All right, Mark 3, 7. Well, back up to verse 6. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. When they heard all He was doing, many people came to Him from Judea, Jerusalem, Edomia, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon. Because of the crowd, He told His disciples to have a small boat ready for Him, to keep the people from crowding Him. For He had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch Him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, You are the Son of God! But He gave them strict orders not to tell who He was. Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to Him those He wanted, and they came to Him. He appointed twelve, designating them apostles." So tonight we begin a whole new section of Mark. Last section with the five conflict encounters ended at verse 6 of chapter 3 where the Pharisees decided to kill Jesus. Where one paragraph into chapter 3 and the Jewish authorities have already decided Jesus needs to be dead, they have completely, decisively rejected Jesus. So in that section that we just finished, Chapter 2 and the first paragraph, Chapter 3, Mark described those five run-ins with the authorities that got progressively worse. It's kind of like, look, just reading that little section of Mark is like time-lapse photography. You know, where you look at a series of pictures and you can just see what happens over a period of time. And you can see the progress of the scribes and Pharisees rejecting Jesus. And it starts at the beginning of chapter 2, where it's just a thought, and then it climaxes in 3.6, where the Pharisees go out of the synagogue in a rage, and just hook up with the Herodians trying to figure out how to kill Jesus. And so Jesus gets out of Dodge. He leaves. Verse 7, Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the lake. He knew that they were planning on killing Him, according to Matthew. It's not time yet for Him to die, and so He's not going to wait around for Herod's forces to come back to that synagogue, show up and arrest Him. He leaves the synagogue, leaves town, and once again goes back to the shores of the Sea of Galilee. So once again we see this pattern. where Jesus does something big in a town that attracts attention and as a result of the response he has to leave town. Now when Jesus gets out to the lake, Mark gives another one of these big picture summaries of Jesus' ministry. Mark does that. He'll describe several specific events He'll show up close a few specific trees in the forest, and then he'll back off and show us, once again, the whole forest, the picture of Jesus' ministry. And of the various summaries that you find in Mark, this is the longest one. This is the most detailed. And at first glance, it doesn't seem like anything. I was almost tempted to kind of skim over it and move on to the next section because it just sounds exactly like the other summaries that He's given us. Jesus goes to the lake and large crowds come to Him. We've seen that before. He heals all the sick. We've seen that before. He orders the demons to be silent. We've seen that. So it seems like nothing new here, just a repetition. But if we look a little more closely, we're going to see If we look a little more closely, we're going to see that Mark is actually adding a whole new dimension and a whole other level of complexity to the unfolding story of what Jesus came to do and who He was. Verse 7 begins this new section, and so far the focus has been on Jesus and His power who Jesus is, His awesome power, His absolute authority, His deep compassion, and His mission to heal the spiritually sick, to bring forgiveness of sins. And the more Jesus revealed who He was, the more the Jewish authorities rejected Him. And that rejection sets up this next section of Mark. So now that they've rejected Him, we're ready for this next section. In order for the next section of Mark to make sense, you have to understand the nature of that rejection because it's in this next section that Jesus is going to start revealing this kingdom that He's been preaching all along. Remember in chapter 1 He says that's what Jesus did, He went around preaching the kingdom? It's the first thing we learn about His ministry, that's the summary. And now we're going to see how that's going to unfold. When the Messiah finally arrives to restore the kingdom The last thing that you would expect would be for the people to reject Him. Nobody would have seen that coming unless they really understood Isaiah 53. They wouldn't have thought that the Messiah would arrive, restore the kingdom, and all the people would reject Him. How can Jesus have a kingdom if the subjects of that kingdom are rejecting Him as King? How does that work? And the answer to that question is what's going to start unfolding in this passage. We're going to learn about the kingdom And the fact that this section is about the Kingdom was already hinted at, I think, in this last miracle that we just saw last week with the withered hand. Remember, Jesus' miracles are not random acts of power. They're designed for a purpose. Each one is specifically designed to teach us something. For example, the cleansing of the leper, that taught us about spiritual cleansing, it was a picture. What's the significance of healing a withered hand? Why is that special? I mean, the leprosy one is kind of obvious. Why the withered hand? Is there any other place in the Bible where somebody has a withered hand? Yeah, one. There's one other place where someone has a withered hand. And in that place, in that passage, the man's hand was also miraculously healed. But not like Jesus did it. Jesus often does this. He will style a miracle after some famous Old Testament miracle, but then He'll beat it. He'll do it better. He does that again and again. A much better, more greater, more powerful way than the miracle workers of the Old Testament to show that He's the greatest miracle worker. In this case, the Old Testament prophet didn't have the power to heal. He just prayed and asked God to heal the guy, and God answered the prayer. Jesus doesn't have to do that at all. He just, with an act of His will, heals the guy. But what's really interesting is when that other withered hand incident happened. That's important. It happened at a moment in Old Testament history that's very, very significant with regard to the kingdom, and I'll tell you when that was in just a second. But first, let's look at what's different about this summary. I told you the summary starting in verse 7 sounds just like the other ones, but it's actually adding something new. Let's look at what's new. So far in Mark, we've seen that the news about Jesus spread quickly throughout Galilee, right? When He did the miracles in Capernaum, the news about Him spread quickly throughout Galilee. Now look what happens, verse 7, "...Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. And when they heard all He was doing, many people came to Him from Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon." That's a huge area. Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, those first three, that's the entire nation of Israel right there. The rest of those places are outside of Israel's borders surrounding the country. So Tyre and Sidon is about 50 miles north to the north in Phoenicia. Idumea is about 120 miles south across the southern border of Israel. These are Gentile nations surrounding Israel, and they're all places that have large Jewish populations. There are some other Gentile nations in the vicinity, too, but they're not mentioned, and they don't have a lot of Jews. But these are the ones that have a lot of Jews. So there are Gentile nations surrounding Israel that have lots of Jews. So the picture here is of a mass pilgrimage coming from throughout Israel and surrounding countries converging on one spot in Israel, a stark kind of a contrast with right at the moment when the Pharisees are going out to kill Jesus, at that very moment, masses of broken humanity are flocking to Jesus for healing and restoration and life. And if you know Old Testament prophecy, then this mass migration inward is a striking image. Because ever since the Jews were scattered when God judged Israel in the Old Testament with the exile, even before that actually, God has been promising that one day He would regather all of His people again in the land. from all the nations. That promise is everywhere in the prophet. It is one of the most often repeated promises about the end times. I mean, that is like, for us, it's the rapture. That's basically their rapture. I mean, God said, I'm going to regather everybody. He's this great in-gathering of Jews who had been scattered among the nations, followed by the Messianic banquet. So once he gets them all together, then there's going to be the big Messianic banquet. Isaiah 43.5 is just one example. "'Do not be afraid, for I am with you. "'I will bring your children from the east "'and gather you from the west. "'And I will say to the north, "'Give them up, and to the south, "'Do not hold them back. "'Bring my sons from afar "'and my daughters from the ends of the earth, "'everyone who is called by my name, "'who I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.'" So, God is going to regather all his people from all the points of the compass. Now, go back to our passage in verse 7, Mark 3, 7, Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, that's Israel, Edomia, that's south, the regions across the Jordan, that's east, Tyre and Sidon, that's north. So it looks like the Isaiah thing. Everyone's coming in from all the directions. And Isaiah said when that happens, there will be, it'll be a time of mass healings. Isaiah 35, five, says there will, then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert and the ransom to the Lord will return. That's the promise. That's what everyone's been looking forward to all these centuries. And now it looks like it's happening, right? Jesus is performing mass healings, just like it's described there, unlike any kind of healings or miracles that's ever been seen before. People are streaming to Him from everywhere, from all points of the compass, just like Isaiah said, this looks like this is it. The big, great, in-gathering of God's people in the last days of the Messiah. And that's not even all. One of the key features of that in-gathering is the reunification of the divided Kingdom of Israel. So the Kingdom will be unified. The Kingdom of Israel started out unified, and it stayed unified under three kings. First Saul, then David, then King Solomon. And under those three, it was one nation. And then after Solomon died, the Kingdom was ripped in half. It was split. It's like the first church split, except it was a Kingdom split. The king that took over after Solomon was really bad. He was a real mean, oppressive king, and he alienated the people from the north, and so the ten northern tribes rebelled against the house of David and broke off and went and just started their own country with their own king, a guy by the name of Jeroboam. But there's a problem. The problem is there's only one temple, and it's in the south. It's in Jerusalem, right? Jeroboam's advisors say, this isn't going to work because our people are going to, once a year for Passover and everything, they're going to go down for all the festivals, they're going to go down to that temple and they're going to eventually be won over and they're going to rejoin the south. And Jeroboam says, oh no problem, we'll just start our own worship system. Forget the temple, we'll just set up..." And so he set up two golden calves at the two ends of his territory, for convenience, and he set up shrines, and he told the people, you don't have to go down to Jerusalem anymore, you can just offer sacrifices here in the north, and he came up with his own festival, and created his own priesthood, and the whole works. Just made up his own system. Well, as you can imagine, that aroused God's anger, and so God sent a prophet up there. And the prophet comes up and says to Jeroboam, God's going to smash those altars. He just points at the altars and