I’ve joked before that if someone showed up at my front door, told me that they owned my house, kids, and bank account, and were now coming to collect what was rightfully theirs, my first question would be, “Does this have something to do with a form that I checked on some website saying that I’d read the terms and conditions and agreed with them?” After all, whenever I check those forms I always seem to think to myself, “If this were really important or something with extreme consequences, surely they’d put it in bold or something.” So, I scan through those forms, looking for bold or italicized words, and then just move on.
It’s simply understood in our society that you need to know what you’re getting into. You need to know what your commitment to something means. This is why when we take out a loan on a house, there is a lawyer present and seemingly hundreds of pages that you have to initial. It’s why the insurance company that covers our church building came out and sat with us a few years ago, telling us everything we’d need to do and every benefit that we were getting. They wanted us to enter into our insurance agreement with them with their eyes wide opened.
What am I getting into, what are the costs, and what is expected of me are simply a few basic questions we should be asking when we go into any kind of commitment. It’s the reason we don’t just receive members into our church without first having them attend a new members’ class. And the idea of understanding and counting the cost is biblical.
When Jesus speaks to the crowds in Luke 12 about following him, he goes over what it will cost them and what will be expected of them, and then he says, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 12:28-33). Jesus wanted his followers to understand what it meant and what it means to be his disciple.
And I think that’s a central theme that arises in Mark 3:13-35. I also think it’s something we should expect. After all, consider what Mark has done to this point. He’s shown us in 1:1-13 who Jesus is. He is the God-Man. Then, he shows us Jesus’ message and what it looks like for him to bring the kingdom. Then, in the text we looked at last week, he showed us the adversity Jesus faced. He was constantly opposed by the scribes and Pharisees, who challenged his authority and were unwilling to accept Jesus’ claims for himself. Therefore, after some episodes in Jesus’ ministry that dealt with adversity, Mark gives us a few episodes in Jesus’ life that are knit together by the mixed responses Jesus received. Some followed him, others misunderstood him, and still others hated him and accused him of evil. And just as Jesus answered his adversaries in the text we saw last week and, in so doing, clearly revealed his identity, I believe that as we see the mixed responses Jesus receives from people and his response to those individuals, we get a glimpse of the blessings and the costs of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. And that’s what I want us to see from these verses this morning.
What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ? First, it means that . . .
In Mark 3:13-19 we read that Jesus went up on a mountain, called to himself those whom he desired, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve (the apostles) so that they “might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons” (vv. 14-15).
And there is much we could say here. We could note the fact that they were first called to be with him, and that is important. It’s easy for us to think that our primary calling as believers is to do something. And indeed, we are to obey all the commands of Christ, which involves much doing. However, the primary thing we are called to do is to love our God. Our greatest commandment is to have deep affection for the one who created us and saved us. Our God really is our Father. He’s even sent his Spirit into our hearts so that we might know and feel that we are his sons. So, there is a helpful reminder to us here.
Also, it is a helpful reminder to remember that even as the apostles were sent out to preach and were given authority from Christ, so are we sent out to preach the gospel to all the nations, and we are given the authority of Christ not only to preach the good news but to command all people everywhere to repent and believe in Jesus Christ.
But I do think those two details are secondary to what’s going on in verses 13-19. I think we are supposed to read these verses and understand that Jesus is forming for himself a new and true people of God. And I say that for a couple of reasons.
First, I’ll mention the lesser of the two reasons. When Mark mentions that Jesus goes up on a mountain, it is probably to remind us of when Moses went up on Mount Sinai and received the law, for it was in that act that God was forming for himself a people – the people of Israel. It was in that moment as Moses goes to the top of the mountain that God was forming a people for himself who would relate to him under the terms of the Old Covenant law that God gave them through Moses.
But more importantly is the note that Jesus calls to himself twelve men. Mark mentions in verse 14 that “he appointed twelve,” and then he repeats that fact, beginning verse 16, “He appointed the twelve.” Now, there’s no way a student of the Old Testament would have seen this as insignificant. If you didn’t know the Old Testament well or weren’t a Jew of the first century you might think that this number was somewhat random. Maybe Jesus thought, “Ah, let’s just have twelve.” Or perhaps he wanted a group that would be large enough to help him but small enough to fit in a boat together – since they’d have to do a lot of traveling.
But this number was not random, and it had nothing to do with how many men could squeeze in a boat. Any Jew in the first century would have associated the number twelve with the number of the tribes of Israel. God has constituted a people for himself under the Old Covenant through the twelve tribes. And you were even identified according to your tribe so that Paul can say he was of the tribe of Benjamin and David of the tribe of Judah.
