Jesus the King

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And of course, the idea of the Read, Knock, Learn programme that we do, that Giles will be talking about this afternoon, is to give others a chance to digest it not only by hearing it from you but by teaching it to others. And in giving you that presentation at 2:45 this afternoon, we’re not of course imagining that your situation is like ours, where we have many young people and students to train and teach, very fortunate, but the principles remain the same and it’s, I think, sometimes helpful to have a concrete example even though you don’t practise in any detail the example, the, the things from it that we’ve learned may be of value to you.

Now every day that we go through this teaching conference, the coloured printing, the coloured photograph will become clearer. I, I don’t understand printing, but I, when I’ve seen the explanations, don’t you get the picture first of all all in green and then the one in all in red? If you see a colour printing as it is just in one colour, it looks absurd and quite inadequate. And it is true in Mark’s Gospel as we go through it that if we see it in its first stage without the second stage being laid on top and then the third stage on top we shall only be misled as to what the picture really is. For example, this morning’s lecture on Jesus the King is totally misleading without tomorrow morning’s first lecture.

So I mean, should you be carried away to take somebody’s funeral this afternoon and don’t get tomorrow morning’s lecture, I do beg you to get it on the tape because we can only be misled by Jesus the King if we don’t understand that he’s accepted only to faith today. And it’s, you know, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, isn’t it? That’s what we’re learning today with masses of young Christians across the scenery. It’s an exciting day to be alive in, but a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, isn’t it? And young Christians get hold— do you remember when you were a young Christian?

You’d get hold of a bee in your bonnet, right out of balance with other things. And that’s why it is so important in these 3 days to try to get the full picture. I don’t think that’s really going to be possible, but at least we can make an effort. Well, now this morning we’re on the kingship of Christ and how very slowly the disciples came to understand it. I’ll take that thing off now, but if anybody wants to see the revised programme, here it is immediately afterwards.

And as you know, the disciples very slowly came to understand it. You’ll be studying that development of understanding Jesus was amazed at their slowness, and yet in some ways I find it a comfort. When I first submitted to Christ as a teenager, I’d had an enormous amount of background because of my upbringing and schooling, but, and therefore I had a lot of knowledge that all came into place when I was presented with the challenge of personal submission to Christ. But of course there are many people today who have never had that background. Indeed, I suppose the vast majority.

So that we shouldn’t be dismayed at the slowness of people to come actually and truly to believe that Jesus is Lord. It is a tremendous thing to believe, isn’t it? Many of our church leaders today in the Church of England and in the other older denominations are actually now Unitarians and don’t actually believe that Jesus is Lord in any orthodox historical sense. It’s a terrific thing to believe, isn’t it?

Well, let’s start then at the beginning, which is Mark 1:15. And in Mark 1:15, we learn that Jesus is not only the preacher, as we saw last week, but that he is the content of his own message. Mark 1:15. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying, And here is the gospel: The time is at hand— sorry, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. And the good news is that the kingdom is at hand, the rule of God is near.

What then is the rule of God?

I seem to have slipped something out of my notes here. No, I haven’t. All is well. Panic over. We shall find the rule of God in Isaiah 52:7.

I’d like you to turn to this because it is really a vital cross-reference, I think. The first time that the good news is mentioned in the Bible, and it’s on these foundations that of course the Gospel according to Mark is built.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good. Here’s the good tidings: who says to Zion, your God reigns. So if you, if you’re going to publish salvation, which is the gospel, it’s the gospel of salvation, what you’re publishing is that your God reigns. Verse 10: The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations. And all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

You see the salvation of our God when he comes to reign. Very simple, isn’t it?

And so the tremendous statement in early Mark is simply this: the words of the prophets have come to pass. The nations are going to see the salvation of God because the King is about to take his proper place and reign.

And so the illuminator of the Lindisfarne Gospels, in the title page of Mark’s Gospel, has drawn over Mark’s head as he writes his Gospel a rather unferocious looking lion. A lion, a symbol of royalty in all times, the king of the beasts. You remember in C.S. Lewis’s children’s storeys, Christ is always the lion. He’s the king, king of the beasts.

So when the King comes, Satan may be a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, but the Lion of Judah overthrows him. So that’s the excitement, isn’t it, of the message as it comes in 1:15. The time promised by Isaiah and all the prophets that the King would reign is at hand, and the King is about to take his power and rule. The sovereignty of God is basic to the Old and New Testament faith. It’s basic to the Bible.