says, God's going to smash that thing and you're going to be judged. And Jeroboam gets mad and he points to the prophet and he says to his guards, arrest him! And guess what happened? The hand that he uses to point at that guy shrivels up. And so it's instantly withered. at which point he asks the prophet to pray for him. It's like, I know I just tried to arrest you, but could we just let bygones be bygones and maybe you could pray for me? And he does, he prays, and then God miraculously heals Jeroboam's hand. That is the only other place in the Bible where there's a withered hand. And it's the same word for withered in the Greek translation that we have here in Mark 3. The only other place where there's a withered hand and it's healed is at the moment of the divided kingdom. So Jesus is calling that to mind. In Ezekiel 37, God promised that one day He would reunite the kingdom under a single king. First part of that chapter is the in-gathering, it's the dry bones. Israel's like a bunch of dead, dry bones, and He's going to get them back to life. And then He has this other image. He says, I'm going to take the two, northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, and He tells the prophet, get two sticks and write northern kingdom, southern kingdom, and put them in, and then join them together in your hand as one. Ezekiel 37, 17, then join them together into one stick so that they will become one in your hand. And when your countrymen ask you, won't you tell us what you mean by this? And verse 21, and say to them, this is what sovereign Yahweh says. I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I'll gather them back from all around and bring them back into their own land and will make them one nation. So that's the ingathering and the reunification of the kingdom. will make them into one nation, there will be one king over them, and they will never again be divided into two nations or divided into two kingdoms. My servant David will be king over them, and they will have one shepherd." Talking about David's descendant. Obviously David's been dead for a long time, by Ezekiel's time. He's talking about David's descendant, the great son of David, the Messiah. So you can see how this is all connected. The reunification of the kingdom and the ingathering of the people from the nations is all going to happen when the Messiah comes and does all this flurry of healing miracles and sets up His kingdom. Here's how the prophet Amos described it, Amos 9.8. Surely the eyes of sovereign Yahweh are on the sinful kingdom. I will destroy it from the face of the earth. Yet I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob, declares Yahweh. In that day I will restore David's fallen tent. So the monarchy in Israel had fallen. It was like a tent that had been knocked down. And the house of David had collapsed. And God says, I'm going to restore that one day. So in that day, I'll restore David's fallen tent, I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be, so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name, declares Yahweh. So not only will he regather all the people and restore David's throne and reunite all 12 tribes of Israel under one king, but he mentions the other nations, especially Edom. Specifically, he mentions Edom. is going to be part of this. So then along comes, that's the promise everyone's looking for, along comes Jesus, descendant of David, heals the guy's withered hand. By doing that he replicates the same miracle that happened at the division of the kingdom. So he's calling attention to that. Then immediately after that, Mark gives us this snapshot of Jews just flowing in from everywhere, from all points of the compass, and streaming to Jesus from surrounding nations. And the nation that Amos specifically mentions, Edom, you know what the name of that at Jesus' time is? Idumea. So that's Edom. And that's one of the places, Mark says, they're coming from Idumea. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time believing that all of that is a coincidence. I believe the Holy Spirit is showing that Jesus, the point of this summary is to show us that Jesus is the one who's going to reunify the kingdom and restore Israel. Because He's been proclaiming all along, the Kingdom of God is near. The Kingdom of God is near. That's what He's been preaching. Now in this section of Mark, He's going to teach us what that's going to look like. And He introduces that section with healing a withered hand, where the Kingdom is broken. And calling to mind the moment when that first happened. And then this picture of the people streaming in from all nations. And it's in a context of all this mass healings by the Son of David. It's just all right there. It's all right there. One other observation. This wouldn't be the first time that the people saw people streaming in from all over and outside of Israel and everything to come to Israel. That actually happened all the time. It was a routine thing. They saw it every year at Passover. The great pilgrimage to Israel. People had to do that. They all traveled to Israel. Why? Because there's only one temple. So everyone had to go to celebrate Passover at the temple. And there's only one temple, it's in Jerusalem, so the temple was the center of Jewish religion. And so Jews had to, for the festivals, they had to travel there. They all had to converge in Jerusalem. So now you have that same scene, everybody converging, except the point of convergence isn't the temple. Those people coming from Idumea in the south, they're walking up and they walk right past the temple in Jerusalem and they keep walking. In fact, the people that live right next door to the temple migrate up. They're all converging in a different spot. Where's the point of convergence? Jesus. Remember I told you at the beginning Mark writes with a brush instead of a pen? He paints pictures. He's painting a picture here of the truth that Jesus is going to later spell out explicitly, namely, He's the new temple. Jesus is the new temple. In the renewed, revived, unified kingdom, Jesus