And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So to start, I want us to think about a global superstar. Maybe you have a particular artist in mind as I was thinking through this. I was thinking of different people throughout history. There's Elvis. Today is maybe Taylor Swift's most popular artist out there. But I want you to think about there's a lot of people that have to do with these people. As big as they are, people relate to them in so many different ways. You have the fans, the crowd that comes to their concerts, all their things, they buy all their tickets, they buy their merch, they stream every song, they're there every step of the way. But the relationship is transactional, right? They will spend their money as long as they're getting something in return. They only support the artist as long as the artist delivers a good product. And we've seen it before, but as soon as that artist releases maybe one bad album or tweets one controversial thing, everybody's ready to cancel them and move on to the next person. So you have the fans. And then the second group you have is the management or maybe the PR team. And this group is responsible to control the artist's image. So if they're doing an interview, they'll look at all the interview questions that are being asked. They'll make sure the artist has good responses to these to make them look good. And as much as they love the person, they love the brand more and what they're getting out of it. And then finally, the third group you have are the bandmates or the collaborators, the true ride or die people that are with them every step of the way. And they're not just there for the show. They're not there to manage the artists. They're there on the late nights, the early mornings, every step of the way. The relationship is more than just transactional. It's not about control. It's purely relational. Their desire primarily is to be with the artists, to help them. They're a partner. So if you were with us last week, we're continuing in Mark chapter three, and the heat is really turning up. Jesus just healed a man on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees were extremely offended by that, and now they're plotting his downfall. So the pressure is on. So we tend to think of Jesus as this safe, gentle figure, right? And at times he is. He welcomes children. He heals the sick and the needy. He's there for those who need him. But he's also dangerous. He causes a lot of turmoil and confusion in the society because he disrupts the status quo. He is an untamable force. The crisis Jesus creates forces all the people that are gathering around him to pick which side of the ropes they're actually going to be on. So you have the crowd. We'll see three different groups in this story today. You have the crowd who's there to consume him. They're there for the transaction. What can they get from Jesus? The second group you have are the disciples. The disciples are different from the crowd because they're called apart to be with him, like the relational band members. And then you have the family, which surprisingly are the ones who try to control him, like the management or PR team. So as we walk through these three scenes, the text is going to ask us a hard question. And the question isn't just, do you believe in Jesus? The question is, which of these three groups are you actually in? The crisis Jesus creates forces a decision. And we're going to start by looking at the largest group, which most of us have probably been a part of at some point in our life, the crowd. We'll call them the consumers. So now look at me in Mark chapter 3, starting in verse 7. Mark chapter 3, verses 7 through 12. Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee, and Judea, and Jerusalem, and Edomaea, 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. So there's this great mass of people. If you just look at the geography listed there, Jews from Jerusalem, there's Gentiles from Tyre and Sidon. It didn't matter who you were, you wanted to get a glimpse of what was happening with this Jesus guy. But notice the aggression. Verse 9 tells us that Jesus asked his disciples to get a boat ready unless they would crush him. And then verse 10 says they pressed around him. And the word here is so intense, it implies physical besieging. Why? To touch him. They knew that if they could just touch him, they could be healed. And that's ultimately what they were after. So this scene, this mass of people just crowding around Jesus, reminds me less of a church service and more of Black Friday. So maybe you've been a part of it yourself, or you've probably seen videos online. But everybody lines up at the doors. As soon as the place opens, everybody's budding their way just to get in, to get to the product first. They don't have a concern about the people around them. Their mind is set on one thing. So ask yourself, do these shoppers, do they care about the people who are working that night? Are they trying to figure out whether the manager's doing all right, if they need anything? Trying to figure out his hopes and dreams? Do they want a relationship with him? No, right? They want that 70% off TV. And once they get it, they're out of there. And they just hope they can get it before the person next to them does. So this is the consumer mindset. The crowd here didn't want Jesus. They wanted what Jesus could do for them. They viewed him as a battery. If they could just get a charge of his power, all their problems would be fixed. Now, I want to be clear. Jesus does invite us to himself. He wants to hear our burdens. He wants to hear our wants and desires. So what's the difference? There's a fine line between dependence and exploitation. The danger is when the what becomes more important than the who. Jesus is offering them healing, he's offering him, all these people different things, but what Jesus is actually offering that's the best thing is himself. So when we come to God for the healing, or the job, or the spouse, and that thing becomes more important than Jesus himself, that actually becomes our savior, and Jesus just becomes the delivery truck. The tragedy of the consumer is you might get the gift, but you miss the giver. So notice verse 11. Even the demons that are there recognize Jesus' true