The Unforgivable Sin (Mark 3.7-35)

When I was a kid, about six years old, one day at school I decided to cut my own hair. I don’t know why I made this decision, why I thought it was a good idea. But I did. I took my little scissors, got a big chunk of hair right up above my forehead, and cut it off.

This was the day before school pictures were to be taken.

My mom did her best to try to fix it, but there was no fixing it: the mess I had made was unsalvageable. (The photo was horrendous, of course.)

There is a lingering fear in the minds of a lot of Christians, and that is they are, for some reason or another, unsalvageable. They remember their past rebellion against God so vividly, or they consider the sin they still struggle with after believing in Christ, to the point that there’s always this thought in their minds that maybe, despite what they’ve always heard in church, when they die they’ll stand before God and he’ll show them their past sin and say, “Yeah, I can’t have this in my kingdom.”

So is it true?

Is it possible to do something that in the end makes us“unsaveable”?

Our passage today tells us that there is, in fact, a sin like this. That’s scary. But the rest of the passage tells us what that sin is, and in the end it’s really good news.

So let’s get into it.

We’ve just come out of a turning point for Jesus. In the passage we saw last week, Jesus is repeatedly opposed by the religious leaders in Israel, to the point where he has to take strong positions on questions that were important to them, like the Sabbath. We see the result in v. 6—for the first time, the religious leaders start plotting to have him killed.

In today’s passage, we see a different kind of turning point—we don’t see Jesus taking strong positions on different issues, but rather different groups of people taking strong positions on Jesus. And the interchange between Jesus, people’s response to him, and his response to them, is incredible.

A New People: Delegation (v. 7-19)

In v. 7, we see a basic continuation of what we’ve seen before—crowds are following Jesus to be healed by him and to see what he’ll do. But it’s as if someone turned the volume knob up three or four notches: the fervor of the crowd is becoming far more intense.

V. 7:

7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea 8 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. 9 And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, 10 for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. 11 And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.

Mark explains why the crowd is gaining such intensity: he’s been healing many people, and the sick are coming to him in droves, to the point where his safety is in jeopardy. Jesus has to get into a boat and cast himself out into the sea, so that they don’t crush him.

So it’s like what we’ve already seen in the gospel, but brought to a fever pitch. Jesus healing people, people coming to him to be healed, and even people possessed by “unclean spirits” (i.e. demons). And here’s the crazy thing: before Jesus casts them out, these demons recognize Jesus for who he is—as they say in v. 11, “You are the Son of God.” But Jesus tells them to be quiet.

So all this is happening, and finally, at some point, he manages to get away—we read in v. 13:

13 And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him.

So this isn’t a general call he makes to the crowd; Jesus calls out specific people. V. 14:

14 And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach 15 and have authority to cast out demons.

Essentially, Jesus is delegating. He can’t be everywhere at the same time, so he establishes these twelve men as “apostles” (the word “apostle” means “sent). These are people he is sending out kind of like ambassadors, but bigger: he gives them not only his authority, but also some of his power. He gives them the ability to preach the gospel and to cast out demons.

And the fact that Jesus names twelve of these men is no accident. There’s a good deal of mirroring here, which you’ll recognize right away if you remember the book of Exodus.

When God called the people of Israel out of Egypt and made his covenant with them, he brought them to a mountain to make that covenant. The people of Israel was comprised of twelve tribes, named after the twelve sons of Jacob. God took these twelve tribes, these descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and made them his people.

These people would be God’s people—they would be his representatives on earth, his ambassadors, the means by which he would make his glory known to the surrounding nations.

And that’s exactly what Jesus is doing here. Just like with the people of Israel, Jesus goes up on to a mountain, and when he does, just like with the twelve tribes of Israel, he calls twelve men to follow him.

When God brought his people to the mountain, he established them as the people of God. So now, when Jesus calls the twelve up to the mountain, he’s doing the same thing: he’s establishing a new people of God. These are the men—with one exception—who will represent him where he can’t go, and who will carry on his work after he is gone. Jesus’s people would be, in a much realer sense, God’s people, representing him in the world.

The Old People: Opposition (v. 20-35)

Immediately after this, we see a pretty stark contrast. V. 20:

20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. 21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”

When Mark says, “his family”, he means Jesus’s literal family: his mother and his brothers. They’re looking at all the fuss Jesus is stirring up, and their response is, “He’s lost his mind.”

I can’t say that I blame them. People often say, “But surely his mother Mary knew better; she was visited by an angel before Jesus’s birth, who told her who Jesus is.” True…but even the angel didn’t give her every detail of what his ministry would look like. And we sometimes forget that at this point, she had an entire life of a parent behind her. For her, Jesus wasn’t just the Messiah—he was her boy. She had changed his diapers. She’d taken care of him when he was sick. She’d taught him to walk and talk. And his brothers had grown up with him too—they didn’t see him as a figure, but as their brother.

And now, he’s making himself really visible: he’s upsetting the religious establishment, and in so doing, he’s putting himself in a very risky situation. He must be crazy to go against the religious leaders.

So it’s understandable, but even so, the fact that they are saying, “He is out of his mind” shows that they don’t quite understand what it is he’s doing.

And a little later, at the end of the chapter, we see Jesus’s very blunt response to them. Go down to v. 31:

31 And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” 33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

We saw before that Jesus is establishing a new people. What we didn’t see is how deep that bond goes. Jesus is establishing a people that supersedes even his own blood relations: Here are my mother and brothers, he says!

Clearly his actual mother and brothers are missing something.

And they’re not the only ones. In v. 22, we see a group of scribes, religious leaders from Jerusalem, who have come down to see what Jesus is doing.

22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.”

Essentially, the religious leaders think Jesus is duping everyone. They think he’s using some kind of dark sorcery to cast out these demons, and that he’s claiming to be doing God’s work.

So in response to what they’re saying, Jesus calls them over to poke holes in their logic. Or at least that’s how it seems at first. V. 23:

23 And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 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.

It’s important to see that Jesus’s parables aren’t just attacking the religious leaders’ logic. They’re getting to the heart of what he’s actually doing.When Jesus says that “if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom will not stand,” he’s not just saying that it would be stupid of Satan to use such tactics. He’s saying that that’s not what’s going on. Satan isn’t divided against himself. Satan is waging a concerted war against God’s kingdom. Satan is trying to stand…but he’s going to lose.

And that’s what he means by the second parable, when he says, “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man.” Satan is strong—no doubt about it.

But Jesus is the plunderer.

Jesus describes himself as a sort of invader, sneaking in behind enemy lines to take them apart piece by piece. In claiming that Jesus is acting in Satan’s power, the religious leaders are showing their deep and fundamental misunderstanding of who Jesus is.

So after throwing out these parables (which no doubt went a bit over the religious leaders’ heads), Jesus gives them a very striking warning. V. 28:

28 “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

I know this is the verse most of you have been waiting for, so let’s talk about it.

First, very quickly, why does Jesus bring up the Holy Spirit in the first place? No one was talking about the Holy Spirit—even Mark hasn’t mentioned the Holy Spirit since Jesus’s baptism and temptation in the wilderness in chapter 1.

But Jesus Christ is the Son of God; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. The Spirit and the Son are inseparable—you don’t get one without the other.

So Jesus is taking advantage of what these religious leaders are saying about him—“He has an unclean spirit”—in order to teach them something much bigger about the Spirit who actually animates him, the Holy Spirit.

But there’s still a big question remaining, and it’s the question we’ll be spending most of our remaining time on: What exactly does Jesus mean when he says, whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness?

I myself grew up hearing that “blaspheming against the Holy Spirit” means to attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to the devil, as the religious leaders do here. I also heard it means to say something negative against the Holy Spirit, as if you can say something bad about God the Father or God the Son, and that’s okay, but you’d better not say anything negative about God the Holy Spirit, or else you’re not getting into heaven.

Lots of Christians have grown up hearing things like this, so we grow up with this nagging fear: Have I blasphemed against the Holy Spirit? Did I at some point say something about the Spirit, in a way that makes me guilty of this sin? Is there a chance I’ve already said or done something that has ruined my chances of getting into heaven?

And clearly there is a sin that is unforgivable, that keeps us out of heaven. So what is it? What does it mean to “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit”?

This text tells us what it means, but in order to see it, we need to take a step back.

Different Groups, Different Responses

What is really happening in this passage? What do we see? We see various groups of people responding to Jesus, and Jesus responding to them.

First, we see the sick, in v. 7-10. They come to him to be healed, they come to him for what he can do for them, with little regard for who he is (they almost crush him in their haste to get close to him). Jesus does what he can for them, but eventually has to retreat.

Next, we see the unclean spirits, in v. 11-12. They see him, and cry out, “You are the Son of God.” So they recognize Jesus for who he is, and they’re right. But they don’t accept him. They don’t love him. And Jesus responds to them by telling them to keep quiet—so clearly there is no unity between them.

We also see Jesus’s family, in v. 20-21 and 31-35. What do they say about him? They say, “He’s out of his mind.” Even if it’s understandable, they clearly don’t get what’s going on. So Jesus responds to them by saying, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother”—in other words, these people sitting around me are my real family. Pretty harsh.