would sit on the throne and Jesus would be the temple. He would be the center of all worship. The new center. He's the new center of all true religion. If you want to meet God, if you want to worship God, if you want to serve God, if you want grace from God, instead of traveling to Jerusalem now, you travel where? To Jesus. See what Mark is showing us is this transition. We understand in the New Testament times how things are with Jesus and we know how they were in Old Testament times with the temple. He is showing us how that transition is unfolding. So, all that to say, this is looking pretty hopeful, right? I mean, if you're looking at Jesus at this moment, this is all, it's all coming together. The Messiah's gonna bring all this restoration. This looks like the end, the last day, right? The final glorious paradise that's been promised all the way through Isaiah, this looks like this is about to happen. Almost all the pieces are in place. The only thing that's left is the part where all these people that come streaming in come to the Messiah and they repent of their sins, fall on their knees and worship Him and become followers. Ezekiel 37, 21. I will take, that's the same chapter, Ezekiel 37 about the two sticks and everything, the restoration. He says, I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I'll gather them from all around and bring them back to their own land. That's the end gathering. I will make them one nation in the land. There will be one king over them and they will never again be two nations or two kingdoms. There's the reuniting of the kingdom. and they will no longer defile themselves with any of their offenses, for I will save them from all their sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them, and they'll be My people, and I'll be their God. My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd, and they will follow My laws and be careful to keep My decrees." That's the only part that's left for this whole picture to be complete. for all these people to come streaming to Jesus, repent, be cleansed, and then become followers of the Messiah and obey Him. And Jesus has been crystal clear that that's what He's here for, right? He's not here to do physical healings. He's here for spiritual healings. He's made that clear. John first prepared the way by calling people to a baptism of what? Repentance, for the forgiveness of sins. Then Jesus arrived and He preached the kingdom and He said, repent, because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then he starts calling people to believe and to follow him. And then he cleanses a leper as a picture of spiritual cleansing. This is what he's here for. And then he forgives the paralytic's sins. Instead of healing him, he forgives him because that's what he's here for. And then he goes and he forgives Levi, this tax collector. And then he goes to a big party with all kinds of tax collectors and sinners, and he's celebrating because they're coming to repentance. And then he makes a statement, I'm here as a doctor. Don't be surprised that I'm hanging around with sick people because I'm a doctor. I'm a spiritual doctor. He's just making it crystal clear in these first chapters of Mark. I'm here for spiritual restoration, forgiveness of sins. I'm here to deal with the issue of sin. So everything else is in place. The people are streaming in. The kingdom is about to be... It's all right there. The miracles are happening. The only thing that's left is for these people to repent and follow Him. So do they? Is that what happens? Do they come and seek forgiveness of sins? Hardly. Verse 9, "...because of the crowd He told His disciples to have a small boat ready for Him, to keep the people from crowding Him. For He had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch Him." There's not even a hint anywhere in here that any of these people came seeking forgiveness of sins or salvation or any kind of spiritual cleansing. It's just not even in there at all. They want one thing, physical healing. Are they worshiping Him? Yeah, word got out, not only in Galilee, before we saw it get out in Galilee, now it's gone out throughout all those other, even surrounding countries. So it says, when they heard all He was doing, then that's when they all came. So, yeah, they all heard. And are they worshipping Him? No, they're not worshipping Him. They're about to crush Him. There's nothing even a little bit reverent about their attitude in this passage. You can't see any worship at all. The NIV uses some kind of mild terms. It says, crowding and pushing forward. Those are actually, in the Greek, very strong terms. The word for, the first word can mean to crush. And several scholars believe that Jesus got to get the boat ready because he was afraid for his life. There was a lot or at least some serious physical danger. That's how strong these terms are The other term means that the crowd was falling upon him And that can be a bit, you know to be trampled. You can get you can die if you get trampled by a frenzied crowd It's a very dangerous scene here Not to mention all the demonized people, in verse 11, who knows what they're acting like. Right in the middle of all this chaos you already have, then the demons start going off. And once again, they know who Jesus is. Verse 11, "...whenever the evil spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, You are the Son of God." So they knew the truth, and as we saw before, demons can't be trusted with the truth. They're always up to no good. They're going to use that to deceive people and so on. So Jesus has to shut them up again, verse 12. He gave them strict orders, very strong language, just rebuked them hard not to tell who He was. Jesus had already done that with demons back in chapter 1, but not all the demons were there in chapter 1. Evidently they didn't all get the memo, so now He has to do it again with these demons. So the crowd, Crowds are a theme in Mark. Mark talks about crowds a lot, and they're never portrayed in a positive light. They're always a problem. They're