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We’re continuing a little series which we’ve picked up again in Mark’s Gospel. It’s a series called Jesus Rediscovered. We’re tackling those two little paragraphs in Mark chapter 3. Not sure if they’re being read if they seem very interesting to you, but I hope you’ll see on a careful reading for a few minutes that they’re absolutely wonderful and important. The first little paragraph, Mark 3:7-12, shows us a crowd which is fairly chaotic. The second paragraph verses 13-19, shows us Jesus choosing 12 apostles. And if you’d like to know what the point of the sermon is, I’ll give it to you in 4 words – it is – Jesus makes new people.

Jesus makes new people

What we’ve seen so far in Mark’s Gospel over the last few weeks is that Jesus the king has come into his world, and he brings great kindness and power. We’ve also seen that he receives great opposition. Last week we saw as he taught about the Sabbath, which is a gift from God, to be able to rest. That the religious leaders were so angry they went out and planned to kill him. So these two little paragraphs, they’re like snapshots. One is a picture of massive need in the world. The other one is a snapshot of calm choosing of 12 apostles. And just before we turn to the text itself, I just want to remind you that if you have a biblical view of what’s wrong with the world, which you desperately need, so that you can watch your television or read the paper or however you pick up your news, and you can say I know exactly why the world is like this.

The biblical diagnosis is Genesis 3, people turning their back on God and walking in a disobedient path. What Jim Packer, his great definition of sin is people playing God. That’s the problem with the world, people playing God. And then if you want to know what the solution is, you might turn to a passage like Mark 3 today, and you’ll see Jesus making new people. And I think this must be our very significant answer when people say to us occasionally, you’re a believer, what is God doing? Why is the world a mess? And one of the possible answers to the question is, he’s making new people.

And when he makes new people, they form new community, when they form new community, they have good impact on the world, and they look forward to the new creation. Without this piece of information, there is nothing to say. That is realistic and hopeful. I was reading an interview of the actor William Shatner from Star Trek, who was interviewed and he said this, he said, I see the end of my life approaching, and I am in despair and anxiety and bewilderment that it should go so quickly. And the key to living I’ve decided is denial. I’m not going to die, everything is fine. Everything is laughable, a cosmic joke. So laugh, why should I spend my life weeping?

Jesus and the crowds

Now that is one way of coping, isn’t it? It’s a big leap into the dark, and I think God expects us to look for better solutions, and we’ve got a very wonderful solution here this morning. So let’s look at chapter 3:7-12 under the heading Jesus and crowds. And then the second section this morning, 3:13-19, Jesus and the twelve. Look at chapter 3, verse 7, it says, Jesus withdrew or left. He walked out. He’s got about 4 or 5 disciples with him, James, John, Simon, Andrew, and Matthew. Why does he leave? Well, the answer is in the verse before verse 6, that the interest in Jesus from the religious hierarchy is negative. And so one writer says Jesus does a deliberate act of separation. He’s not retreating, he’s not nervous. He’s not frightened, he’ll walk into Jerusalem many more times, but this is a powerful demonstration that those who are rejecting his grace will soon find there is no grace around to reject. Remember when Jesus sent his disciples out door to door, he said to them, if you get to somebody’s door and they don’t want to have anything to do with you, just walk away. And if it’s a violent refusal. Then wipe the dust off your feet as a public demonstration to them.

And here is Jesus walking away because he’s under no obligation to bless people who harden their hearts. And this is true of nations that turn their back on Christ. When a nation turns its back on Christ, there’s no obligation on God’s part to bless the nation. Especially with spiritual blessings. This is the story of churches. If a church turns its back on Christ, and, and some do. And they go in a different direction, there’s no obligation on Christ’s part to bless that church, and this is true for individuals, if you turn your back on Christ, then he’s under no obligation to bless you. This human rejection, human arrogance brings spiritual darkness. One of the things that staggers me as I get older in this world, is that the people who are often reporting the great damage in the world in their next article are undermining the Christian faith. It’s like I’m removing the bricks of the faith. And I’m now reporting the damage on the 40th floor. I’m reporting nobly the damage on the 40th floor, but last week I was pulling the bricks out of the faith.