And lastly we have the scribes in v. 22-30, who say, “He casts out demons by the prince of demons.” So not only they don’t recognize him for who he is, but they say he’s doing Satan’s work. Jesus tells them parables to defy their logic and show what he’s actually doing, and he says, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness.”

The sick, the unclean spirits, Jesus’s family, and the scribes. What do they all have in common?

They don’t accept Jesus for who he is. They see what he’s doing, and they either misunderstand or outright refuse to accept what the evidence is telling them about what he came to do.

So that’s one side of the coin.

On the other side, we see his disciples in v. 13-19. How do they respond to him? When he calls them, they come. They follow him. And in return, Jesus appoints them as apostles and delegates his work to them, with his authority.

We also see the crowd gathered around him in v. 31-35. Jesus looks at them and says, “Here are my mother and brothers!” Why? Because they’re doing the will of God. Of course he’s speaking broadly here—there are surely people in the crowd who aren’t following him—but he’s making his point clear, in any case: it takes something more than blood relations to make you a part of my family.

So what makes these people different from all those other examples we see?

They are doing the will of God. They’re not just coming to him to be healed, or to see him do a magic trick, or even to hear some new and interesting teaching. They recognize Jesus for who he is, they accept him for who he is, and they follow him.

Who Is Jesus?

So the real question of this text isn’t, What is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, but rather, Who is this man?! That is the deep question Mark is driving us to ask in this text. The disciples and the crowd sitting around Jesus recognize Jesus for who he is, and accept Jesus for who he is. So who is he?

Jesus is the Son of God. Yes. Absolutely—we saw that in the very first verses of this book. But there’s more.

Jesus is the One who establishes a new people for God. He’s fundamentally changing what it means to belong to “the people of God.”

Jesus is the One who has all authority over every element in this world and the spiritual world—even the demons recognize that he has authority over them.

Jesus is the One who is plundering Satan’s house—the titanic Warrior-King who has arrived to set right everything that sin has made wrong.

Jesus is the One who is empowered by the Holy Spirit to forgive sin. All sins will be forgiven the children of man, he said. It’s easy to look at v. 29 and see the one sin that can’t be forgiven, and miss the incredible openness of v. 28: all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter.

Remember what we saw a couple weeks ago? Who are the people flocking to Jesus, not for healing, but to listen to him? Who are the ones who are actually listening? Not those who are well, but those who are sick.

Not the righteous, but sinners—people who know they are sinners.

These are the ones he came for. These are the ones to whom he points and says, “These are my mother and my brothers!”

Do we see how astounding this is? It would have been so easy and obvious for Jesus to point to his apostles—these men to whom he gave the authority and power to preach and to cast out demons—and say, “These guys here are my people.” That would make sense—they’re the ones who are going out and doing extraordinary things.

But that’s not what Jesus does. He points to perfectly ordinary—and even “unsavory”—people, and says, “These are my people.” Not because they are doing extraordinary things—they’re not!—but because they have come to the extraordinary Savior, who forgives their sin.

So in the context of this passage, what can we deduce is the meaning of “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”? What is the only sin which God will not forgive?

We see clearly in this passage that it’s much more than a matter of words. Usually “blasphemy” refers to an act of contempt against God, either by insulting his name or falsely claiming his authority. But everything in this passage points us to people who do more than just speak—they adopt a position that dictates the course of their lives. That position is expressed in their words, perhaps, but it’s not the words themselves that are the problem.

The problem, with each of these groups—with the demons, with the scribes, with Jesus’s own family—is their refusal to accept Jesus for who he is. And Jesus calls this “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” because there is no greater act of contempt against God than to reject the Savior he sent, whom the Holy Spirit empowered, to save sinners.

Only One Choice

When you get right down to it, even though we see a myriad of different responses to Jesus in this text, there really is only one choice: either we accept Jesus for who he is, or we blaspheme against the Holy Spirit of God.

Whether we realize it or not, and however we may try to turn the problem in our hands to see it from a different angle, that is the choice before each of us: either we accept Jesus for who he is, or we blaspheme against the Holy Spirit of God.

Realizing this truth is incredibly freeing, because it does away with a lot of the fears we may have in coming to Christ.

What we see here shows us that no sin is “too bad” for Jesus to forgive. If we recognize Jesus for who he is, and accept him for who he is, his arms are wide open. Among those who are clearly shown to be forgiven in the Bible are tax collectors (commonly known to be traitors to their own people), prostitutes, a persecutor of Christians, murderers, adulterers, and many other people who have done far worse things than most of us. No one is too far gone, no one is “too bad” to be forgiven.

What we see here also shows us that it’s never too late. If you’re still alive, you still have time. We saw the harsh answer Jesus gave to his family when they were looking for him. But even they eventually accept Jesus for who he is. His mother later realizes and accepts what he’s doing, and follows him as well. And we know of at least one of his half-brothers, James, who does the same. (He’s the one who later wrote the book of James, which we find towards the end of the Bible.)

At this point in their story, they are not accepting Christ for who he is. But that can change. As long as you’re alive, there’s still time.

Conclusion

So what do we do?

First we see ourselves for who we are: very imperfect people who are in need of a perfect forgiveness.

We see Christ for who he is: the sinless Son of God who lived a perfect life in our place, who took our sin on himself, and who was punished in our place in order that we might be forgiven. The powerful Warrior-King who came to defeat Satan and sin and all of its effects. The loving Savior who came to the most miserable among us, and who said, “Here are my brothers and sisters.”

And finally, we accept Christ for who he is. This is not a one-time decision. It’s a decision for every minute of every day. If we find ourselves constantly returning to the same sins over and over again, and committing them with no hesitation and little regret, it’s worth asking ourselves if we’ve really accepted Christ at all. Because accepting Christ means not only accepting what he did for us, but who we are in him.

Those who accept Christ are really and truly the people of God. And the people of God are people who are growing to be like Christ.

I know that can be scary, because all of us can look at ourselves and see all the reasons why we’re not changing like we’d hope, as quickly as we’d hope. But remember Jesus’s mother and brothers: it’s never too late.

Maybe you’ve been claiming to be a Christian for years, and you’re only just realizing that you haven’t ever really followed him.

Maybe you’ve never accepted Christ and are only just realizing you should.

Or maybe you have accepted Christ, but you’re worried about what’s coming around the bend tomorrow, what might test your faith.

In every case, it’s the same choice before us: the choice to admit that we are sinners in need of a Savior, to see Christ for the Savior he is, to accept him, and to follow him. That is the Christian life: day after day after day. That is what it means to “do the will of God.”

Do you see how freeing that is? That Jesus doesn’t ask us to pass a morality test to belong to him? That all he asks of us is that we accept what he has done, and that we walk hand-in-hand with him until he brings us home?

Whatever weight you feel like you’re carrying, you can put it down. There is only one unforgivable sin, and as long as you are still alive, you haven’t committed it. If you’re alive, it’s not too late.

See him. Accept him. Follow him.

Get Up and Walk (Mark 1.40-2.12)

I love the show Survivor.

If you’ve never seen it, it’s almost always the same thing. A bunch of people get stranded on an island somewhere and have to survive for about a month. They play games to win rewards and immunity, and every other day they have to vote to eliminate someone from the team, until there is only one survivor left at the end.

In some ways, it’s very predictable, because it’s a game, and inevitably in a game, there is a winner, and there is a loser. You know what’s going to happen.

But how it happens is why it’s so fun. (I’m aware that what I’m saying is true about team sports too, but I hate sports and I like Survivor, so that’s the illustration I’m going with.) The “how” is what makes it great. The right bit of information, given at the right time, or the right challenge won at the right time, changes everything.

Essentially, in today’s text we see two very similar stories that play out in two very different ways. We see Jesus healing two different people: one is a leper and one is a paralytic. But how those two events play out could not be more different.

“He Began to Talk Freely” (1.40-45)

If you remember the context, Jesus is at the beginning of his ministry. He’s traveling through Galilee, preaching and healing and casting out demons. And people, as we’ll see, are starting to take notice of him.

V. 40:

40 And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.”

Leprosy, as we know, is a skin disease that is often highly contagious. The important thing to know is that lepers were ceremonially unclean, perpetually: they were outcasts from society, isolated from those who didn’t want to become unclean themselves. So this leper was bold for even coming close to Jesus—or perhaps he was just desperate.

But Jesus’s response is predictably compassionate. V. 41-42:

41 Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” 42 And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

What we see here are Jesus’s compassion and Jesus’s power. He reaches out and touches the man with leprosy—which was unheard of—and then he explicitly tells him that he wants to heal him. And with two simple words, “Be clean,” the man is immediately healed.

It’s extraordinary, but for Jesus’s it’s actually fairly standard. Jesus does what he does: he sees a person in need, he is moved with compassion, and he comes to the person’s help.

What is interesting is what happens next. V. 43-44:

43 And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, 44 and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”

This is the first time in this gospel that Jesus tells someone who is healed to not say anything about it, but it won’t be the last. He tells the healed man to go to the priest and give the offering required (usually a pair of birds to be sacrificed). There was a process to follow for this man to become ceremonially clean again, and thus re-enter society. His coming to the priest would also serve as “a proof to them”, a way of showing the priests that Jesus hadn’t come to go against the law of Moses.