But the sovereignty of God is always hard to believe when we look out into the world of problems and pains around us. It was hard in Old Testament times and it is hard now.

It is hard because it is only accessible to faith then and now.

But for a few months and years it was accessible if you like, to sight as well as faith, though that’s a slightly ambiguous statement as we shall see. For a few months it will become a reality. The Lion of Judah will take his sword and destroy all the enemies of mankind. So for a short while God reigned in Jesus, and what Mark gives you, very carefully presented to you with no word wasted, is a series of pictures, or slides if you like, going across the screen as though he puts across the screen of your mind half a dozen slides of the King reigning and the great enemies of the human race being dispossessed of their power.

Man’s greatest enemies I’m now going to list for you. These enemies have plagued us all down history from the beginning, from the fall. They have ruined our experience of life and continue to do so. And the message of the gospel is that God saves us from those enemies and he saves us through his King, Jesus Christ.

Now let me list them. I think I’ll pop them down here for us so that we’ve got them in our minds and then we will just run through them very quickly. What is a help today is that we’ve covered so much material yesterday that a lot of this will be going over similar storeys, and therefore it’s much clearer to us. I’ll just put it in its simplest. It’s not altogether satisfactory not to enlarge them, but you may like to start a list of these.

And just as I put them down, don’t look at them as words, but try to envisage in your mind the power that these things have over life.

Now there are others to be sure, but those 7 seem to me to stand out in the simple order in which Mark puts them. And just to look at them again, because we’re not simply students, are we? We’re trying to be in touch with reality as we study these 3 days. Just look at the power that those certain things have over us. First of all, the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.

Man, I suppose, is the most rebellious of all those powers and the one that does the most harm. Is that not right in history? Secondly, Satan. He must come in the list very high up. He’s behind all the rebellion against God.

Third, sickness. What agony that has caused, hasn’t it, to the human race. How that has dislocated life. 4, sin. That power is a very, very great one, isn’t it, which condemns us before God and separates us from his love.

5, false religion. One of the great burdens of the human race, religion, isn’t it? We don’t see that so much in this country. You would need to go and be resident in some great country like India to see what a terrible burden religion is.

6, nature disturbed, of course, from the fall, as we see in the terrible Mexican earthquake, and therefore an enemy of man. And the sea is always the symbol of that chaos in the Bible. The sea must have been very terrifying to people of that day. Indeed, it still is, isn’t it? And from time to time the sea shows us what a power it’s got as it gobbles up a few millionaires’ boats on the way to Fastnet.

We hadn’t thought about it. 7, and of course, death.

Some of you saw Peter Irwin-Clark’s cot death last week in the paper, one of the people who comes regularly to our preaching conferences. So I’m sure he’ll be in your heart for prayer this week, the beautiful boy. Had a cot and died in his cot. What a terrible tragedy that is, isn’t it? What an inexplicable blow to the heart that is in life.

So we’re dealing here with the ultimate enemies, aren’t we, of all our happiness and peace. Now what we’re going to see, and I shan’t be able to do more than give you a bird’s-eye picture, and it’s impossible to take it all in at once, but what you see in your first term of Read, Mark, Learn here is is you see Christ meeting each of these enemies. The enemy, so to speak, stands up and says, you’re not going to get past me. I’ve held sway around here for a long time. And then is overthrown with a word.

And Christ goes step by step along his pathway overthrowing one after the other. So let’s look at this. Men, chapter 1, verses 16 20. We won’t read it. And chapter 2, verse 14.

How can I illuminate this except to ask you to see how Mark has put these storeys? We read these storeys through the spectacles of Arminianism gone to seed because that’s the world in which we live. We read these storeys as illustrations of how we make Jesus our Saviour. For conversion and how we make him our Lord for consecration, Wednesday night at Keswick.

Now I think these evangelistic and consecrational, if that’s a word, challenges have their place. I don’t want to deny that. But none of them have any ultimate meaning without the fundamental truth of what is put before us here, is that conversion is Jesus making us his servants, isn’t it? That is what conversion is. It is Christ bringing your will in submission to himself.

It is Christ quelling your rebellion. What else is it?

It must be that ultimately, mustn’t it? You can only make Christ your King because he started by making you his servant. Now please don’t misunderstand me. I think we have to challenge young people to make Christ King in various areas of their life that they’ve all forgotten. But it’s only possible for them to do that because right at the beginning he made them his servants.

