Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. Sometimes getting the answer to the question why brings a shift to our personal perspective. As Paul sits behind this microphone, he brings out the focus of the shift that takes place in this chapter: Jesus’ identity, his mission, our beliefs, and where things were really headed. Listen closely. Mark chapter 8: The Full Crumb. Margie gave us a heads up in her introduction to the Gospel of Mark as to how fast-paced this brief account of Jesus’ public ministry is.

Mark, like Peter, his mentor, whose recollections he’s writing down, must have been a very plain-spoken man, someone who appreciated getting to the point. Someone like Sergeant Friday on Dragnet who appreciated just the facts, ma’am. Everyone under 50 is thinking, Sergeant Friday? Yeah, you’ll have to Google that later. In today’s chapter, broken down into 38 verses, Mark shows us five completely different scenes. Unlike, say, John, if you remember, who in his Gospel would sometimes go on for chapters describing one scene in great detail.

I don’t believe Mark was just writing down random excerpts of situations Peter told him about and then stringing them into this account. There’s a why behind each situation Mark writes about, something he wanted his readers, those for whom he first intended this account, to understand and appreciate. And because it is inspired Scripture, this is also what I want to underscore for you today: some of the whys of this Gospel, to be sure you understand and appreciate them as well. Let me start by backing up to the previous chapter to a scene we didn’t focus on in that lesson. The Bible version I’m looking at right now has paragraph headings, and one in chapter 7 says, The Syrophoenician Woman’s Faith. Reading there, we learn that Jesus traveled to the towns of Tyre and Sidon and met a certain woman described by Mark as Syrophoenician and a Gentile by birth.

And without too many other details, he describes Jesus casting a demon from her daughter. But wait a moment. Jesus, as we’ve seen, has rather routinely been exorcising demons at almost every location he visits. So why bother to tell us about this excursion to the towns of Tyre and Sidon? Do you know where they are located? These towns exist to this day.

And if you look at a map of the nation of Israel or open up Google Maps, go to the coastline of Israel as it touches the Mediterranean Sea. Then travel northward up that coastline, crossing the border of Israel and Lebanon. And in a short way, you will encounter the seaside town of Tyre. Maybe 20 miles further north, you’ll come to the town of Sidon. Now look east and find the Sea of Galilee. That’s the region around which everything in Mark’s Gospel so far has centered.

It’s quite a long distance. So what are Jesus and his disciples now doing over at the Mediterranean coast outside the borders of Israel in another country? That’s one why question I think is worth considering for a moment. Why did Mark include this scene, which takes us out of Israel and includes people described as Syrophoenicians? I’m pretty sure the answer gets back to Mark’s original readers. As Margie explained, we believe he was writing in Rome and for the international cosmopolitan audience who lived in the empire’s capital.

I think Mark, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was going out of his way to be clear that Jesus went well out of his way to demonstrate that he didn’t only come for the benefit of the Jews. But also to meet and minister to Gentiles like this woman and her daughter. Gentiles like most of Mark’s readers, first readers, and most of us. The gospel writers in each of these different settings in their accounts make this point. Jesus is not only a Messiah for the Jews; he’s the Savior for the world. So we see him encountering Romans, Greeks, Samaritans, and others like this Syrophoenician woman to show us Jesus intentionally going out of his way to minister to all kinds of people.

I’m a German, English, Scandinavian guy, Ancestry.com tells me, and Jesus is my Savior too. And no matter who or where you are, he can be your Savior as well. And I think that’s the why here. Let’s think about some more whys. From the outset of his account, Mark has shown us Jesus’ authority. This is Tony’s new favorite word, exousia.

In chapter one, just after choosing his first disciples, Mark tells us about Jesus casting a demon out of a man during a synagogue service in Peter’s hometown of Capernaum. Then later, in chapter seven, as we just saw, he exorcised a demon from the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter. And those demonstrations of his power happened in several other settings too, and it’s especially highlighted when Jesus confronts a legion of demons in the wild man from the area of Gerasa. Remember when that tortured man approached Jesus, he bowed low before him, and the demons begged Jesus not to send them back to the abyss. Why are we shown these scenes? Clearly because Peter and the others were struck by the fact that demons of hell that could bind and control anyone. were no match at all for Jesus.