So unbelief when it takes over in somebody’s life is not a sudden thing. Not many people wake up and say, you know, I was really committed, and now I’m really uncommitted. It’s usually a process like weeds taking over the garden. So Jesus is not retreating here to look after himself. In actual fact, he’s advancing to where people are receptive. And you’ll see in verses 7 and 8, twice we read a great multitude. This could be tens of thousands, and they come from the south, Judea, they come from the west. And they come from the north. Now who are these people that are coming to Jesus? They’re not the religious establishment. These are mostly Gentiles, and they’re coming because Isaiah said in chapter 9 in the Old Testament that when the light of the world comes into the world, the Gentiles will come. And in contrast, you see to the enemies of Jesus who refuse his ministry and then sort of slink away working out how they’ll kill him. These people hear what Jesus does, they just hear. And they come to him, they trust him. Now we have to say that the crowd that comes to Jesus is not an easy crowd. This is not like, a crusade where everybody sits on the grass. The verses that we’ve got here indicate that this is an absolute piece of chaos.

This is not Jesus being a success with everybody sort of sitting quietly at his feet and listening. This is problem people. I don’t know if you ever had one of those children’s Bibles, where there’s a picture of Jesus sitting in a kind of a white nighty, and he’s got a little kid on his knee and there’s a little lamb just strolling past and somebody’s holding a white lily flower. And it all looks dreamy. This is the exact opposite here in these verses. Jesus, you see in verse 9, has to arrange for an emergency boat because the crowds are crushing him, literally crushing him. So what he’s facing here in chapter 3:7-12 is a kind of a media frenzy where he’s the celebrity and there’s no police. Even our Bibles play down how serious this is. What it literally says in these verses is that the crowds are squeezing him, crushing him.

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The sick, believe it or not, are literally falling on him. How am I going to get his attention? I’m gonna, I’m gonna fall onto him. And the possessed, the demon possessed are falling down in front of him and yelling. Any opportunity to sort of speak in a coherent way is almost lost. Now just try and picture this. I think it would be humanly terrifying if you’re not the Son of God with supreme power and great love. This would be terrifying. And I think Mark he’s showing us this, not just because he wants us to see the needs of the world a massive, thousands and thousands of people. This is a kind of a, a casualty war landing at once on Jesus, but he’s the only doctor. He’s the only solution. And even if he could fix each one, it’s not what he’s come to do. He’s not come to turn that little patch of geography into heaven.

And then moved to another patch and turn it into heaven. He hasn’t come to do that. He’s come to announce the kingdom. I’ve often used the illustration, you’ll forgive me if I use it again. If you can imagine that the world is kind of like a pirate ship, and Jesus is on his own ship and he comes close to the pirate ship and he drops a gangplank from his ship to theirs. What does he say to the pirate ship? He says, I’m giving you a certain amount of time to change sides. If you change sides, you’ll come under my leadership, you’ll get a complete king’s pardon, and you’ll be a brand new person. But what he doesn’t say is I’m going to cross over the gangplank and I’m going to bandage everybody on the pirate ship and leave them on a pirate ship. So you see, Jesus here is not just doing a superficial job on people, he’s going to show people that he’s the king of the kingdom. He is the person eventually to solve everything, but he’s going to solve everything by going to Calvary. And you’ll notice in chapter 3, verse 11 that the evil spirits know who he is and they get it right who he is. But his method is to go to the cross. And die on the cross and pay for sin and bring fellowship with God and life eternal and a place in God’s glory.

The evil spirits won’t admit the cross part because that’s where they get their doom. So they just say he’s the Son of God. And verse 12, he has to literally shut them up. Notice that the evil spirits know who Jesus is, the Pharisees won’t admit who Jesus is, and people today won’t admit who Jesus is, but the evil spirits in his day knew who he was. Well, there are 3 times in Mark’s Gospel where people call out Son of God. One is the Father, God the Father in chapter 1, who says this is my Son at the baptism, but he also says, in whom I’m well pleased, and that is a reference to his suffering and death.

Then there’s another reference at the end of the gospel where the centurion, the soldier at the crucifixion, calls out, this man is the Son of God, but he’s watching Jesus die. In the middle are these evil spirits, and they’re calling out, you’re the Son of God, but they won’t make reference to the cross. So they’re just saying very inflammatory things, unhelpful things. Once you hear this is the Son of God and you start to think, well, what’s he going to do? Is he going to deliver Israel from Rome? You’ll get very excited, but he’s not going to, he’s going to deliver sinners from death. And the evil spirits won’t say that.