You can’t be a Christian unless God has done that to you. The whole storey of your life is the way in which God is working out that fact in you, isn’t it? He is constantly quelling your unruly wills and affections.

Let me read to you this because, you know, each of these I can get carried away and the point is I’m not here to preach sermons. We’re here to just get the picture and mark together as a whole. So let me read quotations from Anderson. He’s got a very clear way of putting these things. The report is remarkable.

This is 1:16-20. For the bare minimum of information it provides, it is not told as a historian would tell it. Not a word is said about any psychological preparation on the part of the disciples, nor about their antecedents. Instead, the impression given is that Jesus appears abruptly, and just as abruptly the men are up and off with him, and that is all that needs to be said.

Then he quotes— he’s very devastating on previous commentators— he quotes Rawlinson, which is of course a miserable commentary, though very learned. Again, the attempt to explain the abruptness in Mark by the analogy of the wandering guru in India for whom people leave home at once— Rawlinson, page 14— obscures rather than illuminates Mark’s standpoint. The abruptness is indeed vital to Mark in order to focus only on the Master who calls and on his decision to follow.

Mark’s linking phrase, immediately they followed, underlines the instantaneousness of the response. Deliberation and discussion are no indispensable precondition of discipleship. Jesus chooses whom he will and out of whatever worldly business they happen to be engaged in. Human questions and judgments on why he chooses this one or that are beside the point.

But perhaps even more helpful in, on this particular storey is Cranfield. In this section we have the first of a series of incidents that illustrate the authority of Jesus. His word lays hold on men’s lives and asserts his right to their wholehearted and total allegiance, a right that takes priority even over the claims of kinship.

And so on. Yes, it’s the first of a number of incidents in which he lays claim to his proper possessions.

Jim Packer, in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, points out— I remember what a help to me this was when I first read it— that unless we believe in the sovereignty of God, no evangelistic preaching is possible.

Because of course we cannot persuade people to follow Jesus Christ unless we believe that he secretly is doing that. We are wasting our time, aren’t we, to puff out our breath? However, don’t let’s get into false arguments about Calvinism and Arminianism, because actually every Christian is a Calvinist. I sometimes say this to the more ultra-Reformed brethren, and they all look very sort of po-faced and attack on me over the coffee break. I never met any Christian who wasn’t a Calvinist once they’re on their knees.

Once a Christian gets on his knees, he shows quite clearly that he believes that no one can come to God except God draw him. Otherwise, why do you get on your knees before everybody in your prayer meeting in your church, say, Lord, please save Bill. There’s not any hope for Bill to be a Christian unless you do something about it.

Now that’s the meaning of this, isn’t it? We all do believe this actually. Whatever our theology is, whatever our presentation of the gospel, we all believe that Jesus has to take the initiative.

He is not a helpless figure, you know, constantly calling over the telephone hoping he’ll get an answer one day. That picture of Jesus is unknown to Mark.

Secondly, authority over Satan, chapter 1:21-28. Now the attempt to make demon possession equal mental disease, which is almost always done by liberal scholars, is to evacuate Mark of his central message. The Son of Man is manifested to destroy the works of the devil.

And I think I needn’t ask you to look at a lot of Scriptures on this. Though in your study time it is worth flipping through the first part of Mark and simply underlining every time it is said that He is dispossessing Satan or demons or unclean spirits. For 2 examples, chapter 3, verse 15, the disciples, the 12, are sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. Chapter 6 verse 7: He sent them out 2 by 2 and gave them authority over unclean spirits. So you see it is fundamental, it is primary, isn’t it, to the ministry of the 12.

They’re given authority, Christ’s lordship over the unclean spirits.

Jesus’ power in this particular storey in the synagogue is irresistible and His power over evil spirits is regarded by His enemies as, well, they acknowledge it, don’t they, freely, chapter 3, verse 22, only they say He’s done it by Beelzebub.

So there’s the second authority. He has authority over Satan. And verse 27 of chapter 1 can be repunctuated, I think rather better, if we put the statement in verse 27 like this: What is this? A new teaching with authority, full stop, he commands even the unclean spirits. What is this?

A new teaching with authority which leads to Satan being dispossessed.