The demons knew who he was and that he had absolute control and authority over them. Similarly, Mark has told us about many, many healings performed by Jesus and not involving things that are like psychosomatic illnesses somebody could explain away. But over the most serious afflictions people were suffering from in that society, things like leprosy, a progressive incurable disease then, paralysis. Remember the man let down through Peter’s roof. In other scenes we’ve not focused on, Jesus has opened the eyes of blind people, as happens in this chapter, and opened the ears of deaf people. Why?

These were all things doctors could not fix, nor magicians replicate by trickery. But repeatedly, how many times now, Mark has described how Jesus, in front of many witnesses, with just a touch or a few words, did extraordinary healing miracles. I think the answer to why we are shown this over and over again is probably twofold. For one thing, he wants to underscore Jesus’ character of compassion. But beyond that was another thing he makes clear when we are shown that scene of the paralyzed fellow let down through the roof by his friends. What did Jesus say to him?

First he said, Your sins are forgiven you. I made the point during that lesson of describing that event, Jesus saying he forgave the man’s sin, and how that was far more consequential than restoring his ability to walk and function normally again. The future of our souls is far more consequential than our immediate physical problems. But how could Jesus demonstrate his claim to be able to forgive people’s sins, as he did on that occasion? He couldn’t. But he could do these impossible, never-before-seen healing miracles.

And if he had the authority to cleanse lepers, heal paralysis, open blind eyes and deaf ears, to heal any kind of physical malady, Mark is suggesting, why would any reasonable person doubt that he has the authority to heal our souls by forgiving our sins? As we see another remarkable miracle in its context here in Mark 8, it was on the heels of that, the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida, that Jesus asked his disciples who people were saying he was. And they told him some wrong answers they had heard from people in Galilee, when he then posed the same question to them: Who do you think I am? Peter answered for the group, You are the Christ. That means the Messiah. At least Peter, and I think probably the other disciples who had seen Jesus doing all these remarkable things time and time again, are by now convinced that Jesus was, in fact, the promised Messiah.

And why would they have drawn that conclusion? Because the Old Testament prophets had written that when the Messiah appeared, he would do exactly the things Jesus had been doing. He would have the ability to heal people, exorcise demons, and so on and so forth. And Jesus had done these things over and over again. The prophet Isaiah points this out in chapter 35, verses 5 and 6 of his Old Testament writing, for one place. So Mark is drawing the direct connection between Jesus’ unique healing authority and the promise that that specific thing, authority over incurable diseases and afflictions, would be one big sign pointing to him as the Messiah of Israel.

The third class of supernatural things associated with Jesus we’ve seen so far in Mark were the miracles that demonstrated his power in the physical world. And this aspect of his authority is what seemed to freak the disciples out more than anything else, scare them literally. What kind of man commands the wind and the waves and asks to obey him? In another place in Mark chapter 6, the disciples, it says, were utterly astounded, wondering what kind of man walks on the surface of the sea when Jesus came to them walking on the water. In this chapter, Jesus now for a second time feeds thousands of hungry people from a few fish and rolls. The Jews believed, correctly, that only God has the authority over the physical world.

Only God can create things, and only God has the authority to control the laws and power of nature. Job 38 says this. Psalm 135 says this. So, why would Mark show us these instances of Jesus’ authority in this realm over nature? I think, obviously, to make the point, to make the connection, the thought of which alone scared his disciples, that the man they were rubbing shoulders with every day for three and a half years was a lot, lot more than any of them, or any human, that he had divine power and authority only God himself can wield. Let me address one more why question for a moment that no doubt perplexes thoughtful readers of this gospel, any of the gospels really.