So when Jesus comes and calls specifically twelve men to himself, the message would have been clear, he is gathering a people for himself. Indeed, he was gathering the true people of God for himself. And just as he called these to himself, so through their witness, he would call people from all over the world to himself through their witness. This is why Paul writes in Galatians 3 that anyone who is united with Christ by faith is a son of God and “Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gen. 3:29). We are part of God’s true people, the true Israel.
And as we said a couple of weeks ago, the reason we are of this group who are the true people of God is because Jesus Christ graciously called us to himself and we believed. After all, there are a hundred reasons why individuals who make up God’s people should never be together. Consider the twelve for a second. You have Peter, who does all kinds of rash things and declares himself ready to kill and die for Christ. Then, you have two individuals whom Jesus names “Sons of thunder,” perhaps because of their heated personalities. Then you have a group that includes Simon, a zealot who would be ready to lead a revolution against Rome, and Matthew, who had conspired with Rome to cheat his own countrymen through collecting taxes.
This group would not just join one another as pals in a million years. So what brings them together? The answer is in verse 13, when it tells us that Jesus “called” them to him. When Christ effectively calls a people to himself, a miracle happens in their hearts. Let me illustrate this by asking a question. Did you walk into this room today thinking, “What would happen if Satan himself listened to the sermon today and thought, ‘Man, that’s a really good point that was made in that sermon, I think I’m going to dedicate my life to bringing honor and glory to Jesus Christ’?” Of course not. And it wasn’t just because you doubted that the sermon would be that good, was it? One reason we would never in our wildest dreams think such a thing could happen is because we know something about Satan’s nature. He hates the Lord Jesus Christ. He is in moral rebellion against his Maker, and one day he will be cast into the lake of fire.
However, what we may miss sometime is that we were like Satan. Prior to our conversion, we were in moral rebellion against our Maker. We were rebelling against the Lord Jesus Christ. Though we knew the true God existed, we refused to worship and honor him as God, but instead we chose to worship the created order itself. We loved darkness and hated light.
But then something amazing happened. Someone shared the gospel with us, and though it might have been the 100th time we heard it, on that occasion Jesus Christ spoke to our hearts through that gospel proclamation and all of the sudden everything in our hearts changed. We who hated the light now all of the sudden loved it. We who did not want to worship Jesus Christ were now ready to give our lives in devotion to him. That’s what conversion is. Jesus powerfully changes our hearts through the power of his voice.
Then he brings us together with other people so that though there may be nothing that would united us in this world, we are bound together because we love the Lord Jesus Christ, know he is Lord, and are trusting in him for our salvation. You may be a big government person and someone else a small government person. You may be a fan of one sports team and someone else a fan of a rival sports team. You may be from an entirely different culture and background of someone else. But all of that is secondary. What supersedes all of those things is that our hearts have been called and arrested by Jesus Christ, and we are part of a new humanity, a new people that God is gathering for himself from every nation.
That’s what Jesus is doing when he calls the twelve to himself. He is showing us that he’s calling people to believe in him so that they might be part of the true people of God. Being a follower of Christ means that you’re part of the true people of God. Second, being a follower of Christ means . . .
In verses 22-35, Mark gives us two other responses that Jesus receives. The first is from his family. We read in verses 20-21, “Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind.’”
Now, this can be startling news to us. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that we celebrated Christmas and remembered that the angel appeared to Mary, telling her that a baby had been conceived in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, and he would be the Christ. So, how do we get here where she and her other children are trying to get Jesus and take him back home because they think he’s lost his mind?
Well, one factor we should consider is that Jesus’ life for the first thirty years may look quite a bit different than it’s looking now that he’s doing his public ministry. Jesus, it didn’t seem, was doing much to draw attention to his divine power for the first few decades of his life. In fact, John tells us in his gospel that some did not believe he was the Christ because they noted that this Jesus is simply the son of Joseph. Jesus looked and seemed very normal.
Moreover, if there was ever anything that Jesus did that seemed different, he wasn’t doing it as a traveling public teacher, drawing the attention of masses and masses of people.
But now, things were different. Jesus had come onto the public scene teaching authoritatively, casting out demons, claiming to have the power to forgive sins, and on and on. And now crowds were gathering around him all the time.
Therefore, his mother and brothers are no doubt trying to be gracious to him. They’re thinking, “Jesus has finally lost his mind,” and we need to get him away from the crowds so that he doesn’t embarrass himself more.
Just this week I was at the doctor’s office because I’ve been having consistent headaches, and he asked me, “Are you making sense when you talk to other people?” And I thought, “As far as I know. Perhaps I’m not the one to ask.” But then I thought, “Well, surely I have enough people in my life who love me enough that if I’m talking like a mad man, they’ll come get me and say, ‘Lee, why don’t you stop speaking publicly for a bit.’” That’s exactly what Mary and Jesus’ brothers were trying to do for him. But the problem was they just didn’t understand fully who he was and what he was doing.