identity. They scream out to him, you are the son of God. But their theology is a terror-filled acknowledgment of his power, not love. They know who he is, but they don't want a relationship with him. They're there to hinder his ministry. So Jesus silences them, because the demons aren't the ones that Jesus wants proclaiming who he is. He's doing that himself. The crowd wanted a transaction. They pressed in so hard, the text says, they nearly crushed Jesus. But the reality is Jesus doesn't take advantage of the crowd. He doesn't start asking for money or offerings so that he can heal them. He doesn't ask for a throne or fame or fortune, which I'm sure they would have given to him. Instead, he actually moves away from the crowd and goes to a mountain where he calls a different kind of follower, a disciple. And that's the group we're going to look at next, the disciple, the called. So picking up in verse 13 of Mark chapter three, it says, and he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired and they came to him. He appointed 12 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. So notice the shift in geography. He goes from the sea with this mass of people up to a mountain where only those whom he called can follow. So in the Bible, there's not many times where somebody goes up to a mountain. This is strategic here. It's not an accident. So maybe if I asked you what other deliverer in the Bible goes up to a mountain on behalf of the people, who might you think of? Yeah, Moses. You might think of Moses going up on Mount Sinai. So Moses went up to a mountain to meet with God. And Moses was a great prophet and leader of Israel at that time. He designated 12 different tribes of Israel. And now, here in Mark, you have Jesus going up to a mountain, choosing 12 disciples who would become apostles. Jesus is showing that he is a new and better Moses, a great prophet, the best prophet ever. Because where Moses established an old covenant community, under the law, Jesus is instituting and forming a new covenant community. So the old religious system wasn't enough. He's instituting a new family of God based on himself and his own sacrifice. So notice this shift in access. The crowd is forcing their way in just to touch Jesus, but Jesus is calling out the disciples. He's inviting them to be with him. And if you look at verse 14, I want to pull out from that a definition of disciple. So why did Jesus call them to himself? There's two things to point out in verse 14. The first, the starting point, is that they might be with him. Jesus called the disciples to himself so that they might be with him. And then the second thing is so that he might send them out. And we usually focus on the second part. When we talk about what it means to be a disciple, we talk about the doing, the action, the preaching, casting out demons. We think discipleship is just about doing stuff for God. But Jesus says the primary job of a disciple is proximity to him. The crowd wants the product, the disciple wants the person. Because the reality is you can't be set out as a disciple unless you first spent time with the master, the person, the one who is doing the sending. So Jesus calls these disciples to himself so that he can first spend time with them, to teach them so that they can learn his ways. Mark would go on to list all these disciples here. He lists Simon, Peter, James, John, Matthew, the tax collector, Simon, the zealot, even Judas, the betrayer, the all-star team of men at the time. Just kidding. Not the all-star team of men. This is a ragtag team, not who you and I would choose to lead Jesus's call to the whole world. They're a mess. It's fishermen, people who work for the government, revolutionaries. They had nothing in common. They weren't the smartest or the most religious of all. So what made them disciples? The reality is what made them a disciple is that they left the crowd to be with Jesus. Jesus invited them and they said, yes, they accepted the call. What the disciples didn't fully realize is Jesus's mission and time on earth was short. He chose this ragtag team, these undeserving men to be with him so that they could continue his ministry after he was gone. His mission was to make them an example to you and I and to the whole world because he doesn't choose the most qualified. He chooses the ones who know they desperately need a savior. And let's be honest, even after these 12 men were called by God and they would choose to follow him, they would say yes, they weren't perfect. He didn't make them into these perfect individuals who followed everything he said. I mean, just think about it. There's three different groups, right? The consumers, the followers, the controllers, but even his own disciples would go back and try to consume, to try to get things from him. If you think of James and John arguing over who's the greatest and who would get the best throne in the kingdom of heaven, they're consuming. You might think of Peter when Jesus explains that he's going to go on and have to die on a cross. Peter rebukes him. He tries to control him. The point is not that they were instantly made perfect, but that their trajectory had changed. They didn't immediately start obeying all God's commands perfectly, but they left the crowd and kept coming back to the mountain, choosing to prioritize the relationship with God. over all else. And this is the ultimate challenge for us. Jesus is not starting by asking us to do more for God. The starting place is by being with God. Our entire Christian life pivots on this. Are we consumers focused on the product or disciples who are focused on the person? Our final scene is perhaps the most shocking. Jesus creates this new radical community and instead of his family supporting him and being right by his side, they try to shut him down. So we'll look at this last group, the controllers. So picking back up in verse 20 through 21. Then he, Jesus, went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, he is out of his mind. So Jesus goes back from the mountain home, probably to Peter's house in Capernaum. And you might think, well, they just took this hike up and down the mountain. He's been doing all this hard work of ministry. These crowds are all around him. He needs a break. He's going back