Well, I think I said enough about that, but it worries me so much that we get all tied up with oddities on this. One of our Full Gospel men— I think I told you the storey. Did I tell you the storey of one of our Full Gospel men whose son came back from university last term having had Ouija board experiences? Did I mention that yesterday? Well, one of our fine Christian businessmen, but he’s very much in the Full Gospel camp.

His boy came back from first year at university literally shaking in his boots because in the last week or two of term he and some friends had been playing around with the Ouija board and some kind of appallingly evil manifestation had come to them in their room. And he really was, so his father told me, shaking. And he told his parents immediately he’s not a Christian. So of course father took the opportunity immediately, as any father would, to point the danger of it, but he took him round to one of these extremists who immediately cast 4 demons out of him.

Well, then he said to me— his father said to me, he’s going back now to university. He said, I really don’t know if he’s a Christian or not. You know, that kind of thing is enough to blow my mind. Somebody has to come up quickly on the staff and sort of massage me after that kind of conversation. Because you see what it shows is that we, we’ve got the whole thing out of balance.

What drives out devils is not some funny man in a corner who drives out devils, you know, to order, but the truth of the gospel.

And you see if he says, well, my boy’s going back to university and I’m not sure if he’s a Christian, what it means is that the boy doesn’t yet understand the gospel.

I don’t mind how many devils you drive out, if he doesn’t understand the gospel you’re back to square one, aren’t you?

It’s getting the thing out of balance. The authority of Jesus over demons, yes I believe in demons and devils and unclean spirits. You can’t read Mark without it. The pathetic state of the liberal commentator with Mark is really, is really a joke to behold because again and again he’s got to explain blown away large tracts of it. No doubt at all whatever that Jesus understood what he was up against and had authority over it, to Satan’s works.

But it is through the truth primarily that he exercises authority.

Third, sickness. Now these are well worth collecting in your study time today if you’re going to be doing this kind of thing.

I won’t collect them all now in the first half. There are several little paragraphs, and really I suppose chapter 6:53-56 is the last summary. It’s for those early 6 chapters that you have a multitude of examples given to you, and it’s finally summarised at the end of chapter 6. When they had crossed over, they came to the land of Gennesaret, moored to the shore, got out of the boat. The people recognised him and they began to bring sick people on their pallets to any place where they heard he was.

And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and besought him that they might touch even the fringe of his garments And as many as touched it were made well.

Now that kind of summary section comes several times through that early part of Mark.

There are all sorts of things we’ve got to sort out about this, as we did yesterday with chapter 2, verse 17. What is the sickness that Jesus is really concerned about? But there’s the interesting thing that is worth your own study to compare the first and the second half of Mark. In the first half you get many of these summaries. In the second part of Mark you have only 2 miracles in the whole half.

Now you well know that today we live in an evangelicalism where people have gone back to the old style fundamentalism where you simply read the Bible in the flat. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s from Leviticus or Revelation or John’s Gospel or Genesis. You can take anything out you like and apply it immediately to today. That is fundamentalism, isn’t it? And in that sense, none of us is a fundamentalist or oughtn’t to be.

So you see, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and therefore anything he does in the Gospels he will do today. But he’s not even the same in the first and second half of Mark.

He’s not even the same person in those 2 halves, which is worth noticing.

He has changed his priorities, and Mark has changed his priorities for, obviously, for didactic reasons, not because he’s lost his power or has no compassion or because there are no sick people.

Now in view of these amazing miracles, unlike anything that the world had ever seen or indeed has ever seen since, chapter 8 verse 11, which we’ll come to later, is extraordinary, isn’t it? That the Pharisees say, we want signs and wonders. To require signs and wonders after the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels is a mark of blindness and lack of faith, isn’t it?

The essence of unfaith is to put God to the proof, to lay down prior human and worldly conditions for believing in the God who himself offers his word freely and imposes no prior conditions on men.

So the Lord has proved himself to overthrow all sickness. A marvellous truth from the Gospels. We’ll come back to that. Now we’ll go to the 4th. I’ll do that very briefly because we saw this yesterday and the slide that comes across our mind is chapter 2:1-12 and we can summarise the storey of the paralytic in some verses that I was reminded of yesterday.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. That is precisely Mark 2:1-12, 11, isn’t it? The gospel, which is the sphere of the Spirit sets me free from the sphere of sin which leads to death.

So Jesus delivers man from this appalling bondage and its condemnation.