always in the way of ministry. If your idea of Jesus' ministry is just kind of this folksy image of Jesus sitting around on a rock with a kid on his lap and a couple people standing around and a nice fuzzy lamb in the background, that is not typically what it was like for Jesus. The scene around Jesus was not one of peace. It was one of pandemonium. I mean, pandemonium would be the perfect word to describe how His ministry was. Lots of pushing and shoving. Yeah, like a mom. Jesus was not just some long-haired guru sitting around cross-legged on a rock by himself on a mountain all day. He was busy, harried, high-pressure existence. It was demanding, it was dangerous, it was relentless, it was invasive. They would follow him into his house. He'd go in to eat. He couldn't even eat because they'd follow him into his house so that he and his disciples couldn't even have a meal. Happened multiple times. So here, they're crushing him. The crowd is crushing in on him, and he has to get this boat ready. Now, it never says that he ends up actually getting in the boat. It doesn't tell us whether he got into the boat or not. Just have it ready, like a getaway car, like bank robbers where they say, have it running, be in the driver's seat and have a car running in case we need to make a quick exit out of here. That's what they have. They have this boat ready, the motor's running, they're ready to go. which is interesting to me. It just kind of struck me that we don't know whether he ever used the boat. Later on we find out he does the same thing and actually gets in the boat, but here it doesn't say. He just takes precautions. The Son of God took precautions in a dangerous situation. I just think that's interesting. It's a wisdom principle, right? Because Proverbs 27.12 says, So, if you see danger, Take some precautions. Anyway, that's an aside. The point here is that these crowds want one thing, healing, and they don't even care about Jesus. They'll trample Him. They just want to get what they want. They're not interested in following Him. They just want to get what they can get out of Him, even if they kill Him in the process. So, are these followers? No, they're not followers. There's a very clear distinction in this passage, and not just in this passage, but throughout Mark, between the crowds and the disciples. Very different. The followers of Jesus and the crowds around Jesus are presented in a different light. Two very different groups. Some people have described it as the difference between fans and followers, and I think that's a good way to put it. Because Jesus was a celebrity and had tons of fans. Tons of fans. nationwide and beyond. Fans clamor around celebrities to get what they want. get something from them. They claim that they love the celebrity, but they only love them until the celebrity stops providing whatever it is they want, and at that point, there's no love at all, right? So, you know, we love our favorite sports hero until he has a bad season. Like, get that bum out of here! He's horrible! Jerk! And that's exactly what's going to happen with Jesus' fans. That's the way fans are. Crowds As I said, they're a major theme in Mark and that's important for us to look at because Jesus teaches us the right way to think about crowds in ministry. He teaches us to avoid two common errors that I see in the church. Jesus doesn't fall into either one of these. One way to get it wrong when it comes to crowds is to be a crowd hater. Crowd haters get irritated by large crowds. They don't like being around a lot of people. They feel uncomfortable. They feel lost in a crowd. They don't like the noise. They don't like the mess. They don't like waiting in lines. They don't like not knowing people at church. They don't like lots of strangers. They would rather just keep the church small, keep it comfortable. And churches like that become cliques, right? Everyone knows each other, you start having these deep, long-term friendships, these inside jokes, and pretty soon it's impossible to break in. People come and visit and they can never, they're always outsiders, they can never break into the clique, and eventually they drift away. And yet, crowd-haters can get real sanctimonious about their crowd-hating. A pastor starts talking about trying to get more people, and they get all critical and condemning, like, all he cares about is numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, as if that's a bad thing. And I always wonder what those people think when they read Acts, and Luke keeps on talking about giving reports about numbers, how many are added to their number, 3,000 here, and all these other number reports. One pastor said, we count people because people count. I think that's right on. I think that's right on. Jesus was not a crowd hater. When he tries to get away, we're going to see in a few chapters, he tries to get away to a secluded place because they can't even get a meal and they can't get any rest. So they said, let's take a day off and he goes across. And he gets to a secluded place and it's not secluded. A whole crowd's already there waiting for him. And when he sees that crowd, He's not irritated. It says as soon as he saw them, the first thing he had, it says he had compassion on them. And then he began teaching them many things. He spends a whole day ministering to them. He cancels his day off. He wanted to reach the masses. He wanted to reach the masses. We saw that in chapter 1. Remember when they were trying to get him to come back into town and he said, no, I need to preach elsewhere. Let's go from village to village because that's why I've come. So let's go. And he starts going all over Galilee. So it was important for Jesus to reach as many as possible. So we learn from Jesus, don't be a crowd hater. Our mission is to make disciples of all nations, not just the same handful of people that you've known for the last 20 years and that you're comfortable with. But there's another way to get it wrong when it comes to crowds in ministry, and that is to be a crowd lover. And the crowd lovers, these