Unpardonable sin? Repent and believe. What do you have to lose?

The Most Basic Spiritual Distinction

(Mark 3:22-30, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 23, 2018)

[22] And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” [23] And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? [24] If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. [25] And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. [26] And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. [27] But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.

[28] “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, [29] but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—[30] for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

What did the Scribes think of Jesus?

In the previous passage we learned that when Jesus' astounding public ministry attracted so much notice, the people who grew up with Him were very concerned. Mark quoted His brothers, who did not believe in Him until after the resurrection, as saying, “He is out of His mind.” In John 6 we learn that many who listened to His teaching found it to be more than they could accept. We are told that a significant number of the larger group of disciples who had been following this movement “turned back and no longer walked with him.” (John 6:66)

The reaction of the scribal leaders from Jerusalem was even more critical. They could not ignore that He was doing great deeds of power. That was obvious. They also found it just as certain that He could not be a godly man, since He so clearly rejected their holy traditions. Nicodemus, one of the important leaders from the Pharisees, came to Him “by night” and secretly broke with his colleagues by saying in John 3:2, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”

While Nicodemus was complimenting Jesus, he did not go nearly far enough when He spoke of Him as a “teacher come from God.” Nonetheless, he was certainly more positive about Jesus than his colleagues. In Mark 3 we learn what the great majority of the religious authorities had concluded. Yes, Jesus, had power. Undeniable. But where did it come from? It couldn't be from God. He was too ungodly. He must be an agent of the devil, called here “Beelzubul.” Sure he was doing amazing signs, but these were part of a deceptive plot of the demonic adversary of the God of the Jews. “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.”

Jesus responded with a parable.

This was a horribly arrogant accusation to bring against the Messiah. Jesus replied with a story with a question underneath it. If it is the work of the devil that is being overturned in releasing people from demonic oppression, how could it be Satan behind the assault against Satan. It just makes no sense. No, it has to be an adversary of Satan who is defeating Satan.

Jesus was not on the devil's team, but had authority over this frightening enemy. He was able to destroy Satan's evil kingdom because He had the strength to enter that “strong man's house” and to “plunder his goods.” How could the Lord do this? He first “binds the strong man” so that He then may “plunder his house.” That was the correct way to analyze Jesus' great deeds of power over the kingdom of Beelzubul. As Jesus said in Luke 11:20, “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (See also Matthew 12:28 where “finger” is “spirit” of God.)

A solemn warning

Now what? Was it ok to make an accusation like this against Jesus? What might be the consequences of such a brash verbal assault against the Son of God? After all, Jesus came to bring about the forgiveness of sins. Was this just another sin for Him to forgive?

Apparently not. This accusation that Jesus was actually an agent of God's enemy was an example of what Jesus calls blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. How so? The ministry of the Holy Spirit was to perfectly display Jesus as the fulfillment of every Scriptural expectation of the coming perfect Servant of the Lord. See John 15:26, “He will bear witness about Me.” The Spirit had inspired many passages (such as Isaiah's servant songs and great miracle passages such as Isaiah 35:5-6, 61:1-2) in order to prepare Israel to recognize her holy king. Instead, her spiritual leaders believed more in their own false Rabbinic interpretations of Torah than in the Man that God sent to live out what it meant to be filled with the Holy Spirit beyond measure. To suggest that He was an agent was not only to attack Him, but also the Holy Spirit of God. Dangerous indeed.

Discerning the difference between Satan and Jehovah is a spiritual necessity. Jesus came to this earth in perfect unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He cannot be the Son of God and a servant of the devil. Despite the accusations of some of His powerful contemporaries, Jesus was not building Satan's kingdom but defeating it. To ascribe the works of the Lord to the prince of darkness is a serious and fundamental error.

“All sins will be forgiven the children of man,” but what if you persist in calling the only Savior of mankind a subordinate agent of the “prince of demons.” John 3:18 “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” John 6:40 “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Application:

1. Be warned, but receive the forgiveness of “all” sins through Christ now.

2. Best not to cling to false religion and settle on the idea that Jesus is part of a demonic plot. Afraid? What do you have to lose by repenting the unforgivable even now?