But the man’s joy supersedes Jesus’s command. V. 45:

45 But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.

This is usually why Jesus tells someone who is healed not to say anything. If someone runs up to you in the street and says, “That guy on the corner is giving out money!”, what will you want to do? You’ll want to go see that man, and maybe get some money. It’s not that Jesus doesn’t want to heal, but if he heals everyone, that’s all he’ll be doing, all the time. And he didn’t come mainly to heal; he came to preach the good news of the kingdom of God.

Because the healed man tells everyone what happened, Jesus can’t go into any town to preach the gospel, because people immediately swarm him.

Now, a couple of things before we move on. Mark doesn’t say that the healed man had bad intentions; he let his joy get the best of him. And Mark also doesn’t say that Jesus didn’t know what would happen. He knew perfectly well that the healed man wouldn’t listen to him.

Mark tells us about this exchange to show us one simple thing: that because this miracle is talked about in the wrong way, it makes Jesus’s primary mission to preach the gospel more difficult.

We know this because of what comes next.

“Your Sins Are Forgiven” (2.1-12)

At the beginning of chapter 2, several days have gone by, and Jesus decides to return to his home in Capernaum.

Chapter 2, verses 1-2:

And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them.

So this story starts off just as it was at the end of chapter 1: Jesus goes into a town—he goes home—but he can’t get any peace there, because people find out he’s at home and they swarm his house. There are people crammed in everywhere, even standing outside the door.

But Jesus is a glass-is-half-full kind of guy: he takes advantage of the opportunity and does what he came to do. He preaches the word. For whatever reason, the people flocking to Jesus here happens in such a way that he can preach to them, so that’s what he does. He stands in his house and preaches so that even those outside can hear him.

Then the interesting thing happens—it’s a story people know well. V. 3-4:

3 And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 4 And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.

This was less violent than it might seem—often roofs were made of simple thatch and could be easily removed. But picture the scene: Jesus is in his house preaching, and suddenly sun is shining down through a hole in the roof, and a man on a bed is being lowered down through the hole in the roof. Of course, the paralytic coming down through the ceiling is essentially an interruption. Jesus stops his preaching and looks at the man, and then he looks up and sees the other men, these four friends who had lowered him down.

V. 5:

5 And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

This is a really fascinating twist. First, because Mark doesn’t talk about the paralytic’s faith, but the faith of his friends. The believed Jesus could heal their friend, so they brought him to Jesus’s house, and Jesus responds to that. Compassion calls to compassion.

The second thing is that we don’t hear anything the paralytic says to Jesus. We don’t hear him asking to be healed, much less asking for forgiveness. Jesus is the one who decides what he’s about to do.

The third thing is that when Jesus makes that decision, he jumps from point A all the way to point Z. He doesn’t immediately say what he said to the leper—he doesn’t say, “Be healed”—but instead, he says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

This statement was shocking for a number of reasons. This man didn’t know Jesus at all—it’s not as if he had offended Jesus earlier and Jesus is forgiving him for something he did. He’s saying, more generally, “Your sins”—as in, all your sins—“are forgiven.”

The most basic definition of sin is disobedience against God, and not a single man or woman who has ever lived, besides Jesus, has not sinned. We have all rejected God in favor of our own desires.

And Jesus says that he is forgiving this man for his disobedience against God.

He knew exactly what he was doing. Before that man was lowered down, he was preaching the word to the crowd, and the good news of the gospel is that proclamation: “Your sins are forgiven.” He’s been saying that the kingdom of heaven is near, and although the people may not have realized it yet, the kingdom of heaven isn’t displayed through physical healing, but through forgiveness of sin.

It’s a shocking statement. V. 6-7:

6 Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7 “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

“Blasphemy” in the Bible is, in a strict sense, speaking evil of God, or defaming God. This blasphemy can be either direct or indirect—it can be directly speaking evil of God, or it can be implying a link between something evil and God. The scribes accuse Jesus of blasphemy here in this second, indirect sense, because Jesus (a human being) is claiming to do something that only God can do—that is, forgive sins.

The thing is, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong…if Jesus was anyone else. But Jesus is who he is. And he’s not only going to say it; he’s going to show it.

V. 8-9:

8 And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?

Jesus’s response to the scribes is genius; it’s a pretty classic argument of “greater to lesser”, of harder to easier. If you can do the harder thing, then obviously you can do the easier thing.

So look at Jesus’s question in v. 9: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?”

How would we respond to that question?

In a strict sense, saying “Your sins are forgiven” is easier. Anyone could say that, and you wouldn’t be able to prove them wrong, because there wouldn’t be any visible proof one way or the other. Saying something is not difficult.

So Jesus does the “harder thing”. V. 10-12:

10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— 11 “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” 12 And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

In v. 10, we see the first time that Jesus refers to himself as “the Son of Man”—it’s his favorite title for himself, and it’s a provocative one. It’s a reference to a prophecy in Daniel 7, in which a hero comes, and God grants him dominion and authority over all peoples and nations. The Son of Man is the Lord of all things, and the people listening to him were all Jews. Every single person within earshot would recognize that title—the Son of Man—perfectly well.

This is the first time Jesus has gone this far in identifying exactly who he is. He says, “I am the Son of Man; I have the authority to forgive sins (an authority that—you were right—only God has)!”

It’s a pretty bold thing to say about oneself, but after what just happened, who could argue with him?

The Greater Miracle

Let’s take a step back and look at this passage as a whole.

When we read the Bible, we need to pay attention not just to what it says, but how it says it. When Mark wrote his gospel, there were no chapter or verse numbers; chapter 1 just immediately flowed in to chapter 2. And he says that “some days” have passed between the time that Jesus healed the leper and the time that Jesus healed the paralytic. Surely lots of things happened during those days, things he could have reported.

But Mark is very intentional: he puts these two stories back to back for a reason.

Jesus heals two people: a leper and a paralytic. And in both cases, there is a message communicated.

The first message is communicated by the leper, who goes out and tells everyone what happened. And that message is, “Wow, this man can heal diseases!” As it turns out, that message, even if it was well-intentioned, is counterproductive, because people from all over flock to him, to the point where he can’t preach the gospel effectively—he can’t go into the towns where the people are and proclaim the good news to them, because every time he does, he’s overrun with people coming to him for healing.

It’s easy to understand why some people would be more interested in being healed than in listening to Jesus preach. When you’re sick, it’s difficult to think of anything else other than your illness; so when you hear of a cure, it’s difficult to think of anything besides the cure. And what if the doctor with the cure wanted to talk to you, for a long time, about something else that seemed unrelated to your illness? You may listen to some of it, but it will be difficult to concentrate, because you just want to feel better.

We understand why people who are ill would come to Jesus, but coming to Jesus for that reason makes it more difficult for them to hear what Jesus is trying to say. The testimony of the healed man is counterproductive, even if his intentions were good.

Now, compare that to the second healing. There is a message communicated when Jesus heals the paralytic too. It is not only, “Wow, this man can heal diseases!” but also, “Your sins are forgiven.” You see, it’s basically the same message, but with one vitally important piece of information added: “This man can heal diseases, and therefore, this man has the authority to forgive sins.”

That final piece of information produces an entirely different sort of response. The first time, the people started to come to him from every quarter, to the point that his preaching of the gospel was hindered. This time, when the paralytic picked up his bed and walked out, what was their response? V. 12 tells us that “they were all amazed and glorified God.”

The first miracle produced spectators and consumers; the second miracle produced worshippers. The first miracle hindered the preaching of the gospel; the second miracle helped the preaching of the gospel.

And the only substantial difference between the two events was this declaration: “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

That was Jesus’s point to the scribes: it’s easier to say this man’s sins are forgiven than it is to heal him. So I’ll heal him so that you might see I can not just say his sins are forgiven, but that I can actually do it: that I really do have the authority on earth to forgive sins.

That changes everything, because even if saying “Your sins are forgiven” is easy, actually doing it is far more difficult.

Already it’s difficult on a simple, relational level. Imagine someone who has hurt you badly. How difficult was it, or how difficult would it be, to truly forgive a person who has wounded you? It is never easy to forgive, because there is a deep-seated desire for justice in the human heart, and forgiveness means accepting to not see justice done against someone who has committed wrong. Forgiveness requires us to take the pain that the guilty person deserves, and in a sense, accept to suffer pain ourselves—the pain of not seeing justice done. It’s far easier to punish than to forgive.

And that’s the simplest kind of forgiveness: very basic, relational forgiveness.

But that’s not even the kind of forgiveness Jesus is talking about here. Sin isn’t a simple offense against another person; it is divine treason. It is spitting in the face of a good, loving Creator, who made us to find our joy, to find our humanity, in him. It’s not about what the offense is, but rather against whom we have sinned. The only proper justice for all sin is eternal judgment, because all sin is committed against an infinitely righteous God.

What would it take for this infinitely just and worthy God to be able to actually “forgive” us our sins? Justice still needs to be done, otherwise God is not just. No—to forgive our sins, it would require a perfect human being to take the place of sinful human beings, and bear our punishment in our place. The only being perfect enough to do that would be God himself, made man.