are the people that think the more people you can get into the building, the better, period. and paragraph, period, paragraph. They do whatever it takes to get more people, and whatever it takes then to keep all those people, and they just have to... Because once you get them, then you've got these big facilities that you bought to house them, and then now you have to keep them because you've got to get rid of the facilities and the staff and everything. Did Jesus want to reach as many as He could possibly reach? Yes. The more, the better. The more, the better. But there's a huge difference between reaching people and gathering a crowd. Just because you get someone to come into the church building on Sunday mornings every Sunday and sit through a sermon doesn't mean you've reached them with the gospel. In chapter four, Jesus is going to teach us about the various responses. As he's unfolding, he's going to say, this is what the kingdom is like, and he's going to talk about the different responses of different people in the parallel soils. And we're going to find out that the objective, when we get to the parable of soils, the objective is not just for people to hear the Word. The objective is for them to hear it and accept it and bear fruit. The objective isn't even for people to hear it and accept it. The objective is for them to hear it, accept it, and bear fruit. And that comes through persevering in it. So having lots and lots of people in the Church is good, But what we learn from Jesus is it matters which people and why they're there and how they're responding. All that matters. If you have lots of people who are receptive to the gospel of Christ, that's fantastic. Praise God. The more the better. You can't have too many of those. But gathering a bunch of unreceptive people, not only is that not our objective, that does more harm than good. All that does is monopolize the time and the resources, and those crowds get in the way of real ministry. They clog up the works, just like you see in Mark. And they take up so many resources that we can't use the resources to do the real work of the gospel. One thing that we learn from Jesus' ministry is attracting a huge crowd of curious people, amused people, people seeking just to have their physical needs met, Even if you preach the gospel to them, it doesn't translate into them being disciples. All it does is hinder the work of making real disciples. So it's a mistake to think the more people in the building, the better on a Sunday morning. One church, I was listening to this guy, a church growth guy, and he was talking about this church that offered free iPads on Easter. They had this drawing, this raffle, and they were giving away iPads on Easter, and they packed the place out. And you just, you know, you hear story after story like that, and you hear this all the time from the church growth gurus, that they say this, it doesn't matter why they come, it only matters that they come. You can't expect them to have good motives, so just get them in there, by hook or by crook, whatever, get them in there. And the idea is you can just trick people into coming, and then once they're there, you kind of sneak the gospel in on them, and you can get some people to make decisions for Christ. Missions will do that with homeless people. You give a free meal, but first you have to sit through a sermon. Then you can have your meal. It's kind of like the time Cedric was just reminding me of this the other day. It's kind of like the time when we had our dog was sick, we were trying to get it to take a pill, and it wouldn't take this pill, so we, our dog loved peanut butter. So we get this big huge glob of peanut butter, we put the pill inside the peanut butter, we gave it, and she just devoured that peanut butter. And when she was done, spit the pill out. That's what people will do with the gospel. They'll take the iPad, they'll take the entertainment, they'll take all the handouts, the free food, whatever, and then they'll just spit the gospel right back out when you give it to them. See, what these people, these church growth people fail to realize is what you win them with is what you win them to. You win them with free goodies, then that's what you win their heart to. And the moment there's no more goodies, they lose interest. If you win them, if you draw them with entertainment, that's what you win them to. And as soon as it's not entertaining anymore, then they're going to be gone. The contrast that we see in this passage between the crowds in verse 10 and the disciples in verse 13, such a stark contrast. And one of the biggest differences is the reasons they have for why they come to Jesus. Why did the crowds come? We already saw that, physical, temporal benefits, healing. Why did the disciples come in verse 13? Why did they come to Jesus? What does verse 13 tell us about the reason why they came? Yeah, He called them. It says Jesus went up on a mountainside and He called to Him those He wanted and they came to Him. Now when you first read that, you think, why does it say those he wanted? Of course he wanted them, he wouldn't have called them if he didn't want them. Isn't that kind of, why does he state the obvious? He states it in order to emphasize it. He wants to draw attention to the fact that Jesus chose these men. He desired them, he willed. It's very strong in the Greek, it's talking about his will. He chose them. That's why they came. He called them, chose them, drew them. That's why they came. And listen, those are the only people that will ever come to Jesus. That's what we have to understand about ministry. John 6, 44, no one can come to me unless the Father draws him. No one. If you attract someone to your church with an iPad, but that person's not being drawn by the Father, he will never become a believer. Never. Those are not the people we need to spend our time with in ministry. Rick Warren says that you can make anyone a Christian if you just figure out the key to his heart. That's such a human-oriented way of thinking about how people come