3. Pray for wisdom and humility together with all the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, and receive them like a little child. (Message in Romania in 2000: Luke 19:13-15)

Old Testament Reading—Psalm 76 – God fearing

New Testament Reading—Hebrews 5 – His reverence

The Ultimate Start-Up

His Own Holy Desire

(Mark 3:13-21, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 16, 2018)

[13] And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. [14] And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach [15] and have authority to cast out demons. [16] He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); [17] James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); [18] Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, [19] and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

[20] Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. [21] And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”

Jesus

As Jesus appoints the men who will be leaders in His church, we are left with no doubt that His will is supreme in the kingdom that He is establishing (Ephesians 1:10). He is the one who chooses them and calls them to Himself. We are told that these are the people “whom He desired” (literally those “He wanted”) and they came to Him.

He will have twelve apostles – men who would be sent out by Him on a mission that will ultimately change the entire world. They will be “with Him,” not to stay secure in their ease but to be sent out. Their ministry will be like His: they will be “sent out to preach” and they will also have “authority to cast out demons.” Everything that they have will be an extension of who their Master is. As He would later say, He would be the vine and those He would send out would be the branches (John 15:4-5, 20:21).

The Twelve

Most striking about these twelve men is that they were very unlikely candidates for the job. They did not have obvious qualities that recommended them for this historic role. Some of them we still know very little about. The unfathomable fact is that one in their number would be a betrayer.

All in all, the key requirement that set the twelve apart from their contemporaries was their chosenness. And what were they chosen for? Not a life of ease, but one of uncommon suffering in service of a Man who died on a cross and rose from the dead.

His Family

As we have considered before, the ministry of Jesus, one that the twelve will share with Him (Ephesians 2:20) together with other prophetic leaders in the first century church, attracted enormous attention. Normal life became nearly impossibly for this group of men. We are told that “they could not even eat” in peace because so many people wanted access to them, and especially to Jesus.

All this attention was very unnerving to His natural born family. When they heard about what was happening, they decided to stage some kind of intervention. “They went out to seize Him.” Why? They had come to the conclusion that their brother was “out of His mind.”

Who can doubt that it would have been challenging for sinful and envious men to grow up in the same family as Jesus of Nazareth? Let's look at the evidence. From the moment when Mary conceived the Christ, her life together with that of Joseph was thrown into disorder, almost resulting in the end of their relationship before it even began (Matthew 1:19). We may think of angel visitation as a great idea, but if we consider the evidence more carefully we must acknowledge that this way of being directed by God was exceptionally unsettling (Matthew 2:13-23). The messages coming from those with prophetic gifts were also troubling since they pointed to upheaval and emotional agony (Luke 2:34-35).

What about the relationships with the extended family that can be such a blessing in any family desiring a stable home life? When Jesus was 12 and traveled with the large group of family and friends up to Jerusalem, he stayed behind and did not tell anyone. His mother was beside herself, and His response to her “distress” would not have been all that reassuring (Luke 2:49).

What about His adult brothers when Jesus began His whirlwind public ministry? They did not believe in Him, and He points out the painful fact that they lived their lives with a different worldview than He had (John 7:1-9). This was no small matter because Jesus' way of speaking and living ended up putting Himself and anyone around Him in the middle of a gigantic controversy that might get violent at any time, and His brothers were right in the middle of it, and not by their choice (John 7:10-13 and the rest of John's gospel).

There is no indication that His brothers believed in Him until after His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:7). Two of them would enter the ranks of New Testament writers, James and Jude. We learn of the new life that these men had from the opening words of their letters (James 1:1, Jude 1). All of this helps us to think more deliberately about this earlier assessment of their brother that we read in Mark 3:21, “They were saying, 'He is out of his mind.'”

What is God revealing to us here? Jesus was and is in charge. A real man in a world of danger, He was also truly the second person of the Godhead – How uncomfortable! God was with people. In the words of Isaiah 5:8-9, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” He has His own goals, His own way to achieve them, and His own will.

He does not need the best and the brightest to succeed. It is our privilege to be on His side. We are not doing Him a needed favor by believing in Him and serving Him.

Finally, the resurrection does not come to earth because we say so. The final verdict on Jesus and the gospel was never ultimately a matter of human opinion. He is the Sovereign Lord over heaven and earth.

Old Testament Reading—Psalm 75 – It is I

New Testament Reading—Hebrews 4 – Draw near the throne of grace

Seeing the Real Jesus

Son of God and Healer of the World

(Mark 3:7-12, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 9, 2018)

[7] Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea [8] and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. [9] And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, [10] for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. [11] And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” [12] And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.