That is the forgiveness Jesus is talking about here: he has the authority to forgive sins because he is the perfect God, the Creator of all things, come to earth to take our place and suffer our punishment, in our place. It is far more difficult to forgive sins; forgiveness is by far the greater miracle.

But he can do it—and the first proof that he can do it is this paralytic, lowered down through a hole in the ceiling, picking up his bed and walking.

That is the point.

The goal of Jesus’s ministry was the proclamation and understanding of the good news. The good news of the kingdom of God is the good news that finally, once and for all, our sin can be forgiven. That paralytic leaving Jesus’s house is a picture of the good news of the kingdom of God: it is a full-on renovation of humanity—new creatures, made whole, reconciled to God.

And that is why Mark tells us about these two miracles back to back. Without forgiveness of sins, his miracles are still good, but they’re only a temporary Band-Aid. Every single person whom Jesus healed still died one day. Jesus does it anyway—he keeps healing people, because he has compassion on those who suffer. But miracles in themselves get the people no closer to the heart of the kingdom. What gets people to the heart of the kingdom is the knowledge that we are sinners in need of a Savior, and that Jesus Christ has the authority to forgive our sin.

Conclusion

Now, it’s very easy to read these stories as stories, to read them and dissociate them from our own lives. We can not, we must not, do that. Because these stories aren’t just tales of something that happened a long time ago—nothing, nothing, concerns us more than what we see here.

Think about it for a minute, especially if you’ve grown up in church. We so often come to God differently than the way Mark invites us to come to Jesus in this text. All too often, we come to God because we want something. We want power, or we want joy, or we want healing, or we want an emotional high. Some will come to God the way we go on roller coasters: we come to God because we want to experience something we don’t get to experience in our day-to-day lives. Others will come to God the way we go to the doctor—we have something we feel is wrong, so we go to the doctor to get it fixed. I really like my doctor, but I don’t think about her during the week. I don’t have a relationship with her. Our interaction is purely transactional.

And without the forgiveness of sin, that is exactly what any “experience” of God becomes: it becomes transactional. If it does not drive us to repentance and a recognition of the forgiveness we have in Christ, any spiritual “experience”, even a good experience, even a healing experience, is a spiritual Band-Aid: it may feel good, and it may do us good, but it gets us no closer to the heart of the kingdom.

So this text invites us to ask ourselves a very serious and a very simple question: What are we looking for when we come to Christ?

Are we seeking experience, or are we seeking forgiveness?

Are we seeking relief, or are we seeking reconciliation with God?

Are we seeking a better quality of life, or are we seeking union with Christ?

We have to understand this. In this text we’ve seen leprosy, and we’ve seen paralysis. But sin is the greater sickness. A leper was outcast from society; sin separates us from God. A paralytique was forced to beg because he couldn’t work; a sinner is forced to work, to try to earn his worth.

In any illness, in a sense, our bodies turn against us; our physical weakness becomes a weapon that is wielded against us, and we feel very keenly. Ask anyone who has been sick for a long time. We should feel the illness of sin much more deeply, because sin is a corruption of our nature. It separates us from our humanity. What is worse, it is a voluntary illness. We have all chosen sin. Our cancer is a cancer we preferred over glory.

If we feel the horror of our sin as keenly as we ought, what should we feel when we hear our Maker say, “Son, daughter…your sins are forgiven”?

Mark wants us to seek forgiveness, reconciliation, union with Christ, because Jesus came not to bring temporary healing, but permanent healing. Sin is the greater illness, and forgiveness is the greater miracle.

And if Jesus stopped there—if he only died to forgive our sin—that would be quite enough. So it’s amazing, isn’t it, that Jesus doesn’t stop at forgiveness. He doesn’t just forgive; he also heals. He doesn’t just bring reconciliation with God; he also brings eternal joy in his presence.

He doesn’t just say, “Your sins are forgiven.” He also says, “Now get up and walk.”

And if we know that our sins are forgiven, we walk very differently. We walk, not out of a desire to get something new from God, but out of gratitude for what we already have in him. We walk, not out of a sense of obligation or duty, but out of a sense of awe, that God would be good enough to save someone as wretched as me. We walk, not to enter into a transaction with God—“I’ll do this if you give me this”—but to know the God who saved us.

Your sins are forgiven, Jesus says. Now, get up and walk.

A Day in the Life of Jesus (Mark 1.16-39)

Today's sermon is called “A Day in the Life of Jesus”, and you probably know that there are a huge amount of books, films, documentaries that have a title like “A Day in the life of something”. It's a title format that works well, because we assume that with a typical day, we can get an idea of ​​what someone's life is like.

Besides, I shouldn’t have been surprised to know that there is already a published book called “A Day in the Life of Jesus”.

This book was published by a historian and professor of the New Testament called Régis Burnet, and I don't know if the book is good or not, I haven't read it. But it shows, once again, the interest that we can take in someone's typical day to try to understand the person who experiences that typical day.

And that’s a bit of what we see in this text. In this text from Mark, we see a typical day in the ministry of Jesus with his disciples - at least a typical day in this phase of his ministry, at the beginning, in the region of Galilee. The story here describes a Saturday where a lot of things are really happening.

In three parts, we will see:

• What is happening Before the day that is described here;

• What is happening during this day;

• What is happening After this day;

Before the day: the Call

Last week we saw the very beginning of Mark's gospel, with the baptism of Jesus and the beginning of his ministry. We can read verses 14 and 15:

After John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee. He proclaimed the good news [of the kingdom] of God and said, “The time has come, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Change your attitude and believe the good news!”

So Jesus began to preach, to proclaim the kingdom of God - he said that the time promised by the Old Testament prophets had arrived. These prophets promised that God would forgive and free His people from the oppression of sin, and that He would do this through a special person, the Messiah. So, according to Jesus' preaching, this moment had arrived. And the appropriate reaction to this arrival was to change one's attitude and to believe.

Then, in today's text, we see how Jesus calls his first disciples. Mark describes things so succinctly that one can have the impression that Jesus has hypnotized them: they drop what they are doing and follow without hesitation... But if we should not see hypnosis here on the part of Jesus, Mark still wants to show us to what extent there is something urgent about Jesus' call to his disciples.

It’s part of the “the time has come” momentum. The appropriate time to answer it is now. They leave an active life, with ongoing activities, to follow Jesus. They do not cut themselves off from society, but their lives have a new direction.

This introduction, with the call of the disciples, is also important because, in a way, Mark calls us to put ourselves in the shoes of these disciples. The way he tells us about the events is really a way of putting us in the shoes of Jesus' disciples. And it is not only a literary device to make the story more interesting, but also a way to make you ask the same questions and arrive, perhaps, at the same conclusions, as the disciples.

Now the team is assembled who will spend 24 hours with Jesus: Jesus himself, the disciples and, in a way, us the readers.

The day: the Authority…

Teaching

They will spend a day with Jesus but, certainly, not just any day of the week. Saturday was a day for them to go to synagogue, to read the scriptures together, to listen to someone teach the scriptures.

So they go to the synagogue in Capernaum, and it is Jesus who will teach. Mark does not say exactly what Jesus taught, but we can be sure that it is linked to what we saw before, in verse 15: the time has come and the kingdom of God is at hand. Certainly he taught this by showing quotes from the prophets.

And the people at the synagogue were impressed. Not only by the content of his teaching but by the authority with which he taught. Unlike the scribes, Jesus was not presenting a synthesis of a consensus of certain scholars who had debated for a long time. Jesus spoke of prophecies whose fulfillment passed through him. So it is not without surprise that he spoke in a confident manner, like someone who knows very well what he is talking about.

La reaction

But there is another reaction that was provoked by the teaching of Jesus: that of a demon. Here there is no real explanation of what a demon is. But Mark uses the expression “unclean spirit” and that communicates quite a bit. Already it is a spirit, therefore a supernatural entity, which we cannot really see or completely understand. And this spirit is impure. The word impure designates, in the Jewish world, a state of absence of possible communion with God and with others. So it is a spirit which is not in communion with God, and which acts against the communion of men with God.

So this unclean spirit reacts to Jesus' teaching. We can understand: if Jesus is announcing the kingdom of God, that is to say the restoration of communion between God and humans through the work of the Messiah, then it is really a program opposed to that of the spirit of non-communion.

He calls out to Jesus in an aggressive way, in an expression that is a bit like “Why are you bothering me? What do you want from me?” We see that the preaching of Jesus, for the impure spirit, is understood as a threat. In an attempt to gain the upper hand over Jesus, the unclean spirit shows that he knows Jesus' identity. But Jesus closes the debate, in a very simple way: he prevents him from speaking and he casts out the demon.

It’s interesting to see that Jesus doesn’t really have an exorcism “technique”. He has no incantation, no incense, no blessed object. He has his authority. He says, and the thing happens. And that’s what people still notice: his authority.

“What is this new teaching? He commands with authority even unclean spirits, and they obey!”  (v.27)

We see that this episode of exorcism gives authority to the teaching of Jesus. The two things are mentioned together: his teaching and his miracle. Indeed, the fact that Jesus can provoke an impure spirit through his preaching and expel it through his authority shows that we are not really in a status quo - the moment has arrived, hence the fact that they call “new” teaching.

