Thoughts from a Crosseyed Jesus Freak

Mark 14:27-52

• Mark 14:27-31
• 27 Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will fall away, because it is written: I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered. 28 But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you to Galilee. 29 Peter told him, “Even if everyone falls away, I will not. 30 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to him, “today, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times. 31 But he kept insisting, “If I have to die with you, I will never deny you.” And they all said the same thing.
  • It is a tremendous thing about Jesus that there was nothing for which He was not prepared
    • The opposition, the misunderstanding, the enmity of the orthodox religious people, the betrayal by one of His own inner circle, the pain and the agony of the cross—He was prepared for them all
    • But perhaps what hurt Him most was the failure of His friends
      • It is when we are up against it that we need our friends most, and that was exactly when Jesus’ friends left Him all alone and let Him down. There was nothing in the whole gamut of physical pain and mental torture that Jesus did not pass through
  • Jesus had supremely, more than anyone who has ever lived, this quality of fortitude, the ability to remain steadfast no matter what blows life assaulted Him with, this serenity when there was nothing but heartbreak behind and torture in front
    • Inevitably every now and then we find ourselves catching our breath at His heroism
  • When Jesus foretold this tragic failure of loyalty, Peter could not believe that it would happen
    • In the 18th century, the Marquis of Huntly was captured. His captors pointed at the block and the axe and told him that unless he abandoned his loyalty he would be executed then and there. His answer was, “You can take my head from my shoulders but you will never take my heart from my king.” That was what Peter was saying that night
  • There is a lesson in the word Jesus used for “fall away”
    • The Greek verb is skandalizein, from skandalon, or skandalethron which meant the bait in the trap, the stick on to which the animal was lured and with snapped the trap when the animal stepped on it
    • So this word came to mean to entrap, or to trip up by some trick or guile
    • Peter was too sure
      • He had forgotten the traps that life can lay for even the best among us. He had forgotten how easy it is to step on a slippery place and fall. He had forgotten his own human weakness and the strength of the devil’s temptations
      • But there is one thing to be remembered about Peter—his heart was in the right place. Better a Peter with a flaming heart of love, even if that love did for a moment fail most shamefully, than a Judas with a cold heart of hate. Let those people condemn Peter who never broke a promise, who were never disloyal in thought or action to a pledge. Peter loved Jesus, and even if his love failed, it rose again
• Mark 14:32-42
• 32 Then they came to a place named Gethsemane, and he told his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 He took Peter, James, and John with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. 34 He said to them, “I am deeply grieved to the point of death. Remain here and stay awake.” 35 He went a little farther, fell to the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 And he said, “Abba, Father! All things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will.” 37 Then he came and found them sleeping. He said to Peter, “Simon, are you sleeping? Couldn’t you stay awake one hour? 38 Stay awake and pray so that you won’t enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39 Once again he went away and prayed, saying the same thing. 40 And again he came and found them sleeping, because they could not keep their eyes open. They did not know what to say to him. 41 Then he came a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The time has come. See, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Get up; let’s go. See, my betrayer is near.”
  • The fact that Judas knew to look for Him in Gethsemane shows that Jesus was in the habit of going there
    • In Jerusalem itself there were no gardens. The city was too crowded, and there was a strange law that the city’s sacred soil might not be polluted with manure for the gardens
    • But some of the rich people possessed private gardens out on the Mount of Olives, where they took their rest
    • Jesus may have had some wealthy friend who gave Him the privilege of using his garden at night
  • When Jesus went to Gethsemane there were two things He sorely desired. Human fellowship and God’s fellowship
    • In time of trouble we want friends with us. We do not necessarily want them to do anything. We do not necessarily even want to talk to them or have them talk to us. We only want them there. Jesus was like that. 
    • It was strange that men who so short a time before had been protesting that they would die for Him could not stay awake for Him one single hour. But none can blame them for the excitement and the tension had drained their strength and their resistance
  • Certain things are clear about Jesus in this passage
    • He did not want to die
      • He was 33 and no one wants to die with life just opening on to the best of the years
      • He had done so little and there was a world waiting to be saved
      • He knew what crucifixion was like and He shuddered at the thought of it
      • He had to compel Himself to go on—just as we so often have to do
    • He did not fully understand why this had to be
      • He only knew beyond a doubt that this was the will of God and that He must go on
      • Jesus had to make the great venture of faith, He had to accept what He could not understand
    • He submitted to the will of God
      • Abba is the Aramaic for “my father”. It is that one word which made all the difference
      • Jesus was not submitting to a God who made a cynical sport of men and women
      • Even in this terrible hour, when He was making this terrible demand, God was Father
        • When Richard Cameron, the covenanter, was killed, his head and hands were cut off by one Murray and taken to Edinburgh. His father was in prison for the same charge, and they wanted to add grief to him. They gave him his son’s hands and head, asking if they knew who they belonged to. He kissed them and said, “I know them—I know them. They are my son’s—my own dear son’s. It is the Lord. Good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor mine, but hath made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.” 
