You're listening to the Vice Chancellor's Hour, a ministry of Radio ABC 993 FM on the campus of African Bible University. I'm Jeremiah Pitts, a professor and administrator here at the African Bible University in Uganda. The purpose of Vice Chancellor's Hour is to provide biblical and theological teachings that are an extension of the ministry of the university. Welcome back to another episode of the Vice Chancellor's Hour. So glad to have you along for this journey through the book of Mark. We're looking at Mark because it's one of the Gospels, those four primary books which direct themselves at the life and the work of Jesus's ministry here on earth. And I hope you found it encouraging and interesting. I certainly have. And each time I go to these stories, I find more and more. Today we're in Mark chapter 3, a relatively short passage. We're looking at Mark 3 verses 6 to 19, and looking at a relatively short passage, Mark chapter 3 verses 6 to 19. And I'm going to read it for you, and then we'll learn about it hopefully together. This is what it says. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Him, how to destroy Him. Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee, and Judea, and Jerusalem, and Edumea, and from beyond the Jordan, and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that He was doing, they came to Him, and He told His disciples to have a boat ready for Him because of the crowd, lest they crush Him. For He had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around Him to touch Him. And whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, You are the Son of God! And He strictly ordered them not to make Him known. and he went up on a mountain, and called to him those whom he desired. And they came to him, and he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him, and he might send them out to preach, and have authority to cast out demons. He appointed the twelve, Simon, to whom He gave the name Peter, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, the brother of James, to whom He gave the name Oraneges, that is, sons of thunder, Andrew, and Philip, Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Him. So in this story, we see that Jesus is doing the work, that even though the Pharisees and the Herodians are against him, he has people coming to him from basically everywhere. And from that, he selects a relatively small group who are going to be his disciples that he himself equips, and then they go out into the world. When I think about this passage, it actually reminds me a little bit of a story I heard not too long ago about a man who was in a concentration camp. He's telling the story of himself. He had suffered so much during his time in this concentration camp. He had been abused, and he didn't have enough food, and many people around him died. In fact, there was good reason multiple times why he thought he also would die. He endured unbelievable suffering. Towards the end of that war, he had some people who came and they told him and the other prisoners that if they would get into the trucks, that they would take them to an aid station, that there was a neutral party there who would provide them with food and with clothes, all the things that he desperately, desperately needed. and he wanted that opportunity but he remembered something back that he had left and he returned for it when he came back he found they had left without him and he was so very disappointed it was devastating really crushing to have missed this chance to get more food to get more clothing to be taken care of, and he was incredibly disappointed to have missed the opportunity. It was only later he found out that all of those who had gone with those men in those trucks had all been killed. that the men who had come had not come in fact to help them, but had come instead to kill them so that they could not be evidence used against them, testimony used against them later. The reason I think of that story is because it is a powerful example of a principle we find here in this passage, which is that not everyone who shows up is there to help. Not everyone who shows up is there to help. Jesus, in this passage, is surrounded by a number of individuals and groups who come to him. And in our humanity, we often think if we have lots of visitors, lots of guests, lots of attenders, the powerful people, if the right people come to see us, if the crowds come to see us, that we're doing something well. But we see in this story that not everyone who shows up is there to help. The first group we see in Mark 3.6 is the Pharisees and the Herodians. You may remember the Pharisees from our discussions of them before, But the Pharisees are essentially a very popular holiness movement. They have some things in their favor, some things which were good about them, that the Scriptures also point out to us. Which is, they did believe, for instance, in the reality of miracles, they did believe in the Old Testament, and they did believe in following the law of God. Their great problem was that they added many other things to it. It was not that they wanted to hold to what God actually told them, it was that they misunderstood, misapplied, and misinterpreted what God had told them, and in many cases added to it. You can go back and listen to the previous episode at your own leisure, and you'll hear how they misunderstood and misapplied the Sabbath, keeping the Lord's Day. And because of that, they actually oppressed other people, rather than finding it to be a joy and rejoicing. And in fact, you would say they didn't fulfill all the duties required of man. They didn't help others. That's the Pharisees. And when the Pharisees saw Jesus teaching, their response to that was that they wanted to get rid of him. Herodians are a party of people who supported Herod. And they only come up a few times here because they weren't super popular. What