the Messiah was going to accomplish than this. Repeatedly He had told them what awaited Him in Jerusalem, and yet they were still thinking of His kingdom in earthly terms and of themselves as His chief ministers of state. There is something heartbreaking in the thought of Jesus going toward a cross and His disciples arguing about who would be greatest
    • Yet in their heart of hearts they knew they were wrong
      • When He asked them what they had been arguing about, they had nothing to say. It was the silence of shame
        • It is strange how a thing takes its proper place and acquires its true character when it is set in the eyes of Jesus
        • So long as they thought that Jesus was not listening and that Jesus had not seen, the argument about who should be greatest seemed fair enough, but when that argument had to be stated in the presence of Jesus it was seen in all its unworthiness
        • How much different would we live if we thought of everything we were doing as being done in the sight of Jesus (my toes hurt)
  • Jesus dealt with this very seriously. It says that He sat down and called the disciples to Him
    • Rabbis sat to teach when the subject was of great importance
    • Jesus deliberately took up the position of a Rabbi teaching his pupils before He spoke
      • Greatness in His kingdom would be found not by being first, but by being last; not by being masters, but by being servants
      • It was not that Jesus abolished ambition
        • He recreated ambition
        • For the ambition to rule, He substituted the ambition to serve
        • For the ambition to have things done for us, He substituted the ambition to do things for others
          • The really great people, those who are remembered as having made a real contribution to life, are the ones who said to themselves, not, “How can I use the state and society to further my own prestige and my own personal ambitions?” But, “How can I use my personal gifts and talents to serve the state?”
          • JFK “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”
          • Instead of coming to church to get something, come to see how you can give/serve
  • The divisions and disputes which tear the Church apart would for the most part never occur if the only desire of its leaders  members was to serve it without caring what position they occupied. When Jesus spoke of the supreme greatness and value of the one whose ambition was to be a servant, He laid down one of the greatest practical truths in the world
• Mark 9:36-37
• 36 He took a child, had him stand among them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one little child such as this in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me does not welcome me, but him who sent me.”
  • Jesus is steal dealing with the worthy and unworthy ambition
    • Children have no influence at all; they cannot advance a career nor enhance a person’s prestige; they cannot give us things
    • Children need things; they must have things done for them
    • So Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes the poor, ordinary people, the people who have no influence and no wealth and no power, the people who need things done for them, is welcoming me. More than that, that person is welcoming God.”
      • It is the person who needs things that we must seek
  • There is a warning here
    • It is easy to cultivate the friendship of the person who can do things for us, and whose influence can be useful to us
    • And it is equally easy to avoid the person who inconveniently needs our help
    • It is easy to want favor with the influential and the great, and to neglect the simple, humble, ordinary people
    • In effect, Jesus says here that we should seek out not those who can do things for us, but those for whom we can do things, for in this way we are seeking Jesus
• Mark 9:38-40
• 38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.” 39 “Don’t stop him,” said Jesus, “because there is no one who will perform a miracle in my name who can soon afterward speak evil of me. 40 For whoever is not against us is for us.
  • There was one very common way to exorcise demons. If you could get to know the name of a still more powerful spirit and command the evil demon in that name to come out of a person, the demon was supposed to be powerless to resist
  • Jesus declared that no one could do a mighty work in His name and be altogether His enemy. Then Jesus laid down the great principle that “Whoever is not agains us is for us.”
  • A lesson we should all learn
    • We all have a right to our own thoughts
    • We all have a right to think things out and to think them through until we come to our own conclusions and our own beliefs
      • We are never going to agree with someone 100% of the time. There are going to be differences of opinion, and that is ok
        • It is necessary to remember that truth is always bigger than any individual’s grasp of it
        • No one can possibly grasp all truth
        • The basis of tolerance is simply the realization of the magnitude of truth itself
          • We should never “tolerate” something that is obviously against Scripture
    • We must concede the right to do our own speaking
      • There are of course limits.
        • If someone is spreading doctrines calculated to destroy morality and to remove the foundations from all civilized and Christian society, they must be combated. But the way to combat them is certainly not to eliminate them by force but to prove them wrong
        • Voltaire~ “I hate what you say, but I would die for your right to say it”
    • We must remember that any doctrine or belief must finally be judged by the kind of people it produces
      • The question must always ultimately be, not, “how is a Church governed?” But, “What kind of people does a Church produce?”
    • We may hate a person’s beliefs, but we must never hate the person
      • We may wish to eliminate the teaching, but we must never wish to eliminate the teacher
• Mark 9:41-42
• 41 And whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you belong to Christ —truly I tell you, he will never lose his reward. 42 “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to fall away —it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
  • The teaching of this passage is simple and straightforward
    • It declares that any kindness shown, any help give to the people of Christ will not lose its reward
      • When Jesus saw someone in need, He helped that person in the most practical way, and the duty of help has been passed down to us
      • It is to be noted how simple the help is. The gift is a cup of cold water. We are not asked to do great things for others, things beyond our power. We are asked to give the simple things that anyone can give
        • A missionary tells a story about telling a class of African schoolchildren about giving a cup of cold water in the name of Jesus. She was sitting on the veranda of her house. Into the village square came a company of native bearers. They had heavy packs. They were tired and thirsty, and they sat down to rest. Now they were men of another tribe, and had they asked the ordinary non-Christian native for water they would have been told to go find it for themselves, because of the barrier between the tribes. But as the men sat wearily, and the missionary watched, from the school emerged a little line of tiny African girls. On their heads they had pitchers of water. Shyly and fearfully they approached the tired bearers, knelt and offered their pitchers of water. In surprise they bearers took them and drank and handed them back, and the girls took to their heels and ran to the missionary. “We have given a thirsty man a drink”, they said, “in the name of Jesus.” The little children took the story and duty literally.
          • Would that more would do so! It is the simple kindnesses that are needed
    • But the opposite is also true
      • To help is to win the eternal reward
      • To cause a weaker brother or sister to stumble is to win the eternal punishment
        • The millstone here is literally a millstone turned by a donkey
        • To be cast into the sea with that attached was certainly to have no hope of return
        • To sin is terrible but to teach another to sin is infinitely worse
      • God is not hard on the sinner, but He will be stern to the person who makes it easier for another to sin, and whose conduct, either thoughtless or deliberate, puts a stumbling block in the path of a weaker brother or sister