      • If we can call God Father everything becomes bearable. Time and time again we will not understand, but always we will be certain that the Father’s hand will never cause His child a needless tear. That is what Jesus knew; that is why He could go on—and it can be so with us
  • We must note how the passage ends
    • The traitor and his gang had arrived 
    • What was Jesus’ reaction? Not to run away, although even then, in the night, it would have been easy to escape. His reaction was to face them. To the end, He would neither turn aside nor turn back
• Mark 14:43-50
• 43 While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, suddenly arrived. With him was a mob, with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. 44 His betrayer had given them a signal. “The one I kiss,” he said, “he’s the one; arrest him and take him away under guard.” 45 So when he came, immediately he went up to Jesus and said, “Rabbi!” and kissed him. 46 They took hold of him and arrested him. 47 One of those who stood by drew his sword, struck the high priest’s servant, and cut off his ear. 48 Jesus said to them,“Have you come out with swords and clubs, as if I were a criminal, to capture me? 49 Every day I was among you, teaching in the temple, and you didn’t arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.” 50 Then they all deserted him and ran away.
  • Here is sheer drama and the characters stand out before us
    • There is Judas, the traitor
      • He was aware that the people knew Jesus well enough by sight. But he felt that in the dim light of the garden, with the darkness of the trees lit in pools of light by the flare of the torches, they needed a definite indication of who they were to arrest. And so he chose that most terrible of signs—a kiss
      • It was customary to greet a Rabbi with a kiss. It was a sign of respect and affection for a well-loved teacher. But there is a dreadful thing here
        • When Judas says, “The one I kiss, he’s the one”, he uses the word philein which is the ordinary word. But when it is said that he came forward and kissed Jesus, the word is kataphilein
        • The kata is intensive and suggests that the kiss was prolonged in order to give a clear signal. But more than that, it was not a mere formal greeting. It was the greeting of a friend. That is the grimmest and most awful thing in all the gospel story
    • There is the arresting mob
      • They came from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. These were the three sections of the Sanhedrin, and Mark means that they came from the Sanhedrin
        • Even under Roman jurisdiction the Sanhedrin had certain police rights and duties in Jerusalem and had its own police force
      • No doubt an assorted mix had attached itself to them on the way. 
      • Somehow Mark manages to convey the pent-up excitement of those who came to make the arrest. Maybe they had come prepared for bloodshed with nerves taut and tense. It is they who emanate terror—not Jesus
    • There is the man who drew his sword and struck a blow
      • John tells us that it was Peter. It sounds like Peter, and Mark very likely omitted the name because it was not yet safe to write it down. In the scuffle no one saw who struck the blow; it was better that no one should know
      • But when John wrote forty years later it was then quite safe to write it down
      • It may be wrong to draw a sword and hack at a man, but somehow we are glad that there was one man there who, at least on the impulse of the moment, was prepared to strike a blow for Jesus
    • There are the disciples
      • Their nerve cracked. They could not face it. They were afraid that they too would share the fate of Jesus, so they fled
    • There is Jesus Himself
      • The strange thing is that in all this disordered scene Jesus was the one oasis of serenity
      • As we read the story it reads as if He, not the Sanhedrin police, was directing affairs
      • For Him the struggle in the garden was over, and now there was the peace of the Man who knows that He is following the will of God
• Mark 14:51-52
• 51 Now a certain young man, wearing nothing but a linen cloth, was following him. They caught hold of him, 52 but he left the linen cloth behind and ran away naked.
  • These are two strange and fascinating verses
    • At first sight they seem completely irrelevant. They seem to add nothing to the narrative and yet there must be some reason for them being there
  • We saw in the Introduction that Matthew and Luke used Mark as the basis of their work and that they include in their gospels practically everything that is in Mark. But they do not include these two verses
  • That would seem to show that this incident was interesting to Mark and not really interesting to anyone else. Why then was this incident so interesting to Mark that he felt he must include it
    • The most probable answer is that the young man was Mark himself, and that this is his way of saying, “I was there”, without mentioning his own name at all
  • When we read Acts we find that the meeting place and headquarters of the Jerusalem church was apparently in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark. If that is so, it is at least probable that the upper room in which the Last Supper was eaten was in that same house
  • There could be no more natural place than that to be the center of the Church. If we can assume that, there are two possibilities
    • It may be that Mark was actually present at the Last Supper. He was young, just a boy, and maybe no one really noticed him. But he was fascinated with Jesus, and when the company went out into the dark, he slipped out after them when he ought to have been in bed, with only the linen sheet covering him. It may be that all the time Mark was there in the shadows listening and watching. That would explain where the Gethsemane narrative came from. If the disciples were all asleep, how did anyone know about the struggle of soul that Jesus had there? It may be that the one witness was Mark as he stood silent in the shadows, watching with a boy’s reverence the greatest hero had ever known. 
    • From John’s narrative, we know that Judas left the company before the meal was fully ended. It may be that it was to the upper room that Judas meant to lead the Temple police so that they might secretly arrest Jesus. But when Judas came back with the police, Jesus and His disciples were gone. Naturally there was an argument. The uproar wakened Mark. He heard Judas propose that they should try the garden of Gethsemane. Quickly Mark wrapped his bedsheet around him and sped through the night to the garden to warn Jesus. But he arrived too late, and in the scuffle that followed was very nearly arrested himself.
• Whatever may be true, we may take it as fairly certain that Mark put in this passage because it was about himself. He could never forget that night. He was too humble to put his own name in, but in this way he wrote his signature and said, to anyone who could read between the lines, “I was there as a boy.”

Mark 14:12-26

• Mark 14:12-16
• 12 On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrifice the Passover lamb, his disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and prepare the Passover so that you may eat it?”13 So he sent two of his disciples and told them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. 14 Wherever he enters, tell the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”’ 15 He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make the preparations for us there.” 16 So the disciples went out, entered the city, and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.