we know about them is that they joined forces with the Pharisees in order to test Jesus. If you stick with me in this series, eventually we'll get to Mark chapter 12, where the Herodians appear, probably because of this time period here where they're joining forces with the Pharisees, to test Jesus along political lines. knowing fully well that there was a tension among the people who lived in that region between what they believed were their religious duties and their duties to their civil authority, that is, whether or not they should pay taxes to Caesar. They came to test Jesus along those political lines, hoping to put him in a position where he could be attacked and possibly he could be imprisoned or killed as a result of his response. So, they're fully supporters of the local government. The Pharisees, by contrast, typically did not like their rulers. So, the Pharisees didn't care for Herod very much. So, the Pharisees and the Herodians are actually kind of natural enemies of each other. They normally wouldn't work together. But what has brought them together, what's aligned them together in their work, is they want to be against Jesus. That's what has made them allies. Imagine hearing someone tell the truth and perform miracles. You see it with your own eyes and your response is, we have to get rid of this guy. But that's exactly what's happened. What inspires these two groups to work together is who Jesus is appears to be a threat to them. What he does undermines their credibility, precisely as it demonstrates his authority, his credibility. So, they are conspiring against Jesus because of what he was doing. And you are going to see these two groups show up again in the book of Mark to test Jesus, to try to catch Jesus, to try to put Jesus in a bad situation. Yes, they are showing up, but they are not there to help. Perhaps a little less obviously is the crowd of people who were mentioned in the first part of the passage. We're told all the regions they came from, and you might think of it as both North, South, East, and West. They came from every part, every area around, pretty much. And it was because Jesus' fame is spreading abroad. That is, it's going all over the place and among different groups of people. But it says that they came specifically to be healed. They came specifically to be healed. Now I mention this not to say that it's wrong to want to be healed, but instead to emphasize exactly what it seems that Mark is emphasizing. Mark seems to me to be emphasizing the fact that their emphasis, their focus, is on the healing of Jesus. They want his healing. They want that regardless of who he is. This is a very real problem in the church today. There are individuals and there are whole churches that are dedicated not to you understanding who Jesus is, so that you could be a believer in Jesus, following his teachings, understanding his ministry, and walking his footsteps, so that you may worship him as he ought to be worshiped and follow him as he ought to be followed. But instead, there are whole groups and ministries of people whose entire focus is on reaping the benefits they perceive are offered in Jesus Christ. That is, they would be people who would want the healing regardless of who Jesus is. They want Jesus as a doctor, but they do not want Jesus as a Lord and Savior. Can you see the difference? Jesus comes not only to help his people from their current physical predicaments, the problems that arise in their regular lives, but he came to be a savior of the world, to bring peace between God and man to be a reconciler of ourselves, not just for this life, but for all eternity. Imagine, if you will, that a person wanted to have his hand be restored. Of course, that's a good thing to want, but imagine having your hand restored for a moment, but your soul suffering in hell forever because you wanted Jesus to be your healer, but you didn't care if he was your Savior. These people were so many and so aggressive that they nearly crushed Jesus. They pressed to get on to Him, to get close to Him, to touch Him, so that they might be healed regardless of the fact that they might kill Him. by their actions. These crushing crowds are not there to help, but instead they are there for their own reasons. Let us, if we crush and crowd to the church, be there for the right reasons. Let us go, not so that we can have big emotions, not so that we can have some kind of healing, not so that we can see miracles, but because Jesus is worthy of worship. It's one of the things that we're told is to be sure that we do things in an orderly fashion. As Paul describes worship, he describes an orderly type of worship, not one which is chaotic, not one which is crushing and destructive. We should be careful not to be a crushing crowd. The crowd showed up, but everyone who shows up is not there to help. Thirdly, and this one you will see in more detail at the end of the passage, is one of the disciples. You may have noticed that in the passage it describes Judas Iscariot, the last one who is mentioned. Now, if you know much about Christianity, you know that Judas Iscariot was a betrayer. Now, the other disciples did not know that. Be sure you understand in your own mind that it wasn't as though 11 of the disciples were looking at Judas Iscariot every day, knowing that he was a betrayer. They didn't know. But do you know who did know? Jesus. Jesus was fully aware that Judas Iscariot probably even was fooling himself in some ways, that he was self-deceived. He doesn't seem to understand that he was the betrayer when it was brought up. either. But he is, he was, the betrayer of Jesus Christ. And in that way, we don't know fully the motivations of Judas when he arrived, but we know for sure he wasn't there to help, he was there ultimately to betray. So you need to know that not everyone who shows up is there to help, be discerning. Secondly, God's