A Great Crowd from Where?

Why did Jesus “withdraw” with his disciples? The previous passage ended with a dire threat involving hostile spiritual and political authorities. “The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Him, how to destroy Him.” Jesus and His disciples were in danger.

Many other people would have been aware of the risks. Why then did a “great crowd” follow Him? The answer is obvious. They “heard all that He was doing” and so “they came to Him.” In other words, they knew their needs, and they heard a credible report that Jesus would be able to give them a new chapter in their impossibly difficult lives. We need to be able to relate to that impulse.

What was the significance of the geography revealed here? Desperate people were coming from everywhere where the news was spreading about the works of Jesus. North, south, east, and west. Here was a healer for the whole world.

A Boat

This mass of needy humanity was quite dangerous. Not only would the crowds have attracted the attention and envy of the enemies mentioned in the previous passage, our text emphasizes the obvious physical danger faced by the Man Jesus. Why did He ask His disciples to “have a boat ready for Him?” We are told very plainly that it was “because of the crowd, lest they crush Him, for He had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around Him to touch Him.”

Why does God want us to know about the danger that Jesus was facing? It would be easy for us to imagine that no one could have crushed the Son of God, but we would be wrong. He was not only fully God but also fully man. Mark has recorded a true testimony, a revelation of Jesus' actual humanity and therefore His weakness. We need to see this incident as a step toward where this entire book is headed—a real death.

The people “pressed around Him,” literally “fell on Him.” (See Luke 1:12, 15:20, Acts 10:44.) Wherever Jesus went, people were falling all over Him. Look at Romans 15:3, quoting the Old Testament prophecy from Psalm 69:9. Paul writes that “Christ did not please Himself, but as it is written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on me.'” The idea in the psalm is that someone will come who will face the criticism, shame, and scorn that people directed at God. Their animus against the Almighty will fall on a man. People were falling on Jesus, but soon our sins would fall on Him.

For now, He needed a boat at the ready, just so His human body would not be crushed. Soon He would fulfill the words of Isaiah 53:5

… He was pierced for our transgressions;

He was crushed for our iniquities;

upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with His wounds we are healed.

Diseases and Unclean Spirits

Why is there disease in this world? Why are there unclean spirits harassing human beings? This is a very deep question that is answered very plainly in the first three chapters of the Bible. Mankind has rebelled against God and are under His wrath and curse. That has led to much misery. That's why Jesus needed a boat.

But we must not start or stop with the question of misery. God did not start the Bible with Genesis 3, but with Genesis 1. Every damaged human being has been created in God's image. Though that image has been marred, we need to be drawn to the most important question at the very center of the Bible. Why the Man in the boat? Why Jesus? He came that we might have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10). Do the unclean spirits understand? They know Him, but they do not love Him. Therefore they must be silenced, since they would seek to undo the order of God's good plan of salvation. They would draw attention to the crown of “the Son of God,” but they have no real appreciation for the cross on which a real Man will die for our sins.

More important than the question of what unclean spirits know and love is this all important inquiry. Do you know Him? Do you love Him? Will you trust the Man who would soon be crushed for you and for me, the Man who not only died on the cross, but also conquered death and rose to life that you might live forever.

What is God teaching us with this plain episode about a vulnerable human Messiah who came to save a lost and sin-sick humanity? 1. He knows our weakness and sympathizes with us (Hebrews 4:15), and 2. He takes our hit.

The leader of a new resurrection world was assaulted by the troubles of the present order. This is what happened when the Son of God came into Adam's lost world. No one but the Messiah understood what it would take to fulfill God's larger plan. What was almost unknown in Jesus' day has now been plainly revealed to us. The Jesus I proclaim to you today must be truly appreciated, honored, and worshiped for who He really is.

To more fully enjoy Jesus and the life to come, we must 1. see the present crushing burden of decay and evil as it really is, but we must do more than this. We must 2. go back and see humanity in a better light – a Genesis 1 image of God light. Then we must 3. see Jesus as the One and Only who could ever bring about this perfect plan of Almighty God. We must know Him, trust Him, and love Him. People from all over were falling on Jesus when He was there in person at the Sea of Galilee. Now He is the Resurrection Man in heaven. Are you desperate enough to throw yourself at Him?

Old Testament Reading—Psalm 74 – Make haste to help me!

New Testament Reading—Hebrews 3 – What Moses could never have done...