Now let’s break some new ground. We’ve made good progress so far. We can spend perhaps a little more time now breaking some fresh ground chapter 2:18 to the end.

Sorry, 18 to 36. I’d like you to open here. We’re going to stop here for a bit. We’re going to put our anchor down.

Now, my dear brothers, there are 3 points to our sermon.

And this is a section, a composite section on its own, chapter 2, verse 18 to chapter 3, verse 6. And in this section Jesus is setting men free from false religion.

You know that I spoke of the conflict. Again, for your study, it is well worth going through chapter 2 to 3, chapter 3, verse 6, and looking at the 5 questions. Verse 7: Why does this man speak thus? It’s blasphemy.

That’s said on their own. Each of the questions comes closer to Jesus. Verse 16: The questions are asked of the disciples: Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? Verse 18: They come closer and say: Why don’t your disciples do this? Verse 24 they say, look, what are your disciples doing?

Etc. You see, they’re getting closer and closer to Jesus. Why, why, why? What, what, what? What’s all this going on about?

And then in chapter 3, verse 4, we get the final question. Only this time it is from Jesus to them.

And we get a moment of judgement. Of course, that’s exactly what’s going to happen in the history of the world, isn’t it? If you’ve taken student missions, you’ll find it more. You don’t find it amongst businessmen here. You never hear businessmen asking you questions.

I hope it’s not because they don’t think, but students think too much, don’t they, really, I suppose. But oh yes, you do get men asking questions. Man naturally asks questions: why, why, why, why, why, why, why? And then on the day of judgement, God asks one question which is unanswerable. Wasn’t it?

So that’s exactly what is happening here. Man asks all the questions until Jesus stands up and asks them a question, and then judgement comes.

Now in that context of conflict, we find 2 illustrations: fasting, verses 18 to 22, and the Sabbath, 23 to 28.

Ian, just turn off the tape for a moment, can you? I’ll give my well-known imitation of Dr. Knox, the principal of— rebellious against God. And there are 3 storeys here that are desperately sad. They’re illuminating. Fasting, I think, stands for the ancient traditions of religion.

In fact, fasting was commanded in the Old Testament only on the Day of Atonement, which has been this week, hasn’t it?

It’s significant that it was commanded only on one day in the Old Testament, but in fact, of course, Judaism had made it obligatory on many days because religion always does.

So it is significant that as we become more religious as evangelicals, you see, fasting becomes something you see paperback books written about. See, we want to add burdens to people’s lives, we want to make them religious. Always so, that’s what we’re always wanting to do.

Now what does Jesus say about fasting? What is so interesting is, you see, that he relates fasting to reality. He says, how can they fast when the bridegroom is with them? The bridegroom being himself. We won’t stop on that remarkable piece of self-identification.

Verse 20: The day will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. Now that is wrongly interpreted to mean that after the death and resurrection of Christ fasting will become a rule in the church again. That’s simply to go back again to religion. What he is saying is that when he dies then they will be sorrowful and fasting is a proper and natural sign of sorrow. That’s all.

Fasting is only of any value if it is a proper expression of a human feeling.

He’s not saying that when he’s gone then it’ll all return and we shall start again being religious. Because verse 21 and 22, we have 2 pictures that we haven’t got time to go into now, we’ve got a wholly different thing. And if you try to put new wine into the old wineskin, it’s are going to burst out.

Today religion is simply an expression of the life that God gives us. And therefore we may choose what we do, whether it is fasting or anything else, simply in accordance with whether it expresses the life God has given us. It is not something imposed on us from outside. It is an expression of a life from within. In other words, it is human.

Exactly the same is said about the Sabbath, 23:28. Fasting stands for ancient traditions. Sabbath stands for the most authoritative rules laid down by God.

And what does this man from Nazareth do with the most authoritative rule in religion ever laid down by God, of which the Sabbath is it? Well, he takes it up in his hands and he says, I actually am going to tell you what to with this. You can’t have any greater spiritual impertinence, can you?

I will tell you what to do with it and I will tell you the principle on which I will administer it in my church. What is the principle? The principle is that it was made for— turn to 7. What is it? For man, yes.

In other words, true religion, Christianity, is humanity. It is It is something that is human.

It is to make us more truly men. It is not to make us religious. Do you remember that when you first met religious boys and girls when you were young? Religious young people are unattractive, aren’t they? Religious, I mean, as opposed to Christian.