  • Again and again we see that Jesus did not leave things until the last moment
    • It appears that He had possible arranged the cold to be ready for His ride into Jerusalem; and here we see that all His arrangements may have been made long beforehand (I say maybe, because I like to leave the possibility of all of this being supernatural/miraculous as well)
  • His disciples wished to know where they would eat the Passover
    • Jesus sent them into Jerusalem with instructions to look for a many carrying an water jar. To carry a water jar was a woman’s duty. It was a thing that no man ever did. A man with a water jar on his shoulder would be very easy to pick out in any crowd.
  • The larger Jewish houses had upper rooms
    • Such houses looked exactly like a smaller box placed on top of a bigger box. The smaller box was the upper room, and it was accessed by an outside stair, making it unnecessary to go through the main room
    • The upper room had many uses
      • It was a storeroom, ti was a place for quiet and meditation, it was a guest room for visitors
      • But in particular it was the place where a Rabbi taught his chosen band of intimate disciples. Jesus was following the custom that any Jewish Rabbi might follow
  • We must remember the Jewish breakdown of days
    • The new day began at 6 PM
    • Up until 6 pm it was the 13th of Nisan, the day of the preparation for the Passover
    • But the 14th of Nisan, the Passover day itself, began at 6 pm. In other words, Friday the 14th began at 6 pm on Thursday the 13th
  • What were the preparations that a Jew made for the Passover?
    • First was the ceremonial search for leaven
      • Before the Passover, every particle of leaven must be banished from the house. That was because the first Passover in Egypt had been eaten with unleavened bread
      • It had been used in Egypt because it can be baked much more quickly than a loaf baked with leaven, and the first Passover, the Passover of escape from Egypt, had been eaten in hasted with everyone ready for the road
      • In addition, leaven was the symbol of corruption
        • Leaven is fermented dough, and Jews identified fermentation with putrefaction, and so leaven stood for rottenness
        • The day before the Passover, the master of the house took a lighted candle and ceremonially searched the house for leaven. Before the search he prayed
          • Blessed are though, Yahweh, our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us by thy commandments, and commanded us to remove the leaven
        • At the end of the search the householder said
          • All the leaven that is in my possession, that which I have seen and that which I have not seen, be it null, be it accounted as the dust of the earth
    • Next, on the afternoon before the Passover evening, came the sacrifice of the Passover lamb
      • All the people came to the Temple. The worshiper must slay his own lamb, thereby, as it were, making his own sacrifice
      • In the Temple the worshiper slew his own lamb. Between the worshippers and the altar were two long lines of priests, each with a gold or silver bowl. As the lamb’s throat  was slit the blood was caught in one of these bowls, and passed up the line, until the priest at the end of the line dashed it upon the altar
      • The carcass was then flayed, the entrails and the fat extracted, because they were part of the necessary sacrificed, and the carcass handed back to the worshiper 
      • If the figures of Josephus are anywhere close to correct, and there were more than 250,000 lambs slain, the scene in th Temple courts and the blood-stained condition of the altar can hardly be imagined
      • The lamb was carried home to be roasted. It must not be boiled. Nothing must touch it, not even the sides of a pot. It had to be roasted over an open fire on a spit made of pomegranate wood. The spit went right through the lamb from mouth to other end, and the lamb had to be roasted entire with head, legs, and tail still attached to the body
  • Certain things were necessary and these were the things the disciple would have to get ready
    • There was the lamb, to remind them of how their houses had been protected by the badge of blood when the angel of death passed through Egypt
    • There was the unleavened bread to remind them of the great they had eaten in haste when they escaped from slavery
    • There was a bowl of salt water, to remind them of the tears they had shed in Egypt and the waters of the Read Sea through which they had miraculously passed to safety
    • There was a collection of bitter herbs
      • Horseradish, chicory, endive, lettuce, and horehound
      • To remind them of the bitterness of slavery in Egypt
    • There was a paste called charosheth, a mix of apples, dates, pomegranates, and nuts, to remind them of the clay of which they had made bricks in Egypt
      • Through it there were sticks of cinnamon to remind them of the straw with which the bricks had been made
    • There were four cups of wine
      • The cups contained a little more than half a pint of wine, but three parts of wine were mixed with two of water
      • The four cups, which were drunk at different stages of the meal were to remind them of the four promises in Exodus 6:6-7
        • 6 “Therefore tell the Israelites: I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians and rescue you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians.
        • I will bring you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians and rescue you from slavery to them
        • I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment 
        • I will take you as my people
        • I will be your God
  • Such were the preparations which had to be made for the Passover. Every detail spoke of that great day of deliverance when God liberated His people from their bondage in Egypt
  • It was at that feast that He who liberated the world from sin was to sit at His last meal with His disciples
• Mark 14:17-21
• 17 When evening came, he arrived with the Twelve. 18 While they were reclining and eating, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.” 19 They began to be distressed and to say to him one by one, “Surely not I?” 20 He said to them, “It is one of the Twelve—the one who is dipping bread in the bowl with me. 21 For the Son of Man will go just as it is written about him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for him if he had not been born.”