We may have discussed this somewhat before, but just to clarify, since it comes up here clearly again, why would Jesus make a point of telling the blind man he healed at Bethsaida, as he does in this chapter, Go straight home and do not go back into the town first? Did you notice that if you read chapter 8? Similarly, in chapter five, after Jesus raised Jairus’s young daughter from the dead, he instructs those who witness that amazing miracle to not tell anyone. Doesn’t that seem really odd? It did to me the first time I came across this. I remember thinking, Wait, shouldn’t they be telling everyone?

He was the Messiah. Shouldn’t the formerly blind man Jesus healed in Bethsaida go straight into the town and say, This man Jesus healed me of blindness? I posed this question, believe it or not, to my Google AI out of curiosity to see how it would answer. I don’t necessarily recommend AI as a knowledge base for reliable answers to theological questions, but I was amazed that it gave a pretty good answer, probably as good as I could put together in a couple sentences. It said this: Jesus often instructed people not to reveal his identity as the Messiah or publicize his miracles because he wanted to control the narrative about himself, to avoid premature attention that could hinder his ministry, so that he could focus on the true message of his coming rather than be seen simply as a healer or a political or military leader. Boy, I like that.

I like the phrase especially, control the narrative. Jesus didn’t come to hold big healing and exercising campaigns. He did those things because he was compassionate, and also because it showed his divine authority. But it hints at something deeper. He did not want to excite the multitudes with wrong ideas about his mission, and he did not want to prematurely trigger his enemies in Israel before his time arrived, as the apostle John would put it, before his hour. He wanted to be able to keep his focus and hopefully turn people’s focus, if possible, to his higher mission by preaching the gospel of the kingdom and urging people to repent toward God and get their hearts ready for it.

And once that had been accomplished, at the right time, to lay down his life as a ransom for sin, which he knew was his ultimate objective. You know, many commentators have pointed out that Mark chapter 8 is the fulcrum of his gospel. I would get as specific as to say that it actually comes right at Peter’s great declaration. It was Jesus wrapping up his Galilean ministry where he had spent the majority of his first two and a half years, when he asked the disciples who people thought he was, and then asked his own disciples, Who do you think I am? Are you familiar with the term fulcrum? I was a little hazy on it myself, so I looked it up, and it means pivot point.

Things take a definite turn here in chapter 8 of Mark’s gospel. Up until now, he’s been showing Jesus’ growing popularity and how the masses were enthralled with him, as well as the disciples’ faith slowly growing, till we finally hear Peter’s confident declaration, I believe you are the Messiah. But it’s just there that you can feel a dramatic turning point in Mark’s gospel. Jesus himself initiates it, as he began then to explain his mission more fully to his disciples. Here is how it’s put in verses 31 through 34. And he began to teach them then that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed.

And after three days, rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan. You’re not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. And then it says, calling the crowd to him and his disciples, he said to them, If anybody would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

I think you can feel the tone definitively turn here, can’t you? Like someone just dumped a bucket of cold water on the heads of the disciples unexpectedly. This is where Mark reveals to his readers that the story of Jesus may not be headed where they supposed or expected. He told his disciples plainly, Mark says, meaning there’s no way they could have misunderstood him. Things were now heading toward an unexpected and drastic climax, one driven not only by the growing hatred and jealousy of Jesus’ enemies, but by divine necessity. Jesus said, I must suffer, be rejected, and be killed.

Hearing that, Peter rebuked him. Can you even imagine? He had just declared moments before that Jesus is the Messiah of God, and within a few moments he has the audacity to rebuke him. What in the world would make Peter presume to do that? Because Peter is quite sure the Christ does not suffer and die. That didn’t just go against the disciples’ personal expectations.

It went against everything that they had ever heard or been taught all of their lives about the Messiah. The rabbis in Israel had woven together a narrative about the coming of the Messiah that had by this time become the accepted wisdom. It was the narrative all faithful Jews knew and all faithful Jews believed and all faithful Jews hoped for, what they prayed for. They were taught that the Messiah, that he would come and he would be a great liberator for God’s people, that he would be a king who would rule from David’s throne, he would be a spiritual shepherd drawing the chosen people again close to their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that he was coming as a national champion. But they were certainly not taught anything about a suffering Messiah, a killed Messiah. No one ever heard that.