timing is the right timing. God's timing is the right timing. You may have noticed in the story that there are certain people who are demon-possessed, and that those demons, when they encounter Jesus, they recognize Jesus for who He is. This has come up a few times as we've talked about demon possession in the past. It will come up a few more times in the future. It's an amazing thing really to think about the fact that you might have these spiritual beings, and while Jesus' real identity is not immediately seen by everyone, it is seen by them. They know exactly who Jesus is the people who came for healings, they came regardless of who Jesus was, they just wanted the healings. But the mouthy demons, those demons who could not help but say who Jesus was, well, they knew exactly how to call him, what to say about him. But don't be confused, we've talked about this before. They're not saying it because they want to tell the truth or because they want to be helpful, but instead because they want to be disruptive. These demons are destructive and damaging and want to be disruptive. So their desire in calling him the Son of God is to disrupt the timing of Jesus. Remember, as we talked about it with the disobedient leper in a previous episode, that Jesus had a timing of His revelation. He is revealing Himself progressively and in His wisdom at the right time. This shouldn't be a surprise to you, that's how the whole Bible has worked over time. God has progressively revealed Himself to His people because in His wisdom He knows the best and the right way. Do you know exactly when Jesus reveals Himself? he reveals himself at the very end of his life here on earth. So, when he fully reveals himself, that is when they murder him. They use legal means, but it is legal murder. That is precisely what it is. So Jesus reveals himself, and that provokes the authorities and the crowds and the religious leaders then to have him turned over and crucified. Jesus knew exactly what would happen. Remember, he tells the leper not to reveal him, and the result of it would be people would crush him, begging for healings, and lo and behold, what do we find here? Crowds crushing just to be healed, not because of who he is. But that's not the primary purpose of Jesus here on earth. He is here to save us from our sins, from both its punishment, but also its power. The penalty and the power of sin. So, God's timing is the right timing. He rebukes them because He has a specific time in which He plans to be revealed. You will see this as we go through the book of Mark, that He will be revealed at the right time. Thirdly, God chooses His people. God chooses His people. Notice that many, many, many people showed up, right? It's a huge crowd and they're so large that it's quite likely that they could have crushed Jesus and crushed His disciples. He actually pre-arranged a method of escape if they were to grow so many that they crushed Him. It is from that larger group that we see that He selects His disciples. So from that larger group, a huge group, he doesn't look across and say, yes, you guys are all basically the same, but actually he selects a smaller unit of people that he calls as his apostles from the whole crowd, the great crowd that came to him. So, the purpose of this is, as he appoints them, he is actually going to give them out his authority to be with him, to be sent out by him, and to cast out demons. He names them as his, and yes, that even includes Judas Iscariot. Now, if you think about it, he's the one who chooses, isn't he? Everybody shows up, but He chooses. And in His wisdom, He chooses exactly the right people. He chooses disciples that I think the world would not choose to change the world. And if you were to think about who would I pick who's going to be the most influential, have the most power, I think most people would go to the top, wouldn't they? I think they would say, well, who's the president? Who's the king? Who's the prime minister? Who's the billionaire? Who's the tech mogul? They would name lots of people that they thought would be the most powerful. You would not pick these 12 men. I'm just going to name a few. Andrew, that first disciple, which I think you could catch a previous episode that gets into more detail, he started out by being the disciple of another man. He was a disciple of John the Baptist before he was a disciple of Jesus, and he doesn't immediately see Jesus exactly for who he is. It has to be revealed to him by his own leader, his own teacher, John the Baptist. Had he not been directed to Jesus by someone else, he never would have gone himself. Simon Peter, although he often says and does the right thing, is often very self-assured at precisely the wrong times. Remember, he actually disagrees with Jesus sometimes, he denies things that Jesus said to him, he says they're not true, and the more important denial is that at the end he denies Jesus and knowledge of Jesus three times publicly. His job is proclamation. He was sent out to proclaim, and then in Jesus's darkest moment, rather than defending Jesus, he denies even knowing him. This is not the person you would think of as the best possible leader. James and John both mentioned in this passage. Often again they say good and right things, but they also often are self-serving. One time they ask for fire to be brought down on others, they ask if they can excommunicate a group who are doing miracles in Jesus' name, who didn't come through their processes, and they ask for more honor, more power. They ask to be on the right hand and the left hand of Jesus in Kingdom Come, and these are all self-serving things for which they were rebuked. James and John are thinking sometimes first and foremost of themselves and not thinking of what Jesus is or who he would want them to be. Thomas, who, yeah for sure, if you listen to my episode on Thomas, you'll find is much better