Healing

After the synagogue, we continue this day with Jesus. Jesus and the disciples enter where they are staying: the house of Simon's family. There, Jesus performs a new miracle, which is both very different and very similar to that of the synagogue.

Very different because, already, it is not the same problem. Marc distinguishes illness from possession, they are two different things. And Jesus also has authority in this area. But this does not mean that possession is a purely spiritual phenomenon, and that illness is a purely material phenomenon. Illness, in the Bible, is a symbol of the consequence of lack of full communion with God.

This does not mean that the sick person (here, Peter's mother-in-law) is sick because she committed a particular sin. But that she is sick because she, like all of us, lives in a fallen world, marked by sin, which must be renewed. Here, in a much more private, much quieter setting, Jesus makes the mother-in-law's fever go away.

Let us look at this again as a continuation of what he did during this Saturday already: he announces that the moment promised by the prophets has arrived. He announces that the kingdom is near: communion with God will be restored, and as an example an impure spirit is expelled. What sin has corrupted in the material world will be restored: and, for example, a disease is cured.

Once again, this miracle is part of this new teaching of Jesus, of the good news that he comes to announce.

The crowd

But the 24 hours with Jesus continue, and at the beginning of the evening people, who have heard about what Jesus did in the synagogue, come to see Jesus to ask for healings, liberations or exorcisms of impure spirits.

So we see the two examples we have seen so far, an exorcism and a healing, multiplied. People with different illnesses are healed, other impure spirits are expelled.

Again, they recognize who Jesus really is, but he does not allow his identity to be proclaimed by demons, but rather through his teaching and actions.

If until now, this Saturday would have already been very impressive, now we are going beyond the limits. And one can imagine Jesus' reputation growing even more after people noticed that these were not isolated episodes but that, indeed, he still had the power to heal and liberate. Certainly other people will come the next day, maybe even more people. And that’s where Jesus does something the disciples don’t understand: he leaves.

After the day: Departure

Jesus leaves to pray before daybreak. Probably to avoid being blocked by the crowd. The disciples manage to find him - he was probably in a place where he used to pray.

The vocabulary that Marc uses here is interesting: Simon and the others are looking for him. We could also translate: they are chasing him. It is a vocabulary normally used with negative connotations, of hunting or persecution. We can imagine the disciples looking for Jesus, almost indignant or angry… “where is Jesus now… this is not the time to disappear, people are lining up in front of the house!”

There are still people to heal. But Jesus says his mission is elsewhere. He must continue to preach in other places, he must continue to announce that the time has arrived, that the kingdom is near. That's why he came out. Healings and exorcisms, these elements are part of the power of his preaching, they are concrete manifestations of the kingdom that he announces, but it is preaching that is the center of his mission. In this logic, it is natural for him to move to other villages.

So he said: “Come on”. The disciples must go with him. They must follow him in his mission, not pursue him. Jesus told them, during their call, “follow me, I will make you become fishers of men.” They are not yet. If the call requires an immediate response, “making it become” is a process. They must understand even better the mission of Jesus, the centrality of his good news. They will become people who boldly proclaim this good news, who live as citizens of the kingdom of God, and who invite others to a newness of life. Jesus is going to make them become fishers of men.

But for now, they must follow Jesus and bear witness to other days like this. We can imagine that days like this were spent in many of the small towns and villages of the Galilee.

Conclusion

So that was a day in the life of Jesus and his disciples, during the beginning of his ministry. I said at the beginning that the Gospel of Mark invites us to put ourselves in the perspective of the disciples of Jesus in its narration. So, if we do this exercise, what conclusion can we draw?

Here, for this morning, I list three.

The Teaching, Authority, and Identity of Jesus

These three elements are closely linked. We see here that people were struck by Jesus' teaching because he preached with authority. We also see that when people see that Jesus had authority over impure spirits, they are surprised by his teaching. And they wonder about the identity of Jesus.

His teaching emanates from his authority, his authority emanates from his identity. His teaching indicates his authority, his authority indicates his identity. We could approach these three concepts from different angles, it is a rope with three threads woven very tightly.

This has a particular consequence, for example, for someone, say, who is beginning to be interested in the Christian faith, who wants to know more about the teaching of Jesus. If this is your case, this point shows you that the question of the identity and authority of Jesus is not really separable from his teaching. We cannot, for example, isolate “principles of life” from the teaching of Jesus, from the consideration of who he is. If Jesus is not, as Mark says, “the Christ, Son of God,” then his teaching truly loses its value.

This point risks being a recurring point of application during the following preachings, because the question of the identity of Jesus is the central point of the gospel of Mark.

Miracles in Proclaiming the Kingdom

Another element that we can draw from this episode is that the miracles of Jesus have a role in his preaching, in his proclamation of the approaching kingdom of God. And they must be understood within this framework, otherwise they will not be understood.

Jesus is announcing that God, through his Messiah, will restore communion with humans and take upon himself the consequences of men's sins. That time has arrived, but kingdom is near - it will yet fully manifest. These healings and exorcisms show people that he was the person through whom the kingdom comes.

But it must be recognized that these signs, although extraordinary, are of a temporary nature, and have prophetic value - they point to the future reality of the kingdom of God. These people who were healed, all, without exception, died. After a few or many years later.

But it is believed that Jesus died and rose again. That through his death he cleansed the impurity that separates us from God and freed us from the powers of darkness. That through his resurrection, we too will one day be resurrected, with bodies free from disease and other consequences of sin on nature. This is the full fulfillment of the announced kingdom. Miracles are only a foretaste, only a way of announcing what is to come.

Of course, this announced kingdom invites people to experience it now. But the invitation to live the kingdom now is not an invitation to live a miracle-filled life, any more than one prepares for dinner by eating 35 pieces of appetizers... The appropriate response to the Kingdom proclamation is change of attitude (repentance), faith, and discipleship. Which leads us to our third conclusion.

Follow vs. pursue Jesus

At the end of today's passage we see the disciples' first misunderstanding of what it meant to “follow Jesus”. It won't be the only one in Mark's gospel.

Despite the fact that they testified in a very direct way to the authority of Jesus, they are there “managing” him. They assume they know what should be his priority, where he should be taking action.

And we need to know that we often act the same way. We have witnessed a Jesus who works wonders, who changes lives, who has power and authority and… our next thought stops on our impression of what he should do. On what he should heal, on what he should restore, on what he should correct, on what he should judge.

So we're chasing him because we feel like he's not where he should be. But our role as disciples is to be where he is. To follow him. In the same way as with Simon and the others, he will “make us become”. He has his mission, the proclamation of his kingdom of God which invites new life in him. It is by following him, it is by accompanying him in his priorities, that he makes us become. In this posture we recognize in him, not only the God who heals, but the one who is our healing. Not only the God who liberates, but the one who is our freedom.

Who is Jesus? (Mark 1.1-15)

We’re excited to be starting a new series on the gospel of Mark today—this will be the first gospel we’ll have done beginning to end since doing Luke, which we finished back in 2020. We took almost three years, and eighty-one sermons, to finish that series; I promise, this one will not be as long.

Now let’s talk a little bit about this book before we get into it.

According to early church records, Mark was the attendant and record-keeper for the apostle Peter. So Mark wasn’t himself an apostle, but he kept written accounts of what Peter told him concerning the life and ministry of Jesus.

This gospel was the first to be written (likely around the mid- to late-50s A.D.), and it was used as a kind of blueprint for the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Large chunks of Mark’s gospel are quoted almost verbatim in Matthew and Luke.

So what is Mark’s objective in his bare-bones version of the story of Jesus?

Mark’s first goal in writing this gospel is to tell us who Jesus is. And he goes about fulfilling his goal by giving us a kind of episodic view of Jesus’s life and ministry. Instead of trying to present everything, Mark gives us snatches of moments, teachings or events. The result is a kind of mosaic of the life of Christ, in which we’re able to get a really quick, easy-to-digest presentation of who Jesus is, what he said, and what he did.

To whom was he writing? He’s writing to the church as a whole, but likely, he’s particularly aiming at Christians who are facing the imminent threat of persecution in Rome. It’s important to keep this context in our minds as we move forward, because this gospel would have reminded these Christians of the salvation they had in Christ, which would give them courage for what they would need to face. It would also give them a potent reminder that whatever suffering they were enduring, Christ endured first. He went before them, in order to save them.

And we can see that fact from the very beginning of this gospel. So let’s get started.

Our passage today tells us four things about Jesus, and there’s one question I want you to keep in your mind the whole time we move through this passage today: Why does it matter? When Mark tells us anything about Jesus, we want to ask ourselves, What difference does it make?

I’ll go ahead and spoil it for you—everything Mark tells us about Jesus here all adds up to one thing, and that one thing changes everything.

Jesus Is God’s Promised Savior (v. 1-8)

Mark wastes no time starting his gospel. His very first sentence is a thesis statement for his entire book. Look at v. 1:

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Mark’s entire agenda is summed up in this one very succinct phrase.

First of all, this is “the gospel”. It might be helpful to clarify something quickly, for those of you who are new to the Bible. Even within the Bible itself, you’ll see the word “gospel” used in two different ways.