  • The new day began at 6 pm and when the Passover evening had come, Jesus sat down with the disciples
    • There was only one change in the old ritual which had been observed so many centuries ago in Egypt. At the first Passover Feast in Egypt, the meal had been eaten standing. But that had been a sign of haste, a sign that they were slaves escaping from slavery
    • In the time of Jesus, the regulation was that they meal should be eaten reclining, for that was the sign of free people, with a home and a country of their own
  • We can see certain great things here
    • Jesus knew what was going to happen
      • That is His supreme courage, especially in the last days. It would have been easy fro Him to escape, and yet undeterred He went on
      • With a full knowledge of what lay ahead, Jesus was for going on
    • Jesus could see into the heart of Judas
      • The curious thing is that the other disciples seem to have had no suspicions. If they had known what Judas was up to, it is certain that they would have stopped him even by violence
      • There may be things we succeed in hiding from other people, but we cannot hide them from Jesus Christ. He is the searcher of human hearts. He knows what is in each one of us
    • In this passage, we see Jesus offering tow things to Judas
      • He is making love’s last appeal
        • It is as if He is saying to Judas, “I know what you are going to do. Will you not stop even now?”
      • He is offering Judas a last warning
        • He is telling him in advance of the consequences of the thing that it is in his heart to do
        • But we must note this, for it is of the essence of the way in which God deals with us—there is no compulsion
        • Without a doubt, Jesus could have stopped Judas. All He had to do was tell the other eleven what Judas was planning, and Judas would have never left that room alive
        • Here is the whole human situation. Og d has given us free will. His love appeals to us. His truth warns us. But there is no compulsion
        • We hold the awful responsibility that we can spurn the appeal of God’s love and disregard the warning of His voice. In the end, there is no one but ourselves responsible for our sins
        • God does not stop us, whether we like it or not, from sin. He seeks to make us love Him so much that His voice is more sweetly insistent to us than all the voices which all us away from Him
• Mark 14:22-26
• 22 As they were eating, he took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is my body.” 23 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. 24 He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. 25 Truly I tell you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” 26 After singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
  • First we must lay out the various steps of the Passover Feast, so that in our mind’ s eye we can follow what Jesus and His disciples were doing. The steps came in this order
    • 1. The cup of the Kiddush
      • Kiddush means sanctification or separation. This was the act which separated this meal from all other common meals
      • The head of the family took the cup and prayed over it, and then all drank of it
    • 2. The first hand washing
      • This was carried out only by the person who was to celebrate the feast
      • Three times he had to wash his hands in the prescribed way which we have already described when studying chapter 7
    • 3. A piece of parsley or lettuce was then taken and dipped in the bowl of salt water and eaten
      • This was an appetizer to the meal, but the parsley stood for the hyssop with which the mantle of the door had been smeared with blood, and the salt stood for the tears of Egypt and for the waters of the Red Sea through which Israel had been brought in safety
    • 4. The breaking of the bread
      • Two blessings were used at the breaking of the bread
        • Blessed be thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth from the earth
        • Blessed art thou, our Father in heaven, who gives us today the bread necessary for us
      • On the table lay three circles of unleavened bread
        • The middle one was taken and broken
        • At this point only a little was eaten. It was to remind the Jews of the bread of affliction that they ate I Egypt and it was broken to remind them that slaves had never a whole loaf, but only broken crusts to eat
          • As it was broken, the head o fate family said, “This is the bread of affliction which our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whosoever is hungry let him come and eat. Whosoever is in need let him come and keep the Passover with us
    • 5. Next came the relating of the story of the deliverance
      • The youngest press present had to ask what Madde this day different from all other days and why all this was being done
      • The head of the house then had to tell the whole story of the history of Israel down to the great deliverance which the Passover commemorated
      • The Passover could never become a ritual. It was always a commemoration of the powered the mercy of God
    • 6. Psalm 113 and 114 were sung
      • 113: Hallelujah! Give praise, servants of the Lord;
        praise the name of the Lord. 2 Let the name of the Lord be blessed both now and forever. 3 From the rising of the sun to its setting, let the name of the Lord be praised. 4 The Lord is exalted above all the nations, his glory above the heavens. 5 Who is like the Lord our God—the one enthroned on high, 6 who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth? 7 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the trash heap 8 in order to seat them with nobles—with the nobles of his people. 9 He gives the childless woman a household, making her the joyful mother of children. Hallelujah!
      • 114: When Israel came out of Egypt—the house of Jacob from a people who spoke a foreign language—2 Judah became his sanctuary, Israel, his dominion. 3 The sea looked and fled; the Jordan turned back. 4 The mountains skipped like rams, the hills, like lambs. 5 Why was it, sea, that you fled? Jordan, that you turned back? 6 Mountains, that you skipped like rams? Hills, like lambs? 7 Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, 8 who turned the rock into a pool, the flint into a spring.
        • Psalms 113-118 are known as the Hall, which means the praise of God. All theses psalms are praising psalms. They were part of the very earliest material which a Jewish boy had to memorize
    • 7. The second cup was drunk
      • It was called the cup of Haggadah, which means the cup of explaining or proclaiming
    • 8. All those present now washed their hands in preparation for the meal
    • 9. A grace was said
      • “Blessed are thou, O Lord, our God, who brings forth fruit from the earth. Blessed are thou, O God, who has sanctified us with they commandment and enjoin us to eat unleavened cakes.”
