Gospel of Mark Study #10

“Surrounded by Friends and Enemies”

Mark 3:13-30

Study #10 in Mark Series

INTRODUCTION:

I have a confession to make, and this may shake some of you up a little bit. Just because I was a pastor and missionary does not mean that I only sit around reading my Bible and doing religious stuff. I also like to fish and hunt and skin dive and ride fast motorcycles and lots of other things that have nothing to do with my role as a clergyman. I also have a couple of video games that I like to play on my iMac computer. That fact alone may startle some of you. But I only have two games, and they are both about war. The first one is entitled “Call of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare” about war in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The second one is “Call of Duty 2,” a WWII simulation game. They are both “first person shooter” games (FPS) where you take on the role of a soldier in the conflict. They are both old games and long outdated but I’m old and so is my computer so cut me some slack.

TRANSITION:

These games have many things in common. In all the scenarios you are a soldier in a war situation and you, and your comrades must complete strategic missions. The enemy tries its best to stop you, and in fact, to kill you dead.

But these games are much more “black and white” than real-life war. In these games there are no innocent civilians to get caught in the crossfire. Moreover, all the combatants wear clearly marked uniforms so that you can tell who’s who. Your buddies are all dressed like you, and the enemy soldiers all wear the same uniform. All your fellow soldiers are good guys and will back you up and defend you with their lives. All the enemy soldiers are bad guys and will try to kill you every chance they get. They show no mercy.

In the game you are always surrounded by friends and enemies. Your friends understand you, encourage you, and help you carry out your mission. Your enemies hate you, lie in wait for you, and look for every opportunity to do you harm.

Jesus found Himself in that kind of a situation every day of His ministry. He had friends around Him who loved Him and wanted to help Him carry out His mission. But He was also surrounded by vultures who were waiting to pick His bones clean. Within seconds He could step from a pleasant setting of relative safety among His followers and loved ones into a den of lions inhabited by enemies who wanted to discredit Him, destroy His ministry, and even kill Him. In His case it was not always easy to tell who was who, because nobody wore uniforms, but Jesus could read hearts and minds, and He knew who His real friends were. Let’s look at Mark 3 starting at verse 13.

NOTES on the Text:

Verse 13: And He went up on the mountain and summoned those whom He Himself wanted, and they came to Him.

·         The text does not say which mountain this was, but it was probably one of the hills overlooking Capernaum. Apparently, there was a good-sized group of people who were following Him (see 2:13, 15; 3:7-9). However, out of this large group Jesus handpicked 12 men, “those whom He Himself wanted.” What were the criteria He used to make His pick? Were they the smartest, the best looking, the most courageous, or the most righteous? We simply do not know. We just must remember that God is sovereign. But Luke tells us in 6:12 that Jesus spent the whole night in prayer before making His choice of the Twelve. Might this be a lesson for us?

Verses 14-15: And He appointed twelve, so that they would be with Him and that He could send them out to preach, ¹⁵ and to have authority to cast out the demons.

·         Was twelve a magic number of some sort? I do not think so, but people go nuts on this point. For example, we buy donuts and eggs by the dozen, but why? A “gross” is twelve times twelve. I did a little poking around on the Internet and discovered that there is a plethora of information about the number twelve, most of it being nothing more than swamp gas. For example, people claim that 12 is one of the perfect numbers, along with 3, 7, and 10. They point out that there are twelve Signs of the Zodiac and twelve months in the year. They point to the Book of Revelation that speaks of the Heavenly City that will have twelve gates with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel inscribed on them. Twelve angels stand at the gates. The walls have twelve foundations garnished with twelve precious stones, and on them the names of the twelve Apostles. The city is twelve thousand “stadia” squared (i.e., 12,000 stadia x 12,000), and the twelve gates are twelve pearls. [By the way, just in case you are curious, a “stade” (plural = “stadia”) was an ancient Greek and Roman unit of length, the Athenian unit being equal to about 607 feet (= 185 meters or 125 paces). It was less than a furlong. A furlong is equal to one eighth of a mile, equivalent to 660 feet, or approximately 201 meters. The “Roman mile” (mille passus, lit. “thousand paces”) consisted of a thousand paces as measured by every other step—as in the total distance of the left foot hitting the ground 1,000 times. It came out to approximately 5,000 Roman feet (= 1,480 meters or 4,856 feet). Now you know just in case it ever comes up on Jeopardy. 😊]

·         Do all these twelves mean something? Maybe, and maybe not. The Bible does not give us any explanation.

·         But the two-fold job description of the Twelve is laid out here:

1.       So that they would be with Him for companionship, training, and friendship.

2.      So that He could send them out to preach and to cast out demons.

Verses 16-17: And He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom He gave the name Peter), ¹⁷ and James, the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James (to them He gave the name Boanerges, which means, “Sons of Thunder”).

