People don’t understand Jesus. Agree or disagree?
Make an interesting poll question, don’t you think? Whatever results today’s poll might show, it’s clear people didn’t understand Jesus in this next part of Mark’s Good News report—chapter 3, verses 7-35. Some were . . .
Desperate for Jesus’ Healing (3:7-19).
Doesn’t sound like a misunderstanding. But think it through.
Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed,
from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea
and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon.
When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him.
And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd,
lest they crush him, for he had healed many,
so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him . . . (3:7-12)
Word spreads, even without social media. A miracle-worker called Jesus is healing sickness! So they come. First, like a trickle of sea water on the beach. Then like a wave. Finally a flood. Limping. Dragging. Carried. Hundreds, like a thirsty mob frenzied for water pressed around him, straining just to touch him, frantic for their miracle.
Who can blame them? When you’re terminally or chronically ill, you long to be well. All you think of is health and healing is everything you want. Mark doesn’t say, but certainly Jesus healed as he had before.
However Jesus is much more than a divine doctor dispensing miraculous cures. He’s the Son of God. He didn’t come primarily to make these dust-bodies better. He came to inaugurate the eternal kingdom of God. That’s what he had proclaimed when he first entered Galilee . . .
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand;
repent and believe in the gospel (Mark 1:14,15).
In a science fiction movie, Earth faces alien attack. Government and citizens prepare. Countdown to THE TIME starts, When Jesus announced, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand”, he was telling us THE TIME of the countdown’s zero hour had struck. The arrival of God’s most incomparable act since Creation—the inauguration of the New Creation—had dawned!
Jesus’ healing miracles were signs of that kingdom’s in-breaking, but many that day were more than happy “just” to be healed. When we fixate “merely” on physical healing to the exclusion of kingdom glory, we’re “like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum, because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea” (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory).
Jesus: misunderstood.
Deranged Jesus (3:20,21,31-35). This misapprehension came from, of all people, Jesus’ family.
Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that he 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” (3:20,21).
The ESV Study Bible identifies Jesus’ family as his mother and sisters and half-brothers. But on this day they all seem like Jewish mothers! “Oy gavalt! He’s out of his mind. We have to go save our boy!” Jesus had given them cause for concern: so besieged by crowds “he could not even eat”. What he said when they found him probably didn’t calm their fears: ” . . . whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother” (3:31-35)? Anybody have the number for the psychologist?
Believe it or not, a few people today believe Jesus was a loon. At least a victim of his own success, who believed his own messianic press clippings. Certainly there are more, though, who think we are the loons for believing in him. Either way, in their mind, Jesus and his followers aren’t the brightest bulbs in the bunch.
Jesus: misunderstood.
Demon Jesus (3:22-30).
And the scribes (law teachers) who came down from Jerusalem were saying,
“He is possessed by Beelzebul”
and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons”.
This is misunderstanding gone ballistic. Jesus’ fame draws scribes from Jerusalem. They can’t deny his exorcisms, so they brand him possessed! Jesus called them together and, like a patient teacher reasoning with 2nd grade children asks, “How can Satan cast out Satan? . . . if Satan has risen up against himself . . . he cannot stand . . . ” (3:23,25).
We smile at the scribe’s sorry charge, but Jesus took it quite seriously. “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 . . . ” (3:28,29). Now “ballistic” misunderstanding has gone to hell.
I don’t know anybody today who says, “[Jesus] has an unclean spirit” (3:30). But rejecting Jesus as the Son of God who came to inaugurate the kingdom of God amounts to pretty much the same thing, How you be saved from God’s wrath against sin if you reject the Savior he’s sent? So learning to understand Jesus is the most important education we can have. And that brings us to part of this section we’ve skipped . . .
Disciples of Jesus (3:13-19).
And he went up on the mountain
and called to him those whom he desired,
and they came to him.
And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles)
so that they might be with him
and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons (3:13-15).
Since you’re reading this, you’re hearing the Gospel. Jesus is present in it. And he’s calling you. Not to be an apostle, but to be with him and to be sent out to make his Gospel understandably known.
None of us on this earth will completely understand Jesus. His thoughts and ways are higher than ours. But this is where we want to be—with him, learning from him through his written Word. Otherwise, at best we’re settling for “mud pies” and at worst eternally unforgiven.
Learning to understand Jesus and believe in Jesus and follow Jesus and make Jesus known is the highest understanding we can have this side of the new creation.
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