Why Can't I....? - Wild Heart: Mark’s Portraits of a Radical Messiah

Click HERE to listen or download this talk....

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


Last we looked at the transfiguration of Jesus – the moment His glory broke through the veil of His human flesh – the holy glow.


Today we’re moving from the glorious mountain top experience back down to the valley of daily life.


So let’s read Mark 9:14-29….


I know we’ve all experienced that moment after we’ve been exposed to a glorious mountain top experience with Jesus where life’s reality reaches up and smacks us in the face. Often it’s just having to go back to work on Monday morning.


Jesus and the three disciples who were on the mountain with Him experience the same thing in this passage. This reminds me of the story in Exodus when Moses and Joshua are coming down mount Sinai after Moses received the Decalogue (10 Commandments) in a mountain top experience and as they were walking back to camp they hear a loud noise that Joshua thinks is caused by battle but Moses hears it and says “it’s not the sound of war but the sound of a wild party! What are these people up to?”


As they get close to camp they see the people not only partying, but worshiping a golden calf idol that they had made! Can you imagine what kind of a Monday morning experience that was?


Jesus faces that here. The first thing He encounters when He returns from the mountain is a huge group of people standing around watching a big argument between the other disciples and those nifty scribes. I think that’s the reason Jesus took Peter with Him, He probably expected something to happen while He was away and figured it was better if Peter was where He could keep and eye on him.


This argument started because the disciples couldn’t cast an evil spirit out of a young boy. They had tried but nothing happened and that gave the scribes an opportunity to try and undermine them and their teacher. Of course when you try to upstage someone they get all defensive and the next thing you know there’s a fight. That’s just great.


But let’s face it we’ve all felt that way at times haven’t we? You know what I’m talking about, those times when we pray from someone and nothing happens?


Sometimes we feel like God’s left us hanging out there on a big ol’ limb. Am I right, isn’t that how it feels?


Do I have your permission to be even more blunt? O.k.? For some, if not all of us, it has at some level caused a crisis of faith. Not to the point where we’re thinking about abandoning the faith, but it has caused us to question some of what we believe about divine healing and other miracles. It may have even caused to hesitate to pray for others, or even changed the way we pray.


Don’t we sometimes feel like we have to make excuses for God? Am I crazy here or am I on to something….


Then you read a passage like this and you may have an idea what the disciples were feeling. But the interesting thing to note is how Jesus responds. He doesn’t try to make them feel better about their doubts; in fact His response is almost like rubbing salt in the wound. How would you feel if you asked Jesus “Why?” and He answered back “How long do I have to put up with you?” That’s kind of rough isn’t it?


When we feel that way only have a couple of options: we can quit or we can get aside with Jesus and learn from Him. This happened in two ways.


Look at the father of the boy in his first request in vs. 22 where he basically showed a lack of faith and said to Jesus “if you can…” Then after Jesus challenges his faith in vs. 23 with an ‘if you can’ question of His own the father gets it and says in essence according to R. Alan Cole “ok then help me just as I am, a doubter.”


The father learned to approach Jesus with faith no matter how small it seemed to be. Don’t come to Him with doubt; come to Him humbly and honestly with whatever measure of faith you have. You might as well what have you got to lose!


Then we see the disciples learning from Jesus. Still hurting and humiliated by what they had just experienced they asked Jesus why they couldn’t cast out the demon. I think their question says a lot about where they were coming from. Based on their question “Why couldn’t we cast it out?” who were they more concerned with? Themselves and their reputation. If they had asked “Why couldn’t we help that boy and his father?” it would have shown a mature level of compassion and humility.


So Jesus sees right through this and gives them a quick lesson in humility: This kind can only come out by prayer and fasting (some mss. leave out and fasting but there’s strong evidence that it should be included).


I’m not discounting the importance of prayer and fasting, it’s obvious that Jesus meant what He said, but why did He say it? In the past Jesus had sent out the disciples in twos and had given them authority to cast out demons. They had done it before so they were completely confused as to why the formulas of the past didn’t work this time.


I believe Jesus answer was intended to show them that they couldn’t rely on a method or formula that worked in the past.


The disciples had to learn to rely on an abiding, humble reliance on God’s power. Prayer and fasting isn’t about a formula for ministry success, it’s about setting everything aside and drawing near to Jesus and drawing in His strength and power. It’s admitting that we’re weak and He is strong and through His strength we can do all things. (Phil. 4:13)


If we pull back from doing powerful works of compassion because we’re afraid of how we’ll look if we fail then we need to go back to Jesus for an attitude adjustment and prayer and fasting is a great place to start.


So let’s ask ourselves this morning do we care enough about the hurting people around us to get on our faces before God and ask for His help to make a difference? Are we willing to put aside everything else so that we can encounter our loving and powerful savior in such a way that we can then serve others with His compassion poured into our hearts?

True Colors - Wild Heart: Mark’s Portraits of a Radical Messiah

Click HERE to listen or download this talk....

Click HERE to watch the webcast.....

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

Last week we looked at 5 ‘snapshots’ from the gospel of Mark that reveal an insight connected to living in a dynamic relationship with Jesus.