to rest to get some food. But little did he know, maybe they're getting ready to sit down and eat together. And all of a sudden, the crowd comes barging in again, and the disciples can't even eat their meal. They're cut short. And what's the family's response? Are they excited? Oh, look at all these people coming to see Jesus. Oh, good for you, Jesus. You're really starting a big movement here in Jerusalem. No, the text says they went out to seize him. And that's the same word that's used for arrest in other places. Why did they do this? They said he's out of his mind. Jesus's family had literally thought he lost it. He's gone mad. He's not sleeping. He's not eating. He's angering the most powerful people in our community. He's ruining the family reputation. They want to bring him home. They want him to go back to his old way of living. Maybe they were suggesting, Jesus, we liked you a lot better when you were making tables out back. Maybe you should go back to your garage and be a carpenter again, Jesus. We miss that, Jesus. To his family, he was out of control and they needed to control him. There is a moment here of redemption that I don't want us to miss. It doesn't state it here clearly in this story, but if you think about who was a part of Jesus's family here. Well, without a doubt, his own brother, James, was there. And this James here, who's trying to seize his own brother because he thinks he's lost it, would later go on to write an entire letter in the New Testament, the book of James. In this very first verse of the book of James, he identifies himself not as the brother of Jesus from Nazareth, but as James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. This moment of redemption for James is powerful. Just think of what it would take for a sibling to go from thinking their siblings out of their mind and crazy and trying to control them to recognizing this is the Lord over all creation. If that doesn't scream that Jesus is the one true God, I don't know what does. The controller became the servant. The family member who thought Jesus had lost his mind would eventually come to call him Lord and worship him. So going back to this family, the controllers, right? I think that this is actually the group that we probably go back and identify with the most. We aren't necessarily a hostile Pharisee who's trying to destroy Jesus, but we are like the anxious family. And we invite Jesus into the car of our lives. We give him over the keys, but at times we try to take those keys back. We try to take back control over our lives. So think about teaching a teenager to drive. These might be stories of horror for some of you or fond memories for some. Unless you're under 16, you probably have some experience. For me, it's on the side where I remember my mom teaching me to drive and every time I would come to a stop, her hand would go up against the dashboard preparing for impact. I thought we were perfectly fine. So you get in the car. You get in the passenger seat. You grab the handle with your right hand. Maybe if you have an emergency brake, you grab that ready to pull it with your left. And if you don't have an emergency brake near you, you have one of those emergency brakes, imaginary emergency brakes at your feet that you push down every time you want them to stop. So things might start out fine if your child's going everywhere you expect them to go. If they're going the speed limit, it's all good. But as soon as they go a little too fast or maybe they start getting a little shaky with the wheel, it's like, whoa, slow down, what are you doing? You gotta grab the wheel or take control and pull that emergency brake or that panic hand goes up. And I think we often treat Jesus this way. We invite him into the car and we say, Jesus, you are Lord, but we keep one hand on the emergency brake. So Jesus calls us to love our enemies, right? But we say, well, let's be realistic, Lord. You don't know what this person's done to me. They don't deserve my forgiveness. And we pull that emergency brake. Or Jesus calls us to give generously with all that we have. But it's easy for us to think, well, there's people with a lot more to give than me. I'll give later down the road when I actually have enough to give. We grab the wheel. Or Jesus calls us to share our faith with a coworker. And we say, I don't want to put my job on the line or I don't want to look like a fanatic. And that panic hand goes up. So like Jesus's very own family, the ones who should have been on the inside, but in reality are looking in as outsiders trying to control. Like his family, we want a safe Jesus. We want a comfortable Jesus that blesses our meals, who helps us accomplish all of our hopes and dreams, who aligns perfectly with our political party and doesn't embarrass us in front of our friends. But Mark 3 is telling us you cannot tame Jesus. The family tried to tame him and the crowd tried to use him, but Jesus is untameable. He doesn't fit into our boxes that we want him to. And as we close today, the text forces us to decide which of these groups are we going to be on? Which of these groups are we actually in? What will we do with this radical, untamable king? It's time to render a verdict. So we have three groups in the story we read today. Last week, we read about the Pharisees. So we have these hostile leaders saying, Jesus is a threat. He needs to be stopped. He needs to be destroyed. The crowd says he's useful. He needs to be consumed. The disciples who say he is Lord and he needs to be followed. And lastly, we have the family saying he's crazy. He needs to be managed or controlled. And if Jesus is just a man, these groups, the Pharisees and the family are right. He has lost it. He is out of control. But if he's the son of God, then he has every right to drive the car and have control over our lives. And he isn't out of his mind. He's the only one who sees reality clearly. And that's why he's not so concerned about the next meal he's going to eat or where he's going to lay his head. So this is where the story pivots. How do you move from being a consumer and just a part of the crowd trying to get something from Jesus or from being a part of the family who tries to control Jesus? How do you move from one of those groups to being a disciple? And