Because it makes them less actually true human beings. I can remember that vividly at school. They weren’t the obvious examples of virile humanity.

Now the 3rd storey is exactly in tune. It is not just another Sabbath storey. It’s on the Sabbath because that is the religious day and the people present are the religious leaders and they’re in the religious centre which is the synagogue. So we have here religion underlined. Now in the sphere of religion we have a great conflict.

We have a man with a withered arm and they watch him to see what he would do because religion as it had developed under their hand meant that if you were truly religious and kept the law you would do What? Nothing to someone in need.

So he says— you see what a terrific question it is— is it the law, that is, is it religious, is it religious to do good or to do harm? That’s the question.

Is it religion to save life or to kill it? What a devastating question.

And then without doing anything, because it’s the Sabbath, and I love this bit, she doesn’t move. Having asked the man to come and stand up in front, it’s brilliant, isn’t it? Brilliant theatre in a way. You ask the man to come and stand in front, everybody’s watching, and then you say to him, lift up your arm, which is what he can’t do.

That is what conversion is, isn’t it? God asking you to do what you can’t do.

And when he is restored— and man being restored is what Christianity is about, restored to his humanness, not just reconciled to God but becoming more truly the man that God made him— then the religious establishment, verse 6, and the social establishment conspire in an unholy alliance to destroy him. We can’t have religion like that.

Now as you will know, it’s one of the messages that I think we’ve got to get very straight again today. Religion is radically reinterpreted by Jesus, isn’t it?

So actually the word religion doesn’t appear in the New Testament except I think once, isn’t it, in James 1. Can anybody quote me that verse? Religion that is pure and undefiled is to visit fathers, widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. Nothing about going to church in that.

You see, we don’t like that. So in fact worship— we see we’re having increasingly unreformed in our whole view of worship. Worship really becomes isolated to mean simply what is church-centered, whereas in the New Testament worship is centred on Monday to Saturday, or rather the whole of life. It’s sharing with others, it’s praising God in everyday circumstances.

So I read the storey of Mother Teresa on my holiday this summer, deeply moved by it, and you know it’s a great moment when she climbs over the wall, isn’t it? Because there she is being religious and she sees outside people dying in the streets of Calcutta. She climbs over the wall, has to get permission to do it.

Oh yeah, yes, you will do it.

Tremendous. What a powerful person she is, isn’t she? She climbs over the wall to do— to be what? To be religious.

According to the New Testament.

Now we need to apply that. I want to apply it afresh to our own congregation and say the mark of being religious is not that we have 30,000 people at St. Helen’s singing 30,000 choruses with 30,000 guitars. The mark of being religious is that we do some good in our neighbourhood, isn’t it? That we give life, we do good. It’s not how much we fasted or how many Sabbaths we’ve kept.

But that’s a revolution, isn’t it, for our thinking? Very, very difficult and awfully difficult for us, you see, because we’re the religious professionals. It’s our business to get them into church. So we’ve got a vested interest in their not being truly religious because we want them to come and be religious. It’s our job, you see.

Well, you surely know that. I remember once when I was staying in some Anglican place and somebody said, Mr. Lucas, do you want an altar tomorrow morning? There’s no more ludicrous question, is there? What on earth would I want an altar for?

To be religious?

I tell the staff sometimes when they’re getting depressed, But my dear old mother’s nearly in her 90th year and she can’t hear a thing, bless her heart. And she has her old friends to tea, and one of them propounded the following question: What does Dick do all day in the city?

Well, she didn’t think my mother had heard, so she propounded the answer. She said, I suppose he shows tortoises. Around all day.

See, the whole framework of that thinking is that what has he been— he’s sent to a building, he’s to look after religion for the Church of England, and so it must be his greatest joy to point out the monuments.

That’s what he’s for. No, no, it’s what people think we’re for, isn’t it?

And it’s indeed what many of our church leaders want us to do because it’s the least They want us to keep religion going on our corner.

Now you see that, there’s a radical reinterpretation of this, isn’t it? He wants to lift the burden of religion and set men free to do good and to save life.

Now is that not a great moment of liberation?

Liberated from the unruly wills and affections of sinful men, liberated from Satan, liberated from sickness, liberated from sin’s dominion and condemnation, liberated from the burden of false religion that is the curse of millions.

God forbid that we should change Christianity into it.