to faith. Just use the right technique and you can get people to make decisions. And Warren is a master at getting people to make decisions by the thousands, decisions for Christ. But our task is to make disciples, not decisions. And no technique will ever make a disciple out of someone who isn't being drawn by the Lord Himself. The whole Seeker-Friendly Movement is all about drawing the unchurched, drawing the unchurched. For ten years, that's all we heard about from that whole movement, drawing the unchurched. It was their mantra. And in many cases, what they ended up doing was just churching the undrawn. People that weren't even being drawn by the Lord, getting them into the building, huge crowds, no disciples. Thousands of Jesus fans, very few followers. Now, someone might say, wasn't Jesus attracting fans? I mean, if Jesus attracted thousands of fans by taking care of physical needs, shouldn't we do the same thing? No, I think what Jesus is showing us is that doesn't translate into disciples. Jesus did it. He did the miracles not to attract a bunch of fans. He did it to prove who He was and to give previews of what the new earth was going to be like. That's why He did the miracles. He didn't do it to get a bunch of fans. And when these crowds came to Him, very often He would leave. I mean, He'd preach to them, but if they weren't receptive, He would leave. One time, in John 6, he fed the multitude, gave them food, and then they come back the next day and they're interested in more food, but they're not interested in his message. And he's like, you're just here for the food. And he said, no, I'm not going to give you any more. And he rebuked them. So what's our target audience? Church growth people, they say, you've got to have a demographic, you've got to shoot for a target audience, you've got to shoot for, you know, young marrieds or whatever this or that. And then you formulate your music to attract that type of person and that's how you make the big churches. And when I went to that church planting boot camp, they asked me, what's your target when we're going to plant Creekside? I said, what's your target? I said, my target is people that are being drawn by the Lord. People are receptive to the gospel. They say, no, no, no, no. It's got to be some kind of demographic. I mean, they said, how are you going to formulate your church and do the decorations and have the advertising and the music? How are you going to do that in order to attract the drawn? And I told them, very easy. Very easy. Just preach the gospel. Because that's what attracts the drawn. You preach the gospel, that attracts the elect and, at the same time, repels the non-elect. It repels the people who aren't interested. They'll get offended. The undrawn will get offended by the gospel and leave, which is exactly what we see happen to all Jesus' adoring fans, eventually. Alright, so was this the great ingathering? The final gathering has been promised all through the Old Testament and people come streaming from the nations. No, not yet. All the pieces were there except for the most important one, repentance and salvation. But I believe there's some very clear symbolism here. And we don't have time to get into how the beginning events in Jesus' ministry symbolized what's going to happen in partial ways throughout the Church Age and then in a final way at His Second Coming. But this is an example of that. Jesus was indeed going to restore the kingdom. But if it's actually going to happen, if Jesus is going to restore the kingdom and he's going to gather everyone back together, how does that work if the leaders of Israel are rejecting him and the population in general is refusing to repent and follow? How's that going to work? How's this kingdom going to take shape? Well, it's going to look a lot different from what anybody ever imagined. It's going to involve individual callings of individual people by Jesus. And it's going to involve Gentiles to a degree that nobody ever dreamed. It's going to start small and grow very big, and it's going to be built on a whole new foundation. And that's what gets introduced right here. And I'll just close with this. Look at the very next thing Mark shows us, verse 14. He appointed twelve, designating them apostles. That might be the most earth-shattering verse in the gospel so far. Jesus appoints 12 leaders? What does that number mean? That number is not incidental. And I'm not one that tries to find some symbolic thing with every single number in the Bible. Some people can do that. I'm not into that. But if any number in the Bible has symbolic significance, it's 12 leaders of God's people. 12 is not a typical number in Jewish fellowships. They would appoint 7 or they would appoint 10 or 15. You just don't see the number 12. But this, Jesus picks out 12, and you can't miss the significance of that. 12 tribes, right? One reason we know that that number is meant to be significant is because it very quickly becomes a title in the gospel. The 12. They're just called the 12 after this. What's so important about them? What's important about them is the fact that they're 12 in number. That's emphasized more than even the individuals. There are only a few individuals that we even learn that much about. The one great obvious point of significance of the twelve is twelve tribes of Israel who were descended from the twelve sons of Israel, the patriarchs of the nation. And the significance of that is absolutely massive. Jesus is recreating the ancient people of God on a completely new foundation. That's the significance of appointing twelve leaders. He's recreating Israel on a new foundation. Israel after the flesh is rejecting him. And now he's creating a new Israel. John 1.11, He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, but born of God. So the new people of God is made up of not the physical descendants of twelve patriarchs. Now it's going to be the spiritual descendants of twelve men who are chosen and believe the gospel and follow Jesus as disciples, as followers. Now does this mean that ethnic