During the week, I went up quickly to Noosa and spoke for Mark Calder, one of the former assistant ministers here, and I was, walking in the little shopping centre and I was talking to a lady, and I told her I was just there for 24 hours, and she said, ‘why are you here?’ And I said, Well, I’m giving a talk tonight at the local church. And she said, What’s your topic? And I said, Oh, it’s the resurrection. And she said, oh that’s interesting, she’s a nice Croatian Catholic lady. She said it’s interesting, I went to the Holy Land, she said ‘I was very unimpressed with the tomb. There’s not much to it.’ And I said, he only lay there two nights.

You know, there’s probably a lot of beds he stayed in for a lot longer. You know, it’s hard to get excited about the tomb. Nobody’s excited about the tomb really. He only just stopped and left. So no wonder there’s not a big sort of spectacle built over the term. But people are not good, are they, at seeing the simplicity of what Christ has come to do, which is to very humbly live and die. People want a spectacle.

Jesus and the twelve

That’s the first section this morning, Jesus and the crowds. The second section is Jesus and the twelve, verses 13-19. Again, these are deceptively wonderful verses. It looks on first reading as if it’s just a list of names, but the, the words in these verses are highly significant. Look at chapter 3, verse 13. Jesus goes up a mountain. Now who’s done that before? This is highly significant. Was it not a mountain where God, basically appointed the 12 tribes of Israel to be his people in the world.

And here is Jesus going up on a mountain, and he’s choosing a new Israel. That’s why the twelve is such a significant word. How could we miss that Jesus is quite deliberately and specifically superseding 2000 years of Jewish history? It’s almost as though he’s saying, you know, there were 12 tribes. Well, now there’s going to be 12 new men. And this is them. I want to just think with you for a few minutes about these 12 men, just say a number of things to you.

First, these 12 men are not very significant in themselves. New Testament doesn’t tell us how wonderful they are. Tells us a lot of their mistakes. New Testament doesn’t spend its time praising these 12 or even following them, and some of them are pretty unknown and we don’t know where they went and we don’t know what they did. The second thing about the 12, however, is that they are still greatly remembered as names. Old Bishop Ryle in the 19th century said the names of a few Jewish fishermen are known and loved by millions all over the globe, while the names of kings and rich men are lost and forgotten.

The lists incidentally appear in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts, and they’ve only got one difference in the lists. In the Matthew Mark list, there is a guy called Thaddeus, and in the Luke Acts list there is a guy called Jude. Since many of the disciples had two names, Simon Peter, Matthew Levi, it’s quite possible that Thaddeus and Jude are the same person.

Third thing to say about these 12 is that they are very different men. I just can’t imagine what it was like on the first night or the first week getting those guys together. I mean, Matthew is pro- Rome, Simon the zealot is anti-Rome. Some of them are fishermen, there’s a whole range of personalities and characters and types. It must have been a weird 12. But under the leadership of Jesus, they have him in common, and because they have him in common, they have more in common than they don’t have in common. Just like when you become a Christian, you have more in common with another believer than you have in common with your best unbelieving friend or family member. As soon as you come into Christ you have immeasurable things in common. That’s of course the way we must live. You think of the little church in Philippi where it started off with Lydia, wealthy lady, and then possibly a slave girl, and then there was the Roman jailer. There’s the threesome, we’re given a Philippi. What a threesome to get together into a triplet. And yet in common with Christ.

Now the most remarkable thing, fourthly about these 12 men is that the word appointed in verse 14 and 16 is actually the word made. I got quite a shock when I read this. It says, Jesus made 12. Jesus made 12. It’s the same word in the Greek Old Testament in Genesis 1:1, God made the world. Jesus made 12. He didn’t just give them a job and say, see if you can be helpful. He gave these men a new soul, a new heart, a new life. As he did to Levi, when he got Levi up from his tax collector’s booth with power. Levi would never have left that tax collector’s profitable booth, but Christ made him new, he made him.

And here he made 12. I was talking with a minister this week who’s part of another state in the country, part of another diocese. He was telling me that when he was at theological college, he said he pretty well learned nothing because they concentrated on what they call formation. And he said formation is so superficial. It’s got to do with you, how you walk in the building and how you hold the offertory plates.

