“The Squeeze” - Wild Heart: Mark’s Portraits of a Radical Messiah

We’re continuing our series Wild Heart: Mark’s Portrait of a Radical Messiah this morning.

Last week we talked about the struggle in our hearts between a religion about God vs. a relationship with Him. The Scribes and the Pharisees struggled to define Jesus and His disciples by their interpretation of proper religious standards and because they didn’t measure up they were rejected and criticized.

It’s clear that Jesus and His disciples faced an ever growing scrutiny of their actions. They were being watched very carefully and with that came a certain kind of pressure. They were being squeezed from all sides.

Now I’ll venture a guess here that when we think about Jesus we often perceive Him as being above the normal human feelings that we experience in our life. It’s true He is God, yet the Bible is clear that He was also fully human.

In fact it says in Heb 4:15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all [points]tempted as [we are, yet] without sin.

What that means is that Jesus experienced the same day today stresses and pressures that we face and in our passage this morning we’re going to look at three of them…..

Let’s read Mark 3:1-12

Three squeezes Jesus faced:

The squeeze of peering eyes: Have you ever felt like everyone is watching you to see if you’ll make a mistake or do something that will give them something to hold over your head and condemn you? That’s a lotof pressure isn’t it?

Jesus knows what that feels like. In vs. 2a Jesus entered the synagogue and saw a man there who had a withered hand. We don’t know if he was there on His own or if he was planted there by the Pharisees as a trap.Either way his presence there that day created a pressure point for Jesus because the Pharisees were watching Him. The Greek word translated watched means to watch carefully.

Like Jesus we will face the pressure of peering eyes.People will be examining your life looking for evidence that you are for real.Some of them will be looking for opportunity to run you down, but many will be watching to see if what’s inside of you is for real.

Jesus could have crumbled but He stood there in full view of them all inviting them to look as closely as they wanted.

The squeeze of expectations: This is one I understand particularly well. I found this on the Internet, that infallible source of all knowledge.

The perfect pastor preaches exactly ten minutes. He condemns sin, but never hurts anybody's feelings. He works from eight in the morning until midnight and is also the church janitor. He is twenty-nine years old and has forty years experience. He makes fifteen house calls a day and is always in the office. (from Jan Karon's These High, Green Hills, p. 37)

But I’m not alone we all face unreasonable expectations. Kid’sface this when the expectations of their parents collide with the expectations of their peers. There are many ‘expectations’ that are placed on us and they create pressure.

Jesus faced that pressure too (vs. 2b) because the Pharisees placed their expectations on Jesus. They were looking to see if Hewould heal this man on the Sabbath day. What they were looking for was a way to criticize and accuse Him.

Not only did Jesus face the expectations of the religious crowd, He had to deal with the enormous pressure of the multitudes who gathered around Him. From verses 7-12 a picture of chaos emmerges. People coming from everywhere all wanting to touch or be touched by Jesus. Demoniacs were screaming at the top of their lungs and falling to the ground. The sick and broken were pushing their way through the crowds. It was so crazy that Jesus asked His disciples to find a small boat for Him because the crowds would have literally ‘crushed Him like a grape.”

We’ll certainly face the pressure of expectations.Sometimes we’ll even put expectations on ourselves and soon enough we begin to feellike failures.

The squeeze of rejection: vs. 5 tells us that Jesus became angry after He looked into the eyes of the Pharisee’s and saw that their hearts were hardened. Anger is something I would expect, but what really caught my attention was that Jesus was grieved by what He saw. His heart was saddened by the hard, thick, spiritual callus that covered their hearts.

Jesus didn’t come to do battle with the Pharisees, He came to save people and even though the Pharisee’s were out to get Him, Jesus still loved them and was grieved that the pain they had suffered became a callus that prevented them from seeing Jesus for who He was their only hope. The thing is calluses don’t form overnight; they develop from years of friction and usually start out as a painful blister.

Jesus felt their rejection very deeply, but He was unwilling to compromise what was right to gain their acceptance. We struggle with this very thing because we want to be liked. How any times have we compromised in order to be accepted by other people only to find out that it was big mistake?

Close: Experts will tell us that our response to these pressures comes out of our self-image. If we’re secure in who we are then we won’t be bothered by these things. But the more people I observe the more I understand that nobody is immune because no one has a proper self image. We’re all broken by sin. Those that seem to have it all together are just better at hiding their true feelings.

The root of the ‘squeeze’ we feel from these pressures isfear.

The squeeze of peering eyes = fear of exposure. We don’t want people to see the real us.

The squeeze of expectations = fear of failure. Nobody wants to be labeled a failure.

The squeeze of rejection = fear of isolation. We all want to be liked by someone.

How we respond to the squeeze isn’t based on self image it’s based on our relationship with Jesus. We’re all broken people who have issues. Left to our own abilities we will at best come up with ‘band-aid’ fixes that will only create more distance between ourselves and other people.

Jesus didn’t back away from the pressures or put up a wall to keep people away. Jesus faced them head on and He can and will give us the power to do the same.

1Jo 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

We often think of God’s love in a very detached, abstract way, almost like something that’s ‘out there’ to be give or attained. But, it’s not abstract at all. God’s love is tangible and personal and it is found in our communion with the Son of Man, Jesus, and through this relationship we experience God’s love in each other through our community or ‘ekklesia’ together.

Don’t buckle under the pressure, don’t give in to fear.Instead climb higher and go farther with Jesus.

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