      • Then small pieces of the unleavened bread were distributed
    • 10. Some of the bitter herbs were placed between two pieces of unleavened bread, dipped in the charosheth, and eaten
      • This was called the sop. It was the reminder of slavery and of the bricks that once they had been compelled to make
    • 11. Then followed the meal proper
      • The whole lamb must be eaten. Anything left over must be destroyed and not used for any common meal
    • 12. The hands were washed again
    • 13. The remainder of the unleavened bread was eaten
    • 14. There was a prayer of thanksgiving, containing a petition for the coming of Elijah to herald the Messiah
      • Then the third cup was drunk, called the cup of thanksgiving. The blessing over the cup was
        • Blessed art thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has created the fruit of the vine
    • 15. The second part of the Hallel was sung (Psalm 115-118) (Ask for volunteers to turn to, and read these)
    • 16. The fourth cup was drunk, and Psalm 136, known as the great Hallel, was sung (another volunteer)
    • 17. Two short prayers were said
      • All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord, our God. And thy saints, the righteous, who do thy good pleasure, and all thy people, the house of Israel, with joyous song, let them praise and bless and magnify and glorify and salt and reverence and sanctify and scribe the Kingdom to thy name, O God, our King. For it is good to praise thee, and pleasure to sing praises to thy name, for from everlasting unto everlasting thou art God
      • The breath of all that lives shall praise thy name, O Lord, our God. And the spirit of all flesh shall continually glorify and exalt thy memorial, O God, our King. For from everlasting unto everlasting thou art God, and beside thee we have no king, redeemer or savior
  • Thus ended the Passover Feast
    • If the fest that Jesus and His disciples sat at was the Passover it must have been items 13 and 14 that Jesus made His own, and 16 must have been the hymn they sang before they went out to the Mount of Olives
  • Now let us see what Jesus was doing, and what He was seeking to impress upon His disciples
    • More than once we have seen that the prophets of Israel resorted to symbolic dramatic actions when they felt that words were not enough
    • It was as if words were easily forgotten, but a dramatic action would print itself on the memory
    • That is what Jesus did, and He allied this dramatic action with the ancient feast of His people so that it would be the more imprinted on the minds of the disciples
      • He said, “Just as this bread is broken, my body is broken for you! Just as this cup of red wine is poured out, my blood is shed for you”
  • What did He mean when He said that the cup stood for a new covenant?
    • The acceptance of the old covenant is set out in Exodus 24:2-8; and from that passage we see that the covenant was entirely dependent on Israel keeping the law. If the law was broken, the covenant was broken and the relationship between God and the nation shattered. It was a relationship entirely dependent on law and on obedience to law. God was judge. And since no one can keep the law the people were always in default
    • But Jesus says, “I am introducing and ratifying a new covenant, a new kind of relationship between human beings. And it is not dependent on law, it is dependent on the blood that I will shed.” That is to say, it is dependent solely on love. The new covenant was a relationship between human beings and God, dependent not on law but on love. In other words Jesus says, “I am doing what I am doing to show you how much God loves you.” Men and women are no longer simply under the law of God. Because of what Jesus did, they are forever within the love of God. That is the essence of what at the sacrament says to us
  • We not one more thing
    • In the last sentence we see again the two things we have so often seen. Jesus was sure of two things
      • He knew He was to die, and He knew His kingdom would come
      • He was certain of the cross, but just as certain of the glory. And the reason was that He was just as certain of God’s love as He was of human sin; and He knew that in the end that love would conquer that sin

Mark 14:1-11

• Mark 14:1-2
• It was two days before the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a cunning way to arrest Jesus and kill him. 2 “Not during the festival,” they said, “so that there won’t be a riot among the people.”
  • The last crowded act of Jesus’ life was now about to open
  • The Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were two different things
    • The Passover fell on 14th Nisan around April 14th
    • The Festival of Unleavened Bread consisted of the seven days following the Passover
    • The Passover itself was a major feast and was kept like a Sabbath
    • The Festival of Unleavened Bread was a minor festival, and, although no new work could be started during it, fork that was necessary for public interest or to proved against private loss was allowable
    • The really great day was Passover
  • The Passover was one of the the three compulsory feasts
    • The others were the Feast of Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles
    • To these feasts every male adult Jew who lived within fifteen miles of Jerusalem was bound to come
  • The Passover had double significance
    • It had a historical significance
      • It commemorated the deliverance of the of the children of Israel from their bondage in Egypt
      • The angel of death was to walk through the land of Egypt and kill every first-born son in every home
      • The Israelites were to slay a lamb
      • Using a bunch of hyssop they were to smear the mantle of the doorpost with the blood of the lamb, and when the angel of death saw the doorpost marked, he would pass over that house and its occupants would be safe
      • Before they went on their way the Israelites were to eat a meal of roasted lamb and unleavened bread
      • It was that passover, that deliverance and that meal that the Passover commemorated
    • It had an agricultural significance
      • It marked the gathering in of the barley harvest
      • On that day a sheaf of barley had to be waved before the Lord
      • Not until after that had been done could the barely of the new crop be sold in the shops or bread made with the new flour be eaten
    • Every possible preparation was made for the Passover. For a month before its meaning was expounded in the synagogue, and its lesson was taught daily in the schools
    • The aim was that no one should come ignorant and unprepared to the feast. The roads were all put in order; the bridges repaired 
    • One special thing was done. It was veery common to bury people beside the road. Now if any pilgrims had touched one of these wayside tombs they would technically have been in contact with a dead body and so rendered unclean and unable to take part in the feast. So, before the Passover, all the wayside tombs were whitewashed so that they would stand out and the pilgrims could avoid them
    • Psalms 120-134 are called Psalms of the Ascent, and it may well be that these were the psalms which the pilgrims sang on their way to the feast, as they sought to lighten the road with their music. It is said that Psalm 122 was the one which they actually sang as they climbed the hill to the Temple on the last part of their journey
      • I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let’s go to the house of the Lord.” 2 Our feet were standing within your gates, Jerusalem—3 Jerusalem, built as a city should be, solidly united, 4 where the tribes, the Lord’s tribes, go up to give thanks to the name of the Lord. (This is an ordinance for Israel.) 5 There, thrones for judgment are placed, thrones of the house of David. 6 Pray for the well-being of Jerusalem: “May those who love you be secure; 7 may there be peace within your walls, security within your fortresses.” 8 Because of my brothers and friends, I will say, “May peace be in you.” 9 Because of the house of the Lord our God, I will pursue your prosperity.