I want to say here, many of us have already made this decision. We've said, Jesus, you are Lord. I am a disciple. But like I said before, that doesn't set us on this perfect way of life. It sets us on the right trajectory, but we often fall back into these other ways of living. We take back the keys. We try to control. We try to consume. We go to Jesus just for what we want. So we still have to move back into the disciple category. But we can't just try harder to follow the rules. We can't just start doing more. The reason that Jesus has the right to be Lord of our lives and why we need to remind ourselves of these things is because of all that he did for us, because of who he did, for who he is and his character. That is why Jesus is worthy to be Lord over our lives, why he's worthy to have control. So the one that invites you into his presence is the same one who would later go on to lay down his life for you and me. And this is what actually opened the door for us all to even have a relationship with him. A relationship with the Father who created all things. What a miraculous thing to accomplish. And this is the primary goal. Jesus doesn't want to just give us a list of do's and don'ts. Here's how you live. But he gave us an unconditional promise that he will never leave us or forsake us. And our job, our primary job, It's just a love and to trust Him and all those other things will follow suit. The same Jesus who was too dangerous for the Pharisees and too radical for the family is the one who would give himself up and be tamed by the cross. He submitted to death willingly. The death he didn't deserve so that you and I could be forgiven. The ones who try to consume him, the ones who try to control him. He still loved us enough to go on and die for us. He gave up his life. But three days later, he rose in power, showing that he is fully God, that he is victory over death, declaring that the price has been paid for your sin. And the call to let him drive the car is the call to trust in his sacrifice as our only hope for salvation. That is the gospel, my friends. My question for us today, for you and I, is can we take our hand off the emergency brake? It's a simple question, but it's extremely hard to live that out. But the reality is, it's tiring. It's tiring just to be a part of the crowd, to only go to God for what we want, only expecting him to deliver the product. There's so much more to life than that. And are you tired of being like the family and just trying to keep control of everything going on in your life, trying to plug every hole that opens up? The invitation today is the same as the one given in verse 13. He's calling you up to the mountain. He's calling you to simply be with him, to trust him, to let him be the Lord, not just in name, but actually over your life. So this all sounds great, to stop all the doing, to stop striving, to serve all the time and actually focus on him. But what does that actually look like? How do you move from just the doing and the serving to prioritizing being with God today? I mean, we don't have Jesus physically present with us. So this is hard for us. We have to remind ourselves of these things. But what actually grows and helps our relationship with God is prioritizing him and the proximity to him. So when you already know him, what does it look like to move from a transactional Christianity to a relational one? I'm going to give you three things, just practical steps that we can take to actually move from these to focus on the being, not just the doing. The first thing is a habit of attention, not just activity. So attention, not activity. We don't just draw closer to God by adding more spiritual tasks to our to-do list. There's endless things for you to do, to serve. There's always more serving that we could do. But ultimately, serving more isn't what draws us closer to God. But prioritizing quiet time, simply to be with the master. This could be 15 minutes of the beginning of your day, just dedicated time of prayer. You could open your Bible up and read a chapter, maybe picking up right where we're at in Mark 3. This is not just to check something off a box, but because you genuinely desire the person. We can't serve from the right place if we haven't first spent time with the person calling us to serve. It's not just about getting more information, it's about being in the presence of God. That's the first. The second thing, give up control in the day to day. Relinquish control over the mundane parts of your life. Because the reality is, the mountaintop experiences are few and far between. The everyday part of life is where we need to learn what it actually means to spend time with Jesus. I want to encourage you when you have the setbacks in life, those financial stresses, a job change, a difficult relationship, instead of panicking and immediately grabbing the wheel and trying to take control of the situation, just rest in the knowledge that the best driver is in control. And just pray, God, what are you trying to show me through this situation? Before I act, before I do anything, I just want to see you, God, in this. Where are you, God? Show me yourself. The third thing is allowing him to define your value and mission. So rather than living a life trying to show other people how good you are or trying to prove yourself or your own image, you're letting God define your value and your mission. So allow God to define your value and mission. So when you stop trying to manage your own brand, your own reputation, maybe for your friends, your co-workers, your family, and you focus on the person of Christ, it's actually freeing. It allows you to live in a way that's not hindered by what others think of you, but live in a way that wants to be with your Savior and wants to please your Father. That is the radical, untamable life that God has called you to live. It's the example that he set for us. Jesus' only desire was to please the Father. And those who followed him and saw that and honored that were the ones who actually understood the task. So we're not being encouraged just to try harder to be perfect. We're being encouraged to draw closer to the one who is perfect for us. The power for a surrendered life comes in our proximity to the King. Let us speak to the Father now.