Second, there was another group that simply hated Jesus. We already know that such language is not an exaggeration because already in 3:6 we’ve read that the Pharisees were seeking how to kill him. But we also see their animosity in these verses. We read in verse 22 that the scribes were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.”
And Jesus answers them in three ways. First, he points out the flaw in their logic. He points out that if he is casting out demons by the power of demons, then that would be like Satan turning on his own kingdom. That is to say, their charge is completely illogical.
Second, he shows them what’s really going on. He says in verse 27, “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed, he may plunder his house.” That is, Jesus is giving them a behind-the-scenes look at what’s really going on.
Satan is called in the Bible the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4), the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2), and the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31). We are also told that he has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. So Jesus wants the scribes to know what’s happening when he effectively calls someone to himself or frees them from demonic spirits. Because he is the rightful king of all the earth, Jesus is coming into this world and binding Satan and plundering his goods. That’s what he’s doing every time someone is freed from demonic spirits. That’s what he’s doing every time someone is freed from Satan’s tyranny and their eyes are opened to repent and believe in the gospel. Jesus is demonstrating his power over Satan rather than carrying out his mission by the power of Satan.
And finally Jesus shows the scribes that they are positioning themselves in a place to know God’s eternal wrath. He says in verses 28-29, “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” And Mark tells us that Jesus said this because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”
Now, let’s try to answer a couple of questions. First, what is this sin that will not be forgiven? It seems that it is knowingly rejecting Christ’s claims and declaring that Jesus is actually working by the power of Satan. At least that’s what they’re doing in this text. Second, has any of us actually committed this sin and is now outside of the reach of God’s forgiveness? I think I can answer that question by saying that Bible nowhere gives any example of someone wanting to be forgiven and of God refusing them forgiveness. Also, the fact that you would fear not being forgiven by Jesus seems to suggest that you’re not committing this sin. Rather, instead of thinking that Jesus is working in cahoots with the enemy, you’re recognizing him as your rightful judge and the one who has the power to forgive sins. So, if you are fearful of being condemned because of this sin, it seems to suggest that your heart is not like that of the scribes toward Jesus but actually recognizes Jesus’ divine authority to judge and forgive.
But the main thing I want us to see here is that the scribes had an axe to grind with Jesus. They weren’t simply mistakenly thinking he was working by the power of Satan. As Jesus points out, that is so illogical as to be preposterous. Jesus also points out implicitly that they’re bound under the tyranny of Satan if they’ve not believed. And they’re blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
But why are they doing all of that? It’s because they’re in rebellion against Jesus Christ. They are enemies of their Creator. And this has implications for us. Being a follower of Christ means that we are identifying ourselves with one (indeed, declaring to be our Lord one) who is consistently misunderstood and hated by the world. And this means that if they’ve persecuted our Lord, they will persecute us.
Following Jesus means being misunderstood, hated, and persecuted for the sake of our Lord and his gospel. For many of us, it may mean we will actually be killed. For others, we will be held in disdain and mocked and ridiculed. For others, we will be disowned by family, misunderstood by those whom we love, and hated by those for whom we would literally give up our lives if only they would believe. It is not an easy road to walk when we follow Christ.
But there is one more piece of good news, especially if following Christ has meant that you had to leave your family or (worse) have been abandoned and hated by them. Being a follower of Christ means . . .
After dealing with the scribes, Mark tells us that Jesus’ mother and brothers finally show up so that they can seize him. The problem is, they can’t get to him because of the crowd. So they send word so that eventually the crowd tells Jesus that they’re looking for him. And his answer is astonishing. Mark writes in verses 33-35, “And he answered them, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”
What Jesus is saying is that the bond that he forges when he called people to himself is actually greater than what is in one’s DNA. Another way to say it would be to say that in the kingdom of God baptismal waters are thicker than blood. You see, one of the odd promises Jesus gives in the Bible is that if we lose our families in this life for his sake, we will not only find eternal life but we will be given a hundredfold mothers, and brothers, and sisters, and children in this life.
But how? The answer is simply to look around this morning. Those without families who come to Christ now have a family whose bonds run deeper than blood. Even within our families, we have deeper bonds with non-biological believers than we do our own flesh and blood who are believers. And the reason we do is because the deepest affections of our hearts have been made alike if we are saved. Families can be as different as night and day, but all believers everywhere throughout all ages love the Lord Jesus Christ more than all else.
So, is there cost to following Christ? Absolutely. You will be misunderstood and hated by some. You may have your family even abandon you and persecuted you. But to believe in Christ means that you will not only have eternal life in the life to come, but it means in this life you’ll be part of the people of God who are a truer family than any blood-connected group of people have ever known.
Therefore, let us come to the table this morning, giving thanks to the one who lived, died, and was raised for us so that we might belong to God, to him, and to one another. And let us rejoice in what he has done for us. Amen.