·         In the NT there are several places that list the names of the 12 Apostles, but the lists are not exactly alike, which has caused some confusion over the years. Several of the men went by two different names. Mark identifies some of them by their nicknames. However, in all the lists the name of Simon Peter always comes first. He was the mouthpiece and spokesman for the group. In fact, on all the lists the two sets of brothers, Simon and Andrew, and James and John, are always listed first.

·         We learned about Jesus’ call of Simon, Andrew, James, and John in Mark 1:16-20. Now Jesus was asking them to take yet another and even greater step of commitment. The Christian life is like that. We grow in steps, stages.

·         James and John, the sons of Zebedee, must have been a couple of hot-headed ripsnorters. Jesus gave them the nickname, “Boanerges,” which loses something in the translation. It would be sort of like calling them “the Tornado Twins,” or “the Bull-in-a-China-shop Brothers.” Apparently, they were impetuous and impulsive, given to acting and speaking without thinking. Evidently it got them into a fair amount of trouble and earned them a nickname. This side of their personalities can be seen in Luke 9:51-56.

Verses 18-19: and 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.

·         Andrew was the brother of Simon Peter.

·         Bartholomew also went by the name Nathanael.

·         James the son of Alphaeus was also called “James the Less,” meaning “Little James.”

·         Thaddaeus is elsewhere referred to as Judas, the son of James the Less (Acts 1:13). His nickname, Lebbaeus, found in several manuscripts meant “big hearted.”

·         Simon #2 was an interesting case. He is referred to several times as having been a “Zealot,” indicating that before meeting Jesus he had been a member of the fanatically nationalistic and patriotic party of Kananaion, zealots who were in favor of immediate revolt against their Roman overlords.

·         Each of these men had a story all his own. There were no two of them alike. But the one that is perhaps the most fascinating is Judas Iscariot (i.e., Judas of Kerioth). Why did Jesus choose him, knowing full well that Judas, the unbeliever, would betray Him?

·         And even more astonishing is that fact that later, when Jesus sent the apostles out two-by-two to preach the Gospel, heal the sick, and raise the dead, somebody got pared up with Judas, probably Simon, the Zealot. And apparently Judas did all those things and passed as a true-blue believer, totally fooling all his apostle colleagues, even though Jesus later called him a “son of perdition,” meaning son of condemnation, Hell, and eternal death (cf. John 17:11-12). Notice that this is the same term that the Apostle John uses in Revelations to describe the Antichrist. When everything came unraveled at the end, apparently Judas’ betrayal took them all by surprise. Except for Jesus, none of them saw it coming.

Verses 20-21: And He came home, and the crowd gathered again, to such an extent that they could not even eat a meal. ²¹ When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him [lit. to lay hold of Him]; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.”

·         “He came home” – i.e., to Capernaum, maybe back to Peter’s house or possibly to his own house—we do not know. Jesus had moved from Nazareth to Capernaum and made that city His new home-base of operations. His mother and siblings must have still been living in Nazareth, but we have no way of knowing for sure. What we can say is that Jesus’ life became extremely complicated, and He had little privacy. People even came asking for Him at mealtimes, just like the stinking telemarketers who call us just as we are sitting down for supper.

·         “When His own people heard of this” - Here Mark is referring to Jesus’ blood relatives, his siblings and perhaps his aunts, uncles, and cousins. Somehow, they had gotten word of what was going on and became concerned, perhaps wanting to protect their own reputations. I do not believe that His mother, Mary, was numbered with this group because she knew exactly who Jesus was and she knew that He had not lost His senses.

·         However, others of Jesus’ family thought that He was losing it, that he was mentally and emotionally unbalanced and in need of rescue. They wanted to take Him into custody and send Him to Shady Acres Nut Farm for a little counseling and electroshock therapy until He gave up this silly idea that He was the Messiah, the Son of God. I am quite sure they loved Him and wanted to protect Him, but they were totally misguided.

·         …they were saying, “He has lost His senses.” Literally, “He is beside himself” meaning that He is unhinged.

·         I imagine that it was painful for Jesus to know that His own family members were ignorant of who He was and what He had come to accomplish for them. John 7:5 says, “For not even His brothers were believing in Him.” Evidently, they did not come to faith until the time of His death and resurrection [cf. Acts 1:12-14].

Verse 22: The Scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.”

·         “Scribes who came down from Jerusalem” - This was a common way of speaking. Jerusalem sat on the top of a mountain so everywhere was downhill from there, even though Capernaum is directly north of Jerusalem, not south.