The word “gospel” simply means “good news.” Sometimes that word is used as a title for one of the four books that tell the story of Jesus: the gospel of Mark, the gospel of Matthew, Luke or John. But most of the time, the meaning is more general than that: most of the time, when we talk about “the gospel,” we’re simply talking about the “good news”, the message of what Jesus Christ did. When we talk about proclaiming the gospel, or sharing the gospel with others, that’s what we’re talking about: sharing the good news of what Jesus Christ did.

In this verse, Mark is sort of using the word both ways: this is “the gospel”—this is a book recounting the life and ministry of Jesus, and the story of his life and ministry is very good news.

Secondly—notice he says that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. He doesn’t just say that this is “the gospel of Jesus.” That word “Christ” isn’t Jesus’s last name; it’s a title that means “Messiah”. That might not be helpful if you don’t know what “Messiah” means—the Messiah was a figure who had been prophesied in the Old Testament; he was the Savior that God had promised to send to save his people. What that salvation would look like was a big question mark for a lot of people at the time, but Mark wants it to be clear from the beginning that he’s not just telling the story of an ordinary man; he’s telling the story of the Messiah, the promised Savior: Jesus Christ.

Thirdly, he gives us more information about Jesus: he is the Son of God. So this Messiah, this Jesus, isn’t just a human warrior that God sent to save his people. He is a human being, yes, but not only—he is the Son of God.

Mark doesn’t go into details about Jesus’s birth or his lineage or any of that, so I won’t either—if you want to know more about that, go read the beginnings of Matthew’s gospel or Luke’s gospel, they both give a lot more information about it. That’s not Mark’s goal.

Mark’s goal here is to show us that although Jesus is human, he’s not only human; he is divine. Everything in this passage—in all the verses we’re going to see today—places emphasis on Jesus’s divinity.

Now that being said, in v. 2 Mark immediately makes a right turn and quotes the prophet Isaiah and the prophet Malachi (he mentions Isaiah because he was the more “important” of the two).

2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,

who will prepare your way,

3  the voice of one crying in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight,’ ”

These prophecies we see quoted in v. 2-3 are prophecies of hope for a weary people, speaking of a messenger who would get the people ready for the coming of the Lord, for the day when these weary people would finally see the glory of God.

When John appears, the people of Israel are living under Roman occupation, and the prophets have been completely silent for hundreds of years. The people have been waiting and praying for the day when God would come and finally show his face again, but so far, it hasn’t happened. It would be easy for them to feel like the only answer to their prayers has been silence.

But then, we see in v. 4:

4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

This was a really big deal, because the law of Moses was still applied; the people of Israel, if they kept the law, were pure—they didn’t need anything else.

At least that’s what the Jewish religious leaders thought. But now, here comes this guy John—a pretty crazy-looking figure, dressed in camel’s hair and eating bugs—telling people that the rituals of the law, although not wrong, weren’t enough. God wasn’t just looking for ritual purity; what God wanted was a changed heart.

That’s what repentance is—it’s a commitment to obedience to God. It’s when we stand before God and say, “I want to be like you. I want to follow you. I want to obey your commands.” So they would come before God and confess their sins, telling God, “I don’t want to live like this anymore; I want to change”, and John would baptize them as a symbol that it is this heart-change that saves us, not ritual sacrifice.

Two really important things we need to see before we move on.

First, we need to see that John’s not reinventing the wheel here. The religious leaders, if they had been paying attention, would have seen that John is doing no more than applying what the prophets had already said. The prophet Micah, the prophet Ezekiel, and many others, had repeatedly told God’s people that all the sacrifices in the world are useless unless the people’s heart is changed. John is taking what the prophets said, and giving the people a visual aid, to help them understand it better.

Secondly, we need to see that John’s baptism is actually lacking something. John’s baptism can show the people their need for a new heart, their need for repentance for forgiveness of sins…but his baptism can’t give them a new heart; it can’t fully bring them to repentance. Only God can do that.

Someone in our home group mentioned that when he was a young Christian reading this book, it sort of seemed like John was almost misleading the people, because he knew his baptism couldn’t actually save anyone. That would be true if John hadn’t been up front about his own limitations—but he was.

Look at v. 7:

And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

So John is really up front about the fact that his baptism isn’t enough—someone else is coming, he said, someone greater than John. He will baptize you, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit.

Who can baptize with the Holy Spirit? Only God.

Do you see how John was effectively fulfilling his role of “preparing the way of the Lord”, getting the people ready for Christ’s coming? Through John’s ministry, he showed the people what they needed, and then he said, “Don’t worry—God is coming to do it.”

Jesus Christ is coming to do it.

Jesus Has God’s Approval (v. 9-11).

And that’s exactly what we see happen next.

V. 9:

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Remember I said before that everything in this passage points to Christ’s divinity? This is an incredibly clear indicator of that.

When Jesus is baptized, the Spirit descends on him “like a dove”, and the Father’s voice rings out from heaven, saying, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” This was, presumably, a voice that everyone standing around could hear: it was a sign that this man who has just been baptized has the full approval of God himself—and even more: this man who has just been baptized is himself divine.

Mark has two goals in telling us this little story. The first is to show us that Jesus is both fully God and fully man.

Jesus is a man—he came from Nazareth, a little town in Galilee that everyone could go to if they wanted. Some of the people by the river probably knew Jesus, if they had followed John—Luke’s gospel tells us that Jesus and John were cousins. Jesus is a man.

But at the same time, he is fully divine. God himself speaks from heaven, saying “You are my beloved Son.”

This is one of those subjects that are of primary importance. There are a lot of things we can disagree about and still be Christians, because there are some things the Bible teaches that are clearer than others, and some things go to the heart of the gospel more than others.

This is one of those subjects on which we cannot disagree: without the divinity and humanity of Christ, the entire Christian faith comes unraveled. If Christ were not man, he could not take man’s place. If Christ were not God, he would have no more power to save than you or I.

So Mark wants Jesus’s divinity to be crystal clear. Jesus is a man, but he is not a man like any other. He is fully man, but he is also fully divine.

That’s his first goal.

His second goal is to show that this fully human, fully divine Jesus was not asking anyone to do anything he wasn’t prepared to do himself. He didn’t need to be baptized, because he didn’t need to repent of sin. But he did it anyway, because one of his tasks was to represent human beings before God. So he would do everything God commanded man to do, and he would do everything man couldn’t do.

So Jesus is the Son of God, and Jesus has God’s approval.

Jesus Has God’s Strength (v. 12-13).

But there’s another piece that will carry on into the next section, and that is that Jesus has God’s strength. We saw the Spirit descend on him like a dove—now, we read in v. 12 that this same Spirit

immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.

Here we see a new character brought onto the scene, and that is Satan, the devil, the enemy of God. Some people want to paint Satan as a symbolic character only, taking any mention of him metaphorically. But the Bible just doesn’t give us that latitude. Satan is a real spiritual being who hates God and who wants to take down God’s people.

Nowwe need to keep something in mind, that Mark helps us see. Look at how little time Mark spends talking about Satan here. He mentions him almost as an afterthought. He wants our attention firmly centered on Jesus, not on Satan. His goal isn’t to downplay Satan’s power, but rather to elevate Jesus’s strength.

Mark tells us that Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. No human being has ever withstood such a thing. When was the last time you went forty days without sinning? We can’t even imagine such an ordeal. Again, Jesus was fully God, but he was also fully man. He was hungry, and thirsty, and tired. It was not easy to resist the temptation to eat, to drink, at Satan’s behest.

And why did he have to go through it? It’s not as if Satan thought Jesus would actually give in to temptation; he knew who he was dealing with.

We actually see the answer to that question in Hebrews 2.10, 18, which we saw this past Christmas:

10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering… 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Jesus’s temptation by Satan was God’s plan, not Satan’s. It was the Holy Spirit who drove him into the wilderness, so that he would be tempted, so that Jesus would be perfectly qualified by what he endured, and so that he could come to our rescue when we are tempted.

Jesus was perfectly qualified because he went into that wilderness with the strength of God’s Spirit. Mark wants us to see that in this most hostile of environments, Jesus held firm. He wants us to see it so that we might remember that this man was no ordinary man: he is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God.

Jesus is God’s promised Savior; Jesus has God’s approval; Jesus has God’s strength.

Jesus Proclaims God’s Gospel (v. 14-15)

And lastly: Jesus proclaims God’s good news. V. 14:

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Shortly after Jesus’s baptism, John the Baptist is arrested, and after his arrest, Jesus comes back to Galilee. What does he do?

He proclaims “the gospel of God”, the “good news” that God had sent him to proclaim.

What is that gospel? What is the content of this good news?

First, we see a declaration of…well, good news! “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.” Remember earlier, when we talked about how long the Jews had been waiting for the fulfillment of these prophecies, for some kind of sign that God was still listening, and that he still heard them?

That time has come: the kingdom of God is at hand. It’s coming. It’s almost here.

We just celebrated Christmas. Every Christmas morning, there’s a moment when parents go get their kids and say, “Okay, you can come out!” and the kids rush out of their rooms to go see the presents under the tree.