And how you tilt your head for reading and how you give somebody communion. He said it’s all surface. Now we’re so thankful that at a theological college, which is a, a good theological college, they will teach you the scriptures which have a transforming effect on you and a transforming effect, God willing on those who listen. God transforms people. He doesn’t do superficial formation. He does profound transformation. And he names some of them or nicknames them or renames them, just as in Genesis, there was a naming process.

The 5th thing to say. That’s why these men are part of the solution. There is a frenzied crowd in chapter 3, verse 10. But the men in chapter 3:14-15 move out to preach a gospel that changes people. And are given power, the apostles, to cast out demons which must have turned the tide of evil. Of course Judas was unchanged, a tragic member, a betrayer in the 12. He had all the privileges, all the opportunities, and yet he became the betrayer. He did this freely. He was not a robot. Nobody made him do it. He wanted money, he was glad to take the money originally. And betray Jesus, but he fulfilled terrible scriptures.

The 6th thing, quickly is, therefore the first role of the apostles, verse 14, is to be with Jesus. This is the key to discipleship, to be with him, to walk with him, to listen to him, to see, as the eyewitnesses did what he did, and then to report to later generations everything Jesus said and did. How thankful we are to have these eyewitnesses who walked with him and then recorded what he said and did and could say like John, we were there, we saw him, or like Peter, we were on the mountain, we saw and we hurt.

And then the 7th thing is that they, verse 14, they were sent out. God’s people were gathered in the land in the Old Testament. God’s people were gathered to Jesus in the New Testament, then they were sent out, sent out with the gospel. And these two paragraphs, as I say, they’re sort of like two photos hanging in an art gallery. One is a picture of problems, problems, problems, pressing in, and one of them is a picture of brand-new people going out. I’m reminded of that man in Mark chapter 5, who’s demon possessed and is a complete drain on the community and meets Jesus and Jesus changes him and he becomes a fountain of blessing in his community. From a drain to a fountain, how often we see this? How often we see somebody who really is on a pirate ship and they cross over to Christ and they become so wonderfully used.

Now I want to finish this morning with just some things to take away. First of all, I say this especially to some of you who may be visitors, I hope you will receive, not reject, the life which Christ died to give you. He died to take the judgement, and he offers to you as a free gift, got nothing to do with your good deeds, as a free gift, eternal life. I was reading an obituary recently of a British lady who was a concert pianist. And she taught music at Trinity College in London. She was described as charming, dignified, cultured, and kind. Her life unraveled, and she spent the last 26 years of her life in her car in a Ford console. And as I’m reading this, this, obituary, I’m thinking to myself, why didn’t somebody help her? And the answer is she would accept no charity of any kind from anyone. Now maybe that was her pride, I don’t know.

But if a person says, I’m taking no charity from Christ, I’ve got my pride. That’ll be fatal. It’s the holding out of empty, humble hands and receiving what Christ gives. Which brings a brand-new life that will go forever. And then be careful to recognise Christ’s agenda and don’t impose on him your agenda. The crowds, of course, in Jesus’ day had plenty of ideas for him to perform. The critics today have plenty ideas of what the church should be doing.

But Jesus, as I say, is not interested in bandaging the world, Jesus is interested in gospelling the world, which brings the transformation. Our need is not that we would have a good CV so God would love us. Our need is that we would have a bad CV which we have, and that we would bring it to him for forgiveness and new life. Do concentrate also on the privilege, the 21st century privilege of walking with Christ and going for Christ. Of course we can’t do this physically like the apostles, they actually walked geographically with him. But we are able to walk with him in real fellowship, reading his word, praying to him.

And we’re also able to go with him and be his light, salt city on a hill, wherever we go. Don’t wait for perfect circumstances. Don’t say to yourself, gee, I’ll be really keen one day when some miracle takes place. Just say to yourself, is it a new day? Has God made me a new person? Is he able to use me today? I’m available. I want to use the resources that I have in his service. Is it possible there are some people who are using the same resources that you’ve got better than you? Therefore, we should use our clever brains that know how to plan so many things to plan how we can be more and more useful.

And lastly, I hope you’ll keep this wonderful truth in your mind when you’re faced with the question, what’s God doing in his world? The answer is he’s making new people, new people who come into new community, who affect the world and wait for a new creation, and one of the things we may say to people who ask us, what is God doing is we may say to them, he’s making new people, are you one?

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