  • As we have already seen, it was compulsory for every adult male Jews who lived within fifteen miles of Jerusalem to come to the Passover, but far more than these came
  • It was the one ambition of all Jews to eat the Passover in Jerusalem before they died. Therefore from every country in the world pilgrims came flocking to the Passover Feast. During the Passover all lodging was free. Jerusalem could not hold the crowds, and Bethany and Bethpage were two of the outlying villages where pilgrims stayed
  • A passage from the historian Josephus gives us an idea of how many pilgrims actually came. He tells that Cestius, governor of Palestine around AD 65, had some difficulty in persuading Nero of the great importance of the Jewish religion. To impress him, he asked the then high priest to take a census of the lambs slain at the Passover in one year. The number, according to Josephus, was 256,500. The law was that there must be a minimum party of ten people to one lamb, so that they must have been close to at least 3,000,000 pilgrims in Jerusalem
  • It was jut there that the problem of the Jewish authorities lay
    • During the Passover, feelings ran very high. The remembrance of the old deliverance from Egypt made the people long for a new deliverance from Rome. At no time was nationalism feeling so intense
    • During the Passover time special detachments of troops were drafted into Jerusalem and quartered in the Tower of Antonia, which overlooked the Temple
    • The Romans knew that at Passover anything might happen and they were taking no chances. The Jewish authorities knew that in an inflammable atmosphere like that, the arrest of Jesus might well provoke a riot. That is why they sough some secret strategy to arrest Him and have Him in their power before the people knew anything about it
  • The last act of Jesus’ life was to be played out in a city crammed with Jews who had come from the ends of the earth. They had come to commemorate the event whereby their nation was delivered from slavery in Egypt long ago. It was at that very time that God’s deliverer of all humanity was crucified upon His cross
• Mark 14:3-9
• 3 While he was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured it on his head. 4 But some were expressing indignation to one another: “Why has this perfume been wasted? 5 For this perfume might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they began to scold her. 6 Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a noble thing for me. 7 You always have the poor with you, and you can do what is good for them whenever you want, but you do not always have me. 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body in advance for burial. 9 Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”
  • Jesus was in the house of a man called Simon the leper, in the village of Bethany
    • People did not sit to eat; they reclined on low couches, resting on their left elbow and using the right hand to eat
  • It was custom to pour a few drops of perfume on a guest when he arrived at a house or when he sat down to a meal. The jar this woman had, contained a very precious ointment made from a rare plant that came from far-off India. But it was not a few drops that this woman poured on the head of Jesus. She broke the flask and anointed Him with the whole amount
  • There may be more than one reason why she broke the flask
    • Maybe she broke it as a sign that all was to be used
    • There was a custom in the middle east hat if a glass was used by a distinguished guest, it was broken so that it would never again be touched by the hand of any lesser person
    • One thing that was not on her mind that Jesus saw. It was also the custom in this part of the world, first to bathe, then to anoint the bodies of the dead. After the body had been anointed, the flask in which the perfume had been contained was broken and the fragments were laid with the dead body in the tomb. Although she may not have had it in mind, that was the very thing this woman was doing
  • Her action provoked the criticism of some of the bystanders, including some of the disciples. The flask was worth more than 300 denarii, almost a year’s worth of wages for the common man. To some it seemed a shameful waste; the money might have been given to the poor
  • The story shows the action of love
    • Jesus said that it was a lovely thing the woman had done
    • In the Greek there are two words for good. There is agates, which describes a thing which is morally good; and there is kalos, which describes a thing which is not only good but lovely. That is the word used here
    • Something that is fine and attractive; and that is exactly what this woman did. Love does not do only good things. Love does lovely things
  • If love is true, there must always be a certain extravagance in it
    • It does not nicely calculate the less or more. It is not concerned to see how little it can decently give. If it gave all it had, the gift would still be too little. There is a recklessness in love which refuses to count the cost
  • Love can see that there are things, the chance to do which comes only once
    • It is one of the tragedies of life that often we are moved to do something fine and do not do it. It may be that we are too shy and feel awkward about it. It maybe that second thoughts suggest a more prudent course. It occurs in the simplest things—the impulse to send a letter of thanks, the impulse to tell someone of our love or gratitude, the impulse to give some special gift or speak some special word. The tragedy is that the impulse is so often strangled at birth. This world would be so much lovelier if there were more people like this woman, who acted on her impulse of love because she knew in her heart of hearts that if she did not do it then she would never do it at all. Hw that last extravagant, impulsive kindness must have uplifted Jesus’ heart
  • Once again we see the invincible confidence of Jesus
    • The cross loomed close ahead now but He never believed that it would be the end. He believed that the good news would go all around the world. And with the good news would go the story of this lovely thing, done with reckless extravagance, done on the impulse of the moment, done out of a heart of love
• Mark 14:10-11
• 10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 11 And when they heard this, they were glad and promised to give him money. So he started looking for a good opportunity to betray him.
  • There is always a studded of the heart as we think about Judas
    • Dante sets him in the lowest of all hells, a hell of cold and ice, a hell designed for those who were not hot sinners swept away by angry passions, but cold, calculating, deliberate offenders agains the love of God.