Today we’re going to see a sequence of events that ups the ante on the disciples. They had seen Jesus doing good works, taking on the religious establishment, and performing miracles. It was clear to them that He was greater than any of the other messianic pretenders who had come before Him. But as we can see by the disciples reactions to the various events that occurred they still weren’t completely sure just who Jesus was and what it meant for them.

They’re about to find out.

So let’s read Mark 8:27-38….

The idea that Jesus might be the Messiah was being floated around by this time but Jesus had never been explicitly said that’s who He was. He had never said that He was the Christ or the Messiah? But all of the signs were there.

Jesus was beginning His journey toward Jerusalem. He knew what awaited Him there. Jerusalem would be the place where He would suffer and be crucified. So it’s at this point that the story line of the gospel of Mark begins to shift. He performs 2 more miracles after this, but His focus changes to preparing His disciples for what was to come and teaching them how to carry on His ministry.

As they are walking along Jesus asks a fairly simple question: “Who do men say that I am?” Of course the disciples would have answer to that because they worked the crowds with Jesus and heard what people were saying about Him. I’m sure some of their family members had opinions that they shared. So the answers they gave weren’t all that surprising. John the Baptist, Herod thought Jesus was a resurrected John. Elijah, he was the prophet that was most closely linked to the Messiah, then the prophets.

It’s interesting that many today are content to label Jesus as a prophet of God. That’s pretty safe and in some ways a comfortable title.

But then almost as if Jesus Himself is testing the waters to see if it’s time to shift into this new phase of ministry and preparation asks a follow up question that’s loaded with meaning “But who do you say that I am?” I think it’s important to note that Jesus didn’t say “Who do you think I am?” The word ‘say’ suggests that He was asking them who that said He was during the moments when they were talking around the campfire in the evenings, or walking along the roads as they traveled from place to place.

But it’s also important because no one can know what you think until you say it. By asking this direct question Jesus is putting the disciples on that spot. There’s no place to hide and no one to hide behind. I’m sure there was a moment of awkward silence.

There are two sides to revelation: what it reveals about Jesus and what it reveals about us. We all face that awkward moment where we have to confess what we believe instead of repeating what someone else believes.

Then Peter as the leader answers “You are the Christ.” Since Jesus had never used that title or even said anything about it how could Peter have known? In Matthew’s gospel Jesus points out that the only way Peter could have known is if God had revealed it to Him. The time had come for the turn toward Jerusalem and it was important that even though they knew His true identity they didn’t understand it enough to share it with others.

Now that the disciples knew who He was Jesus has to prepare them for what this means for Him and for them. In vs. 31-33 Jesus tells the disciples that He will have to suffer and die, but that He will arise from the dead in 3 days.

But that was just too much for Peter, that didn’t match up with his image of the conquering Messiah He was looking for. With all of Jesus’ miraculous power how could He possibly be subjected to suffering and death? That sounded too much like losing to Him. So Peter took Jesus aside and decided to correct Jesus.

But Jesus needed to send a strong message to Peter and the disciples. That’s why he looked around at them; He wanted to make sure they were all listening. Jesus would not allow anyone to try to persuade Him to abandon His mission.

Do you remember at the very beginning of Jesus ministry when He was tempted 3 times by Satan? At the end of the temptations the Bible says that Satan left Him alone until a more opportune time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Jesus points out that Peter’s actions were being orchestrated by the Satan. It’s almost as if Jesus is speaking past Peter as He’s speaking to him.

While the ‘Satan’ thing gets all of the attention I think the most important line in this whole exchange is “You are not mindful, or you don’t have your mind set on, the things of God.” Peter, and frankly the other disciples were more focused on their own ambitions for themselves and Jesus than God’s. Jesus stern rebuke was a warning to them, and us, that..

Survival as a follower of Jesus demands that our minds be firmly established on the things of God. Because things won’t always look the way they we thought they would. Colossians 3:2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.

Now Jesus reveals to them the true cost of discipleship. In vs. 34-38 Jesus spells it out clearly. If we have a desire to follow Jesus it will cost us everything. It will demand the complete and total surrender of our life to Him. We can have the things of this world or we can have Jesus, but we have to choose.

When we receive the gift of salvation, the forgiveness of our sins, we give up eternal separation from God and inherit eternal life with Him. That life starts the moment we say yes to His offer. But we also receive a new life that we live here and now. That life is as a citizen in God’s kingdom and as His people we now live for Him and not for ourselves. We give up our crummy old life and get a brand new one, but this new life demands that we live it entirely for Him.

The enemy will try to convince you that that’s a raw deal, a bait and switch. He’ll try to convince you that following Jesus demands too much and isn’t fair. But think about it for a minute. That’s exactly what Peter and the other disciples must have thought. They were following Jesus and they understood He was the Messiah, the savior of the Jewish nation and now Jesus tells them He’s going to Jerusalem to suffer and die. That’s not what they signed up for. They must have thought it was a raw deal too. But that was because they were listening to the wrong voice. Satan wants us to focus on what we will lose instead of what we will gain and God is shouting through Jesus that if we will die to our self we will gain eternity and…

The start of dying to self is admitting that we really don’t have a better option

Funny thing is that we seem to think we do. What’s the better option you keep turning back to?