And liberated now from nature. Let’s turn over to the end of chapter and throw our anchor down here.

On that day when evening had come, he said to them, let us go across to the other side. And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat just as he was, and other boats were with them. A great storm of wind arose. The waves beat into the boat so the boat was filling. He was in the stern asleep on the cushion.

They woke him. Don’t you care? Peace, be still. He rebuked the wind and the wind ceased and there was a great calm.

Now this is a glorious miracle, isn’t it? It’s a double miracle. You will know that The wind can cease in a moment, especially in the Mediterranean, that area. But the wind may cease, but the water won’t, which is why you don’t cross the Channel the day after the storm rather than in the storm. In the storm is always quite refreshing, plenty of fresh air around.

It’s the next day when you’ll get seasick, isn’t it? And the swell has developed. So here’s a double miracle, as any seaman would know. Which is quite inexplicable, isn’t it, unless you’ve got the Lord of creation there. The wind drops and the sea is calm.

Now it is true that these words are symbolic. In stilling the storm, Jesus assumes the authority that in the Old Testament is exercised sirly by God. Behind this verse lie 2 related sets of Old Testament symbols. The sea symbolises the primal chaos out of which God creates calm, and b) the stormy deep symbolises the trials and tribulations of the righteous. Now all that is right, I think, but I think we need to go back to the bedrock and say that though undoubtedly there is some thought here of satanic power behind it all because storm and disaster like this are signs of a disordered universe, we should, I think, take it basically as the control of Jesus over a disordered universe and only secondarily as over a tried church.

But the 2 things, of course, intermingle in the Scriptures. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea. It reminds us of what’s happened this last week. Though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult and the buildings fall down.

But you see, when that happens, when there is earthquake and storm and disaster, then people’s whole understanding of God is shaken, isn’t it? How can there be a God in a world like that?

And the answer of Mark is that the King came to bring back order out of disorder, to calm that which was disturbed. And to bring back the created universe under its proper Lord.

Now finally, ever death. Chapter 5, verse 35: While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further? I always loved that verse, don’t you? You see, until she was dead there was some hope.

Now she’s dead, there’s no hope, so don’t bother him anymore.

But he persists. And the Old Authorised Version, for a change, is the best of all, isn’t it? In verse 40, where it says, in answer to the fact that he says the child is not dead but sleeping, they laughed him to scorn.

Death is the final enemy, never been overthrown, the king of terrors, the last word.

And Jesus comes to this final enemy and overthrows it. Taking her by the hand, verse 41, he says, little girl, arise. And immediately she gets up. And they’re overcome with amazement.

And he tells her to give them something to eat as a sign, of course, that she’s really well. And you’ve got an appetite when you’re really well.

So she’s back to normal immediately.

And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, which is of course an absurd command, isn’t it, in some ways? Because how could they possibly not let it be known? And yet, you see, it’s an important part of our Lord’s testimony that these things are ambiguous, as we shall see.

And he doesn’t want people to know him at that juncture simply as the conqueror of death until they have learned what kind of a Lord he is.

Right, well, we’ve nearly finished. We’ve got just a few minutes. Before we go to study. So let’s come to that point where they admit that he is indeed King, and you’ll find that in chapter 8.

And once again we have a 3-point sermon.

Here they are, brothers. 1, the Pharisees.

2, people of the country. 3, the disciples. And it is all very characteristically put by Mark because the one, of course, he’s interested in is the disciples. So actually the disciples really should be in the middle, but I’ve left them for the last because I want to make their point last. The Pharisees, verse 11 to 13.

Very brief summary.

They argue with him, that’s always the mark of the unbeliever, and they seek a sign from heaven to test him.

And what happens when people do that to you? You groan. And verse 12 says he groaned.

And says, why does this generation seek a sign?

And he leaves them. Very powerful, isn’t it? No wasted word.

They demand and he does not provide. Who provides for this permanent demand for signs and wonders? The answer is given to us in chapter 13, verse 22.

False Christs and false prophets will arise and share his signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. So there is a demand from the unbeliever for signs and wonders despite the miracles, and these will be provided for by the false teacher.

And of course, he’s talking there about the future. In other words, when we live today, Now this is a painful issue because of the Wimber ministry at the moment, isn’t it? A ministry which is very compassionate and intensely sincere, and it’s because it is so sincere, led by a Christian brother, shows how far we can get within the community of faith from the fundamental New Testament standpoint.