The passages in the Old Testament that in 2020 hindsight we Christians recognize describing the suffering Messiah, atoning for our sins, like Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53, those were ignored or explained away in some fashion by the Jewish teachers then, and ever since then, actually. Their narrative had no room for that message. And that’s why Peter boldly rebuked Jesus, You’re the Messiah. That cannot happen to you. And Jesus angrily reacted to him, Get behind me, Satan, almost as if seeing at that moment in Peter Satan himself. And he said, Your mind is not fixed on the plans of God, but on the plans of men.

I find that sharp response to Peter pretty fascinating. Remember, at the outset of Jesus’ public ministry, the Gospels tell us that he spent time in the desert alone with the Heavenly Father to prepare him for what was ahead, and that there he was confronted and tempted by the devil. We’ll discuss this more when we get to the Gospel of Matthew. But you may remember during that testing at one point, the devil took Jesus in the Spirit to the pinnacle of Jerusalem’s temple and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and said, All this will be yours if you only bow down to me. Talk about audacity. Satan was tempting Jesus to forego all that was ahead of his rejection and suffering and death to short-circuit all of that, claiming that if he would only bow before him, he could have the kingdoms of the world without any suffering at all.

Think of that. And Jesus said, Get thee behind me, Satan, exactly what he said here a few years later to Peter. He knew there was no shortcut. He understood and had already submitted to the plan that required the Messiah, the Son of God, to suffer for the sins of the world. I’m pretty sure, based on Peter’s reaction here, Jesus’ line about his resurrection after that time of suffering and death was probably not even heard or certainly fully appreciated. All he heard was Jesus’ sharp rebuke, and I’m sure Peter was very taken aback by that, and by what Jesus said about being killed, because, my word, none of this fit.

None of this fit with the narrative. That’s what I mean by fulcrum here. It certainly seemed to Peter and the rest of them that the arc of Jesus’ life and ministry had been going up and up and up, but now suddenly it reaches a pivot point, a tipping point, and suddenly, unexpectedly, starts turning downward. I can feel the dark cloud suddenly appear over Mark’s narrative at this point. I’m sure you can too. So imagine what his disciples, who were living this, must have felt.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure Peter and the rest of them were at the time too in shock for the next lines from Jesus’ mouth to even register that day. The closing lines in this chapter, they are probably the most remembered lines from Mark chapter 8. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. I wonder if he glanced at Judas just then. But he continued, Whoever will lose his life for my sake and the gospels will save it.

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his own soul? Or what could a man give in exchange for his soul? It’s crystal clear here. Jesus was here 2,000 years ago on a soul-saving mission, not the one his nation was hoping for the Messiah. Understanding that, coming to terms with that, he wanted his disciples to understand would mean a cross for him, suffering for him, and that it could for them as well. But even if it did, eternal life was the sure outcome for all who would believe into and follow him.

This was the first time the twelve, and certainly the others there from the larger following of Jesus, that he had amassed, were confronted with anything like this message. Jesus plainly told them where things were headed, somberly, but with a look of determination, and in unmistakable terms of necessity, I must go up to Jerusalem and be rejected and killed and rise again. So be ready to take up your crosses and follow me if you believe in me. By this and more challenges to come. Jesus would call the shallow followers from those who believed in their hearts he was in fact the Messiah and the divine Son of God, and one worth following wherever that might lead. This is Paul for Share the Word.

Thanks, Paul. Even over 2,000 years later, there still remains a division of disbelief. There are those who know who Jesus is and the ability that he had on this earth. They’re able to share the stories of what he did, but haven’t truly embraced the mission that he was on for us. How would you react now if you were asked to take up your cross? Do you even know what that means?

Has the shift taken place in your life to truly understand the suffering that he endured and why? Jesus constantly went out of his way, so let me ask, when was the last time you went out of yours for him? From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.