This is that moment, for an entire people. Except they haven’t been waiting a month; they’ve been waiting for centuries. And they’re not waiting on Christmas presents; they’re waiting on deliverance. It’s like they’re back in Egypt again, praying for God to deliver them from the Pharaoh.

And finally, this man whom John spoke of as being “greater”, the one who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit, the one who had received divine approval at his baptism, this man comes saying, “You’ve been waiting a long time. The wait is almost over. The kingdom is coming.”

That’s good news.

And next, he tells them how to get in on that good news: “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

We’ve already said that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ. At this point in the story, the people hearing Jesus have only the tiniest inkling of what he has actually come to do. At this point, they didn’t know that Jesus had come to live the perfect life God calls us to live, in our place, and to take our sin on himself and be punished in our place, and to be raised to apply that work to us. These people knew none of that.

But they knew this much: the good news of the kingdom was coming through this man Jesus, and his message was consistent with the message of John the Baptist. It’s not enough to follow rituals and offer sacrifices: they must repent, and believe in what this man will tell them.

Conclusion

This is the beginning of Mark’s gospel, and in it we see him quickly and methodically laying out Jesus’s credentials—this man Jesus came with God’s approval; he came with God’s power; he came with God’s message. All of that could theoretically be true of an ordinary human being, like the Old Testament prophets. It was true of Moses; it was true of Elijah; it was true of Elisha.

What makes Jesus different is very simple—as simple as a voice speaking from heaven, saying, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

I said earlier that everything Mark tells us about Jesus here all adds up to one thing. This is that one thing: the story that Mark is going to tell us throughout his entire book is the story of the Son of God. Not a healer, not a prophet, not a good, moral teacher: the Son of God.

And that fact, if it is true, changes everything.

C. S. Lewis famously wrote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Lewis is right. Either Jesus was a fool, a madman—or he was and is really and truly the Christ, the Son of God. There is no in between, and Mark means to leave us with no in between. He wants to force us to confront this man, this Son of God, so that we have no other choice open to us other than to accept or to reject him.

And that is the choice we’ll be constantly faced with in this gospel. If Mark’s first goal in writing his gospel is to show us who Jesus is, his second goal is to call all people to be his disciples. The lines in the sand are drawn very clearly here: you’re either for Jesus, or you’re against him; you’re either his followers, or his opponents.

It’s very black and white; when it comes to being a disciple of Christ, there is no room for gray.

So if that doesn’t sound like something you’re interested in, I suggest you find another church. Because week after week over the next several months, these are the choices that you will be faced with over and over again: the choice of accepting or rejecting who Jesus is; and the choice of accepting or rejecting his invitation to follow him.

That invitation is made to believers and unbelievers alike, and there is no bad time to respond to it. If you are an unbeliever, then right now, today, through the words of this gospel, Jesus is proclaiming the gospel of God to you. He is saying to you, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is here; repent and believe in the gospel.” There is no class you have to take, there is no minimum number of credits you have to earn. You don’t even have to get to the end of this gospel.

Today, right now, you have everything you need to respond to his invitation. Repent, and believe in the gospel.

And if you’re a believer, this invitation is for you too, because we all know how easy it is to slip back into unbelief. It’s notable, isn’t it, that Jesus called the apostle Peter to follow him…twice. Once when he first invited him to be his disciple, and then once again, after Peter had denied him. The invitation to follow Christ is always actual, always for right now, because it is the choice we have to make day after day.

So whoever you are, whatever you’re going through, the choice before you and me both is the same: Repent and believe in the gospel.

When God Says No (Acts 8.1-8)

Last week we started 2025 in exactly the right way. We spent the afternoon praying together for our church, our city, our country and our world. It was, as far as I can remember, the best-attended prayer meeting we’ve ever had, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been so encouraged by you. So I wanted to thank you for that.

Last Sunday morning we prepared for that meeting by spending our time in 2 Corinthians 1.11, talking about what happens when we pray together. We saw that when we pray together, God answers; when we pray together, we learn to pray; when we pray together, we see bigger; and finally, when we pray together, God is glorified. As Paul says, when God answers the prayers of many, it gives many the opportunity to thank God for his answer.

But there was one thing we didn’t address last week, that I want to address today. And that is this simple question: What happens when God says no?

I don’t want to be manipulative with this message, so I want to put all my cards out on the table. A couple of months ago, we knew we were going to have a prayer service on January 5th, and we knew we were going to be starting the gospel of Mark on the 19th. That left January 12th open for something else. So back in November, we were already talking about the possibility of addressing this subject today—and that is, what happens if our building project doesn’t go through?

The project isn’t over—we’ll tell you more this afternoon—but I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that the project isn’t going to happen exactly in the way that we thought it would. God has been really good to us. When I was in the U.S. I talked to the head fundraiser for a major Bible translation company, and he was astonished that we were able to raise so much money in such a short time, especially given that most of it came from within the church. It’s an incredible achievement.

But it still wasn’t enough to make the target we needed to hit in December. So it’s not over, but it’s not going to happen exactly like we thought or hoped.

Now there are two ways we could handle this. The first way would be to speak in very pragmatic terms. I know a lot of pastors who have tried to purchasing buildings in much easier places than Paris, and it’s almost never a straight line—most of the time, they try for one place, it doesn’t work, and they try for another, and it doesn’t work, and it’s a roller coaster until finally they have all their ducks in a row. And often that roller coaster takes many years to come to an end. So on the one hand, the fact that things didn’t go exactly how we were hoping is completely normal, and no reason to be discouraged.

But that’s not going to help those of you who have worked really hard, and are going to feel your minds spinning out of control now over all the unknowns about the future. I want to ask you to do your best not let yourself get distracted by those things this morning.

Because before we even get there, we can’t afford to look at this situation only from a pragmatic point of view. We need to look at it from a biblical point of view. We are children of a heavenly Father who loves us; to simply react to what seems like bad news, without taking our Father’s love and wisdom and sovereignty into account, is to do a disservice to God. So just as last week’s sermon was preparation for our prayer meeting, today’s sermon is preparation for our information meeting about the building project. We’re doing it this way because it’s in our nature to panic and worry when news like this comes, and we have no reason to worry, as long as we remember what’s actually going on.

Let me tell you a story that might help us put this in perspective.

Last year I went to an Acts 29 conference in Latvia, where we heard the testimony of a guy named Taras. Taras had planted a church in Minsk, in Belarus. Because of the war in Ukraine broke out, Taras and his family and their entire church were forced to flee for their lives in 2023. The church was scattered to the winds; still, they don’t know where everyone is. Taras and his family ended up as refugees in Warsaw, Poland. None of them spoke Polish; he had no job; they were put up in government housing; the kids had to go to school in a new language.

I tried to put myself in his shoes, and I had a very hard time imagining it. I kept seeing my own family, my own kids, thrown into that situation. It would be an incredible trial just to get through every day—much less do anything worth celebrating.

Taras and his church had prayed that the conflict in Ukraine would calm down. They prayed that their community would be preserved, that they could remain in Minsk and maintain the life of their church, their relationships with these brothers and sisters whom they loved.

But God said no. It’s a truth that’s hard for us to accept, but we have to accept it: sometimes, God says no.

So what happens when God says no? How do we process it? How do we react to it? How should we understand it?

That’s what I want us to consider today. There are many, many places in the Bible we could go. We could go to Joseph, sent to Egypt as a slave. We could go to the Hebrews, enslaved by the Pharaoh in Egypt. We could go to the exile of the Israelites in Babylon and Assyria. We could go to Paul, with his thorn in the flesh, praying that God would remove it, and Christ actually tells him no. And of course we could go to Jesus, who prayed that this cup might pass from him, just a few hours before his own crucifixion.

We really could simply pick our place. But today, we’re going to be spending our time in Acts 8.1-8.

The situation of the church in Acts 8 and the situation Taras found himself in are remarkably similar. The Christian faith exploded in Jerusalem not long after Jesus’s resurrection and ascension. Thousands of Jewish men and women came to faith in Christ, the apostles were preaching the gospel with boldness, and the church was growing day by day.

Of course, this made the Jewish authorities very unhappy; we see several episodes of their conflicts with the apostles in the first few chapters of Acts.

Persecution (v. 1-3)

But in the second half of chapter 6, we see a new level of tension arise. A man named Stephen—not an apostle, just an ordinary Christian, but a Christian who was saying and doing remarkable things—caught the attention of the Jewish authorities and Jewish zealots. Stephen was seized by the crowd, brought before the Jewish council. After giving an impassioned speech before the council, Stephen was taken out of the city and stoned to death, making him the first Christian martyr.

In the verses describing his execution, we see mention of a young man named Saul. We find out later on that Saul is a Pharisee, a young man who was well-educated in the law, and extremely zealous for maintaining that law.

As it turns out, Saul would soon himself become radically converted by Christ and become an apostle himself (the apostle Paul). But that hasn’t happened yet. For now, here is what we see. Acts 8, verse 1:

And Saul approved of [Stephen’s] execution.

And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. 2 Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. 3 But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

So you see how similar this is to what Taras and our brothers and sisters who had to flee because of the war in Ukraine have gone through. The reasons are different, but the basic situation is the same.