·         These are the same “usual suspects” that we have met several times. They were still hanging around waiting for Jesus to say or do something that they could use to hang Him. He had already had several run-ins with them.

·         However, now they were weighing-in with some heavy-duty theological conclusions about Jesus. They were going around saying that Jesus himself was demon-possessed, no, even more than that; that He was literally Satan-possessed, that old Lucifer himself was living inside of Jesus and that was why He could cast demons out of other people. They were saying that Jesus was the Satan-authorized head coach for the demon team, and that was why He could order the evil spirits around the way He did.

Verses 23-26: And He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? ²⁴ If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵ If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. ²⁶ If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished!”

·         Notice that Jesus did not let this bunch of weasels off the hook. He did not let them get away with making such horrible accusations and then slink away. It says, “He called them to Himself.” Jesus took the initiative and called His accusers to come and meet Him face to face.

·         The logic He used against these guys was unanswerable and He used their own argument against them, namely: if everyone agrees that demons are Satan’s servants, then it is illogical to assert that he is casting out his own servants.

·         If Jesus were a Westerner, He might have handled this differently making His point in a very straightforward way. However, the Jewish culture in the Middle East is Oriental, not Occidental. Jesus taught and explained things according to that culture. He told stories. He used parables and word pictures. He was speaking to Oriental people, and He used a methodology with which they were familiar. We are the ones who struggle because we come at the Scriptures as though they were written by an Englishman, expecting them to say things in a more straightforward manner. Jesus was countering their idea that He was Satan-possessed and thus able to cast out evil spirits. It does not make sense that He is empowered by Satan to overcome Satan. Jesus likens that to a kingdom that declares war on itself. He says that if Satan were to do such a thing, he would be defeating himself, destroying his own kingdom. How stupid that would be!

Verse 27: “But no one can enter the strong man’s house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.”

·         Remember, this conversation is about casting demons out of people. The “strong man” is Satan. To cast out demons is to enter Satan’s house and spoil his goods. Here Jesus makes His claim of being stronger than Satan, although He does it in a veiled way. If you plan to rob a man’s house and take everything he owns, knowing full well that the man is home and well-armed, you’d better be much stronger than he and have a good plan. Otherwise, he will beat you up and throw you out onto the street or worse. Jesus is likening Satan to the strong man in the story. And He is saying that He is strong enough not only to subdue Satan, but also then to go in and plunder everything in Satan’s house. Christ was making the point that instead of being in league with Satan, He was engaged in combat against him and would soon beat him to a pulp and take his lunch money.

·         Satan is a loud-mouthed bully, but he cannot stand up against Jesus, the Son of God. Satan sits in his house surrounded by all his demonic sycophant servants and all the stuff he has stolen from others. He thinks he is untouchable. But one of these days Jesus is going to knock the door down, walk in and grab Satan by the throat and shake him like a ragdoll.

Verses 28-30: “Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; ²⁹ but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin” — ³⁰ because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”  

·         This passage has been the ground for endless debate and speculation. But part of the problem is that people try to interpret it in isolation. A specific Scripture must always be understood against the backdrop of the whole of God’s Word.

·         Let’s start at the bottom. What was going on? Verse 30 says that Jesus spoke these words because the Scribes were saying that Jesus was demon-possessed, when in fact, He was Holy Spirit possessed. They were attributing the things that Jesus said and the miracles that He performed TO SATAN! Jesus said that was out and out blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and a clear rejection of God Himself. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the act of slandering, reviling, or speaking maliciously against the Spirit. However, we are not to interpret this passage as teaching that the mere statement against the Spirit is the unpardonable sin. The real issue is the attitude of the heart that underlies any statement the sinner might make. What Jesus is talking about here is a fixed, unrepentant state of mind that persists in defiant rejection of the overtures of the Holy Spirit.

·         For one to reject God and to spurn the Holy Spirit is to condemn oneself to eternal Hell. To reject the Savior is to reject His salvation. The only sin that God cannot forgive is the rejection of Him and His Son, and the turning of ones back on the work of the Holy Spirit. That is the thing that sends men to Hell.

CONCLUSION:

When Jesus walked among us, He was almost always surrounded by both friends and enemies. But many of the people He loved the most were on the enemy side, namely, most of his family members and His dear friends from Nazareth, that He had known all His life. When He left the carpenter’s shop and began His 3½ year public ministry many people moved themselves from the “Friend” side to the “Enemy” side of the ledger? How did Jesus handle that? Surely this is part of what He was referring to when He told His disciples to take up their cross daily and follow Him.

FEEDBACK:

When you took a stand to follow Christ were there repercussions in your family? Were people upset? Did you lose friends?