  • Mark tells the story with such economy of words that he leaves us no material for speculation. But at the back of Judas’ action we can distinguish certain things
    • There was covetousness
      • Matthew 26:15 actually tells us that Judas went to the authorities and asked what price they were prepared to pay and drove a bargain with them for thirty pieces of silver. John 11:57 drops a hint. That verse tells us that the authorities had asked for information as to where Jesus could be found so as to arrest Him. It may well be that by this time Jesus was to all intents and purposes an outlaw with a price upon His head, and that Judas knew it and wished to acquired the offered reward. John is quite definite. He tells us that Judas was the treasurer of the disciples and used his position to pilfer from the common purse
      • The desire for money can be a terrible thing. It can make people blind to decency and honesty and honor. It can make them have no care how they get so long as they get. Judas discovered too late that some things cost too much
    • There was jealousy
      • Friedrich Klopstock, the German poet, thought that Judas, when he joined the 12, had ever gift and every virtue which might have made him great, but that bit by bit he became consumed with jealousy of John, the beloved disciple, and that this jealousy drove him to his terrible act. It is easy to see that there were tensions in the 12. The rest were able to overcome them, but it may well be that Judas had an unconquerable and uncontrollable demon of jealousy within his heart. Few things can wreck life for ourselves and for others as jealousy can
      • There was ambition
        • Again and again we see how the 12 thought of the kingdom in earthly terms and dreamed of high position in it. Judas must have been like that. It may well be that, while the others still clung to them, he came to see how far wrong these dreams were and how little chance they ever had of any earthly fulfillment. And it may well be that in his disillusionment the love he once bore to Jesus turned to hate
        • There is an ambition which will trample on love and honor and all lovely things to gain the end it has set its heart upon
      • Minds have been fascinated by the idea that it may be that Judas did not want Jesus to die at all
        • It is almost certain that Judas was a fanatical nationalist and that he had seen in Jesus the one person who could make his dreams of national power and glory come true. But no he saw Jesus drifting to death on a cross. So it may be that in one last attempt to make his dream come true, he betrayed Jesus in order to force his hand. He delivered Him to the authorities with the idea that now Jesus would be compelled to act in order to save Himself, and that action would be the beginning of the victorious campaign he dreamed of. It may be that this theory is supported by the fact that when Judas saw what he had done, he flung the accursed money at the feet of the Jewish authorities and went out and hanged himself. If that is so, the tragedy of Judas is the greatest in history
      • Both Luke and John say quite simply that the devil entered into Judas
        • In the last analysis that is what happened. Judas wanted Jesus to be what he wanted Him to be and not what Jesus wanted to be. In reality Judas attached himself to Jesus, not so much to become a follower as to use Jesus to work out the plans and desires of his own ambitious heart. So far from surrendering to Jesus he wanted Jesus to surrender to him; and when Jesus took His own way, the way of the crosse, Judas was so incensed that he betrayed Him
        • The essences of sin is pride; the core of sin is independence; the heart of sin is the desire to do what we like and not what God likes. That is what the defvil, Satan, the evil one stands for. He stands for everything which is against God and will not bow to him. That is the spirit which was incarnate in Judas
  • We shudder at Judas. But let us think again—covetousness, jealousy, ambition, the dominant desire to have our own way of things. Are we so very different? These are the things which made Judas betray Jesus, and these are the things with still make people betray Him

Mark 13 Intro and 1-2, 14-20, 9-13

• 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 13:1-2
• As he was going out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Teacher, look! What massive stones! What impressive buildings!” 2 Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another—all will be thrown down.”
  • The Temple which Herod built was one of the wonders of the world
    • It was begun in 20-19 B.C. and in the time of Jesus was not yet completely finished
    • It was built on the top of Mount Moriah (Abraham sacrifices Isaac). Instead of leveling off the summit of the mountain, a kind of vast platform was formed by raising up walls of massive masonry and enclosing the whole area. On these walls a platform was laid, strengthened by piers which distributed the weight of the superstructure. 
    • Josephus tells us that some of these stones were 40 feet long by 12 feet high by 18 feet wide. It would be some of these vast stones that moved the disciples to such wondering amazement
  • The most magnificent entrance to the Temple was at the south-west angle. Here between the city and the Temple hill there stretched the Tyropoeon Valley
    • A marvelous bridge spanned the valley. Each arch of the bridge was 41 1/2 feet and there were stones used in the building of it which measured 24 feet long
    • The valley was over 225 feet below
    • The bridge was 50 feet wide and 354 feet long
    • It led straight into the Royal Porch, which consisted of a double row of Corinthian pillars all 37 1/2 feet high and each one cut out of one sold block of marble
  • Of the actual Temple building itself, the holy place, Josephus writes, “Now the outward face of the Temple in its front wanted nothing that was likely to surprise men’s minds or their eyes, for it was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and, at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a very fiery splendor, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they could have done was the sun’s own rays. But this Temple appeared to strangers, when they were at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow, for, as to those parts of it which were not gilt, they were exceeding white…Of its stones, some of them for 45 cubits x 5 cubits x 6 cubits in breadth” (a cubit is about 18 inches)
  • It was all this splendor that so impressed the disciples
    • The Temple seemed the summit of human art and achievement, and seemed so vast and solid that it would stand forever
    • But Jesus made the astonishing statement that the day was coming when not one of these stones would stand upon another
    • In less than fifty years His prophecy came tragically true
• Mark 13:14-20
• 14 “When you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be” (let the reader understand), “then those in Judea must flee to the mountains. 15 A man on the housetop must not come down or go in to get anything out of his house, 16 and a man in the field must not go back to get his coat. 17 Woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days! 18 “Pray it won’t happen in winter. 19 For those will be days of tribulation, the kind that hasn’t been from the beginning of creation until now and never will be again. 20 If the Lord had not cut those days short, no one would be saved. But he cut those days short for the sake of the elect, whom he chose.