See, the Wimber ministry is part of the existentialist framework of today. Reality is reality only if it is lived. So I can only see the power of God if I see it lived in miracle and signs and wonders. Reality is not an object of thought, therefore the, the storey of the historical Christ is of comparatively little importance.

Instead of the miracles of the Gospels, I must have miracles today. That is existentialism. Isn’t it?

If these miracles of Mark, if this storey, this historical storey will not persuade you, then you will not be persuaded by anything today either.

To ask signs on top of what Jesus did historically in his incarnation is a sign not of faith but of unfaith. And therefore to feed unbelief and is of course ultimate perversity.

The way I get faith is not by seeing Mrs. Jones having her pains cured on a stage today. The way I get faith is by reading the storey of Jesus, hearing the gospel word. If my faith is not pinned in the historic Christ, then it isn’t Christian faith.

Finally, and that is all, isn’t it, implicit in verses 11 to 13.

The Pharisees have seen all the mighty works of Jesus, yet they still ask a sign from heaven. And the only sign they’re going to get is what? It’s the sign of the cross of Christ. Let me read that quotation I gave you yesterday because it so greatly moved me, and I think it is such a great such a help when we come up against the Wimber ministry.

It is crucial for Mark’s theology that the centurion’s believing response— this is the Son of God at the foot of the cross— arises not out of any overt claim made by Jesus, nor out of any preconceived notion on his own part about who Jesus is, but only on the basis of what is accomplished in Jesus’ death. Precisely there in the obscurity, lowliness, and humiliation of the cross, and not in any miraculous display of power such as an unbelieving world demands in proof of God’s presence, the God of Jesus confronts men. Only in and through his death can it become known who Jesus really is. That’s right, that’s right. It can only become known as the real Jesus, otherwise we’re worshipping an idol, a different Jesus.

If we’re worshipping a Jesus who does signs and wonders to persuade us today, we’re not worshipping the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel.

The Jesus of Mark’s Gospel is one who, having done his work of overthrowing the enemies of mankind, refuses to do any signs and wonders to persuade people.

So much for the Pharisees. Now what about the country people?

Well, the country people are described for us in verse 28: Who do men say that I am? They told him, John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets. And go back a page to chapter 6, verse 14: King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some said, John the Baptizer has been raised. Others said, Elijah.

And some said, one of the prophets.

Now my friends, what the country people said in Galilee 2,000 years ago is exactly what the country people say today. There’s no difference. Who is Jesus? You ask the people next door to you. If they are sincere people who’ve read the story— many haven’t of course today— but if they’ve been brought up in Sunday school and that kind of thing and they’re not committed Christians, They will say he’s a very, very great teacher and the very greatest man that ever lived.

That is the sincere but unenlightened response of man today, isn’t it? Precisely as it was then, exactly the same response.

Now in the 3-point sermon, the Pharisees don’t want to believe.

They are blind.

The people, they are much more sincere, but they are equally blind. The disciples also are blind.

Don’t you love the primary school questions of 1920? When I broke the 5 loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? 12. And the 7 for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?

7. Do you not yet understand?

Well, it’s all very well for us to smile at them, isn’t it? You see, they had only one category to think about. It wasn’t possible for them to think in any other category, really. They had only the category of the prophet. And the prophet did 2 things: he pointed to God and he pointed to the future.

Really, the 2 things are the same.

Cuddling your mind— there’s the— that’s your framework, it’s your intellectual framework, and you’re trying to fit Jesus into it and he won’t fit.

That’s the marvel of this paragraph, isn’t it? Won’t fit. Suddenly It’s a great moment when you see that all your previous categories don’t actually explain something. Suddenly you see that Christ doesn’t point you to God but to himself and doesn’t point to the future because the future has come.

There isn’t any future beyond him.

So if he is the future to which the prophets looked, who is he?

He’s not the prophet looking to the future. He’s the one to whom the prophets looked and of whom they spoke.

So that little sentence pared down without any drama, no neon lights, no drums booming. You know, Mark is extraordinary, isn’t it? How you could write verse 29 without any decoration at all is extraordinary, isn’t it? You’re the Christ. But it’s one of the great moments of the gospel.

Isn’t it? To break out of all preconceived ideas, and you can only explain it in terms of divine illumination, as Matthew says, blessed art thou, flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father that is in heaven.