than he is often reputed to be. But nevertheless, we see that Thomas often doesn't really fully get what's going on. He says so himself to Jesus. At the end of John, he says, Jesus, we don't know what you're saying. We don't know how to get there. please explain it to us." Because Jesus said, you know the way. He said, Lord, we don't know the way. He hears the testimony of his fellow disciples of a returned Jesus, and he says, I'm going to have to see that for myself. In fact, he says, I'm going to have to touch that for myself. Jesus says, hey, come, I'm going to go to go see the burial of my friend. And Thomas says, all right, well, if he's insisting on going, let's go and die with him. Courage, for sure, but not exactly what Jesus said was going to happen, certainly not full of faith. One of the most surprising ones to me, we talked about Levi, sometimes called Matthew, and you probably know, based on my previous episode, he was a tax collector. That is, he worked for who were considered the bad guys of his day, and he worked in bad ways. He was a collaborator, if you will. One of the members that we find here is Simon the Zealot, and to be a zealot in those days was to be a member of a political insurrectionist movement. They actually did robberies and assassinations, and they hated collaborators. They hated people like Matthew, like Levi. They were natural enemies. One worked, you might say, for a corrupt government, and the other one was attacking a corrupt government, even violently, passionately. Jesus brings these two people who are enemies into His inner circle to be His disciples, to follow Him and to work with Him. And of course, you have Judas Iscariot. Judas Iscariot is a liar, he's a traitor, he's a thief. and yet Jesus brings him knowingly into his inner circle, always for his own purposes. In the end, Judas can only fulfill what God has set about, and yet if you understood who Judas was, you would never bring him into your fold. These disciples, these are not the people that men would choose for themselves to change the world. And yet Jesus does precisely that. And the way he does it is because the power was never in the men themselves. The power was never in the men themselves. If you look at them, you can see clearly for yourselves that they are not worthy. They are not worthy of the honor they were given. But in Christ Jesus, they were empowered to do things they otherwise could not do. And Jesus uses them to change the world. There's a lesson in that for us, that it's God who chooses His people, and we, in our vanity, should not believe for a moment that we choose ourselves. He chooses us. If we have any power, it's because He's given it to us. If we have any authority, it's because the authority is all His, and He is the one who chooses His people. Finally, we see in this that Christ is sovereign. That word sovereign means that he is the one who, like a king, rules over. Look at all the people who are lined up against him. He has the Herodians who are aligned with the political power where he finds himself, the Pharisees, a very popular religious movement around him. They hate his guts and they want to destroy him. There's a crushing crowd, so the people who are there to see you are actually a big danger to you. They might trample you, might crush you. You have demons, these incredibly powerful spiritual beings who are right there, ready to harm you. and they're certainly not for you, they're against you in every way, and they have incredible power. And you have Judas Iscariot, you have the betrayer in your inner circle with you, one who would to your face say that he wants to do good to the poor, and behind your back he's stealing the money himself. To your face he is saying and doing things that appear to be with you, but behind your back he's conspiring with your enemies for your arrest and ultimately they will kill you. These are massive, huge dangers, aren't they? And yet Christ overcomes. Christ and Christ's mission cannot be silenced and cannot be stopped. that all of the enemies of the world who align themselves against Jesus Christ, every single one of them will fail. If you look at the world around you, you might despair. You might look and say, my neighbor is not a Christian, my church is not faithful, my country is not as Christian as it says it is, I see the push of these other religions, other movements, and I'm so very, very concerned. But let me tell you something, Christ overcomes the world. None can overpower Him. Remember, when the powers of the world were aligned against him, when the people around him abandoned him, when he suffered and died, even death itself could not overcome his purposes. His kingdom will never end. So that when you pray, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, know this for sure, We can see in Christ that He has the victory. In fact, He has secured it with His life, with His death, with His resurrection, so that you and I may be sure that kingdoms come and go, but our Christ and His kingdom is forever. He is sovereign. I hope you are so encouraged by this. You can love the Lord and the things of the Lord, knowing full well that He has overcome. You've been listening to the Vice Chancellor's Hour, a ministry of Radio ABC 993 FM, on the campus of African Bible University. We hope this has been beneficial to your Christian walk and understanding. If it has, you can support the ministry of Radio ABC by going to AfricanBibleColleges.com and clicking on the donate button. Don't forget to let them know it's going to the Uganda station. If you have questions about this or any other episode, please feel free to contact us at vchourofficial at gmail.com. We're also available through Instagram and Twitter as vchourofficial. We may answer your question on a future episode. Until next time, may the peace of God and the fellowship of God's people encourage your hearts.