  • Jesus forecasts some of the awful terror of the siege and the final fall of Jerusalem
    • It is His warning that when the first signs of it came people ought to flee, not even waiting to pick up their clothes or to try to save their goods
    • In fact, people did precisely the opposite
      • They crowded into Jerusalem, and death came in ways that are almost too terrible to think about
  • The phrase the abomination of desolation  has its origin in the book of Daniel
    • The profanation that appalls
    • We talked about Antiochus a few weeks ago; wanting to introduce Greek thought and the Greek way of life into every culture, no matter what
    • He desecrated the Temple by offering pig’s flesh on the altar and by setting up public brothels in the sacred courts
    • Before the very Holy Place itself, he set up a statue of Zeus and ordered the Jews to worship it
    • The phrase the abomination of desolation, the profanation that appalls, originally described the pagan image and all that accompanied with which Antiochus desecrated the Temple
    • Jesus prophesies that the same kind of thing is going to happen again
    • He is saying “Some day, white soon, you will see the very incarnate power of evil rise up in a deliberate attempt to destroy the people and the Holy Place of God”. He takes the old phrase and uses it to describe the terrible things that are about to happen
  • It was in AD 70 that Jerusalem finally fell to the besieging army Titus, who was to be emperor of Rome
    • The horrors of that siege form one of the grimmest pages in history
    • The people crowded into Jerusalem from the countryside. Titus had no alternative but to starve the city into subjection. The matter was complicated by the fact that even at the terrible time there were sects and factions inside the city itself. Jerusalem was torn without and within
  • Josephus tells the story of the terrible siege
    • He says that 97,000 were take captive and 1,100,000 perished by slow starvation and the sword
    • To make it still grimmer, there were inevitable ghouls who plundered the dead bodies
    • Josephus tells grimly how when not even any herbs were available “some persons were driven to such terrible distress as to search the common sewers and old dunghill sod cattle, and to each the dung which they go there, and what they could not endure so much as to see, they now used for food.”
    • He paints a grim picture of men gnawing the leather of straps and shoes, and tells a terrible story of a woman who killed and roasted her child, and offered a share of that terrible meat to those who came seeking food
  • The prophesy that Jesus made of terrible days ahead for Jerusalem came most abundantly true. Those who crowded into the city for safety died by the 100,000, and only those who took His advice and fled to the hills were saved
• Mark 13:9-13
• 9 “But you, be on your guard! They will hand you over to local courts, and you will be flogged in the synagogues. You will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a witness to them. 10 And it is necessary that the gospel be preached to all nations. 11 So when they arrest you and hand you over, don’t worry beforehand what you will say, but say whatever is given to you at that time, for it isn’t you speaking, but the Holy Spirit. 12 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. 13 You will be hated by everyone because of my name, but the one who endures to the end will be saved.
  • Now we come to the warnings of persecution to come
    • Jesus never left His followers in any doubt that they had chosen a hard way
    • No one could claim that the conditions of Christ’s service had not been explained
  • The handing over to councils and the scourging in synagogues refer to jewish persecution
    • In Jerusalem there was the great Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the Jews, but every town and village had its local Sanhedrin. Before such local Sanhedrins the self-confessed heretics would be tried and in the synagogues they would be publicly scourged
    • The governors and kinds refer to trials before the Roman court, such as Paul faced before Felix, Festus, and Agrippa
  • It was a fact that the Christians were wonderfully strengthened in their trials
    • When we read of the trials of the martyrs, even though they were often uneducated men and women, the impression often is that it was the judges and not the Christians who were on trial
    • Their Christian faith enabled them to fear God so much that they were never afraid to stand up to anyone
  • It was true that people were even sometimes betrayed by members of their own family
    • In the early Roman Empire one of the curses was the informer
      • There were those who, in their attempts to curry favor with the authorities, would not hesitate to betray their own family and friends
    • In Hitler’s Germany a man was arrested because he stood for freedom. He endured imprisonment and torture with stoic and uncomplaining fortitude. Finally, with spirit still unbroken, he was released. Some short time afterwards he committed suicide. Many wondered why. Those who knew him well knew the reason—he had discovered that this own son was the person who had informed against him. The treachery of his own flesh and blood broke him in a way that the cruelty of his enemies was unable to achieve
    • Life becomes a hell upon earth when personal loyalties are destroyed and who love is a source of suspicion rather than trust
    • It was true that the Christian were hated
      • One Roman historian, Tacitus, talked or Christianity as an accursed superstition; another, Suetonius, called it a new and evil superstition
      • The main reason for the hatred was the way in which Christianity cut across family ties
        • The fact was that love for Christ had to come before love for father or mother, or son or daughter
      • And the matter was complicated by the way the Christians were much slandered
        • It is beyond doubt that the Jews encouraged these slanders
        • The most serious was the charge that the Christians were cannibals, a charge supported by the words of the sacrament which speak of eating Christ’s body and drinking His blood
  • In this, as in all other things, it is the one who endures to the end who is saved
    • Life is not a short, sharp sprint; It is a marathon. Life is not a single battle; it is a long campaign 

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