Here’s what I want to draw our attention to. The pattern we see throughout all of Scripture, and particularly in the first chapters of the book of Acts, is that the Christians prayed about everything. So although it’s not mentioned in the text, it is inconceivable that the Christians facing Saul’s persecution would not be praying for God to deliver them.

It’s easy for us to look at this story from a distance and not feel much tension when we read this, because we know what happened later. But put yourself in their shoes. They didn’t know what was going to happen next. They knew that God had done incredible things in their midst up to this point, but suddenly here is this guy Saul—an extremely well-learned, passionate and convincing Pharisee, who comes on the scene and is, as v. 3 says, “ravaging the church”. He’s not just prohibiting services; he’s busting into people’s homes and carrying them off to prison.

So they prayed, as Taras and his church prayed…and God didn’t change things. In fact, they went from bad to worse.

Stephen is not only not released; he is carted outside the city and stoned to death.

It escalates to such an extent that the Christians living in Jerusalem are forced to flee. They just have to get out, run for their lives, scattering all over Judea and Samaria. The apostles stay, but everyone else has to run.

Can you imagine the mindset of those Christians? You know they’ve been praying, because that’s what they always do—and yet, God not only doesn’t stop the persecution. He allows it to keep on getting worse.

What question would be on your minds in that situation?

Why? WHY? Clearly the persecution of Christians is a bad thing. Why would God allow this to happen? Why wouldn’t he stop it? And in that moment, you don’t have a clear answer to those questions.

Now I know you know this isn’t the end of the story, but I don’t want to move on too quickly from this. I’d like us to sit in that state of uncertainty for just a minute, because in reality, that is how we will spend much of our time. The time spent between the prayer and the resolution, between the prayer and the answer to that question “Why?”, is often very long. And sometimes the answer never comes. Sometimes something happens, and we never really find out why it did, at least not on this side of heaven.

Scattering (v. 1, 4)

We will all be faced with a situation when either as individuals, as a family, or as a church, when we will earnestly pray that God will do something, and God will not do what we asked, and we won’t understand why. And we need to know ahead of time, right now, what kind of God we serve, because our understanding of God will determine how we respond to those situations.

We read at the end of v. 1:

And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.

Here’s the question—how did these Christians respond to this situation? What was their understanding of God, and how did it inform their response?

Look at v. 4:

4 Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

What they did tells us what they believed.

What did they do when they were scattered? They went about preaching the word.

Think about that. These were people who had just been chased from their homes because they believed the gospel. And they didn’t go very far; they didn’t even flee to another country, but to the surrounding regions of Judea and Samaria. (Samaria wasn’t a place where Jews would have received a warm welcome; the Jews and the Samaritans weren’t fond of each other.) The point is, they were in places where it was still dangerous to be a Christian.

Even so, when they were persecuted, when they had to flee, they fled preaching the word.

This simple fact tells us a number of things.

It tells us, first of all, that their faith was not shaken by the disastrous situation in which they found themselves. It tells us that they didn’t believe that preaching the gospel was a lost cause, despite the hardships it brought them. It tells us they still had confidence in the God they served. It tells us they still believed they were on a mission. And it tells us that they knew that God was working, despite or—dare we say it?—even through their situation.

They couldn’t see what God was doing yet, but they knew the God they served. So they considered their situation, and they acted, not based on their situation, but based on their knowledge of who God is.

So far, the church had been almost entirely centered in Jerusalem. But now the Christians were scattered, and they would have remembered the prayers they prayed back in chapter 4, when they asked God to give them boldness to continue to preach the gospel.

Suddenly, through their desperate situation, they realize they have a new opportunity. It’s not what they were expecting, but it’s there: they can either try to hide themselves and stay safe, or they can go into these new places and preach the gospel wherever they end up.

That’s what they do.

And it’s what Taras did. When he and his family arrived in Warsaw, they were devastated. They had lost everything: their home, their possessions, their church. They had lost any and all familiarity with the culture and the language.

But Taras also knew that they weren’t the only ones in that situation. He knew that many, many Belarusians were fleeing to Warsaw. And he knew that God had not brought them there for no reason.

So he planted another church.

He planted a church for Belarusian refugees in Warsaw, and the church filled very, very quickly. God is now working in the lives of people Taras didn’t know before, in a city none of them knew. The message of the gospel has a particular resonance for people who have lost everything—what a relief to find out that even when you’ve lost everything, you can actually gain everything.

This was his testimony, of the beautiful things God is doing in his church and in Warsaw. And these things never would have happened if God had given them what they asked for in prayer; these things never would have happened if God hadn’t said “no”.

God’s Good Plan (v. 5-7)

God has a plan. It is not always our plan, but it is a good plan.

That is exactly what we see in the following verses in Acts 8. Let’s read again, starting at v. 5:

5 Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. 6 And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. 7 For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. 8 So there was much joy in that city.

Do you see it? The persecution of the church became a tool in God’s hands to win more people to Christ. When they prayed, as anyone would, for their persecution to stop, God said no—not because he didn’t love them, but because he had better plans.

Because the church was scattered from Jerusalem, the gospel went out to places that didn’t yet have it. An argument could be made that it was the scattering of the Christians from Jerusalem that began the trajectory of spreading the gospel all over the world. An argument could be made that we would not be here today if this hadn’t happened. There could have a been a scenario in which Christianity would have remained localized to Jerusalem. But that scenario wasn’t God’s plan.

Obviously letting the Christians stay in Jerusalem would have been far more pleasant and more comfortable. But there was more joy in enduring the persecution and being scattered than in having God stop the persecution. Because they knew who their God was, the Christians in Jerusalem were not devastated by their situation; rather, they realized their mission was being redirected, and they made the most of the opportunity before them, to bring the gospel to places they never would have gone otherwise.

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To close, let’s come back to our current situation. When we put this in perspective—when we think of our situation in comparison to the persecution of the church in Acts 8, or of Taras having to flee because of the conflict in Ukraine—it’s easy to see our building project is actually not a big deal.

But it feels like a big deal to us, as it always does to those who are going through it. So let’s ask the question: Why would God present us with this opportunity, only to not let us get the money we needed at the right time?

Most of the time, we have no idea how to answer that question when we ask it. This time, I have a ton of ideas. Some are speculative, and some are solid facts—we’ll talk about more of these this afternoon. But I want to mention just one specific thing this morning: one thing that stands out in my mind above everything else.

This opportunity has forced people in our church who may otherwise have sat still to use their gifts in ways they wouldn’t have needed to before, and thus to grow in him. I know it’s hard to see the forest for the trees if you’ve been in the thick of the building project this year; but as a pastor, this is what has made 2024 an incredibly encouraging year. I’ve seen people with gifts I had never suspected put together the legal, financial and communications structures that will make it possible for our church to purchase property in Paris. You have done incredible things.

And whether you realize it or not, all the work done over this past year has become the raw materials God will use to cause you to grow.

God almost always causes us to grow in faith and in maturity through trial. Many of us have been paying so much attention to the practical and logistical objectives of this project; I want you to take your eyes away from that for a minute, and consider what God has been doing in you through the effort you’ve put in. What has he been changing in you through this experience?

I’ll tell you what I’m seeing. I’m seeing people who are exhausted, yes, and perhaps discouraged. But I’m also seeing those same people who have realized, in a deeper and more urgent way, that they need God to do whatever it is they’re doing. It’s made us more thirsty for God, because we have a deeper realization of the fact that we can’t do this without him. I know it may not always feel that way—when we’re discouraged it’s hard to think about anything else. But when we cry out to God for help, we are acknowledging our need for him, and growing in our dependence on him.

This was not a wasted opportunity. We don’t know where God is going to bring us in the future in terms of buildings, but we do know that every time God says “no” to a prayer, it is not to harm us, and it is not to set us back. It is to bring us closer to what he has planned for his people, closer to the glory of his name being seen.

Folks, I am not just saying this: I am happy with our situation today. I am so proud of my church. I am thankful for what I’ve seen God do in you, even if it’s been hard.

But most of all, I’m happy because our security isn’t in the success of a church project or a roof over our heads. Our security is in our knowledge of who our God is, that he is victorious, that he is good, that he loves his people, and that he is always working for our good and for his glory.

When God answers our prayers the way we asked, it’s good news, as we saw last week.

But when God says no, it’s also good news.

Ask Joseph, who was sold into slavery in Egypt in order to save thousands of lives from famine.

Ask the Hebrews, who became slaves in Egypt in order to see God’s mighty hand at work to deliver them.

Ask Jesus, who drank the cup the Father held out to him, in order to save us.

Ask Paul, who (as far as we know) was never delivered from the thorn in his flesh, in order to understand that the grace of Christ was sufficient, that Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness.

Ask the church in Jerusalem, which was persecuted and scattered in order to bring the gospel to the surrounding regions.

Ask Taras, who had to flee Minsk with his family in order to begin a wholly unexpected ministry in Warsaw, and see more people come to Christ.

And ask yourselves. Some time in the future, I believe we’ll be able to look back at this past year and see what God was doing, that never could have happened if things had gone exactly as we’d planned. Our God is a good God, and he never stops working for our good and for his glory.

All is well.