Israel is set aside forever? No. Is it somehow anti-Semitic to say that the Jews rejected Jesus? No, that's not any more anti-Semitic than it would be anti-Gentile to say most of the Gentiles also rejected Jesus. The issue is no longer whether you're Jew or Gentile. It's just simply whether you're a follower of Christ. What's it gonna look like? That's what we're gonna see as the rest of this section unfolds in Mark. Next week, we're gonna discover some very, very dramatic and exciting things, not only about the kingdom of God, but another angle, the family of God, and how that changes in this moment, and it's just striking what Jesus does next. And I think it's one of the most encouraging truths in the whole book. I really hope you can make it next week for that, because that one's a big one. All right, let's close in prayer. Father, tonight we've covered a lot of theology. We've taken a big picture look at kind of whole Bible themes and no commands, no specific things to put into practice tomorrow really, not that much at least. But I do pray that this overview of your work, the magnificence and the brilliance of the way that you began to unfold the fulfillment of your promises to gather your people and to create a new nation, a unified nation, and the things that stay the same from the Old Testament and the things that are different The way that you put all that together and the fact that we are descendants of these apostles, we can trace our lineage, our spiritual lineage back to them. They told the gospel to somebody, and that person told it to somebody, and led them to Christ, and they led someone to Christ, all the way down to me. And so while people in the world are trying to trace their bloodline back and see if they're related to some famous person a hundred years ago, we can actually find that our spiritual bloodline goes right back to the apostles who were born into your kingdom by listening to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ himself in person. Lord, help us to be ones that'll bring it to the next generation. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Well, that's kind of a lot to hold in your head for one. Any questions about it? Okay. Okay, what's the connection between doing good and presenting the gospel? That's a great, great question, because so many churches, that's their strategy, is give handouts, do favors, fix people's, you know, mow their yard, do whatever, and then that makes them interested, and then they come, and then they'll listen to the gospel. Personally, I don't I don't see that as being especially effective. I wouldn't condemn anybody for doing taking that approach But it doesn't to me it doesn't strike me as being effective Where does just showing kindness to people fit in it fits in in the the the parable of the Good Samaritan where There's not, it's just a guy in need. And Jesus paints a picture of someone who is nice to him. Two guys that weren't nice to him and one guy that was nice to him. And it doesn't say anything about that opened up an avenue to share the gospel. I think it's just, you see someone in need, be nice to them. and meet needs that are around you. You can't meet everyone's need. Jesus didn't set up a thing for rescuing everybody that's been set upon by bandits or whatever, beat up in ditches and have some kind of ditch ministry all over Israel. It just, if you come across someone and help them out. And so we should have kindness, I mean even to animals. You see an animal that's suffering, see what you can do. So that's just a general, virtue of compassion. And we should be like that. We should be more compassionate than unbelievers, right? If we have the heart of God in us, we should be more compassionate. But we're never going to transform the city of Denver. We're never going to transform Frederick, Denver, Dakono, anything by any number of acts of kindness. If the churches all started giving away tons of food and everything, it's not going to bring transformation. It's the gospel that's going to bring transformation, which is why Jesus focused on preaching the gospel. And so we should be kind, we should be nice, but our main focus should be preaching the word. And the more we can preach to the interested, the better. So again, I don't want to criticize the people running those missions. They're marvelous people. But if it were me, I think I would. I think I would If that's the ministry that I felt called to, I would go ahead and give them the food, and they'd have the option of coming to hear the gospel. Because I would want to focus on the interested. And when you do it the other way around, and you give them the sense that they need to seem receptive in order to get more food, then you create these false conversions, and then they start thinking they're saved when they're not, and it seems like it does a lot of spiritual harm. Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, all those homeless people that I talk to on the corners, almost every one of them claims to be Christian. But you just don't see any any evidence of it in the way they live. I think if we're going to offer something for free, I've said this for years and never really caught on, but if we're going to offer something for free, let's what if we offered? We're in a great position in our culture right now with the mentality of our culture to offer free counseling. Because people are clamoring for counseling. It used to be that counseling was kind of a stigma because you're mentally ill if you went for counseling. Now, everybody's mentally ill. If you're ever down, depressed, happy, whatever, then you've got some kind of mental thing. And so it's not a stigma anymore. And everybody wants counseling, but it gets expensive, and it's getting so the insurance companies can't handle it anymore. you run out of your insurance money, or you go to a bunch of psychologists and it doesn't help, and you still have anxiety, and you know, whatever. People are just clamoring for that. We've got the answers to all that. And those are the people, that's not unrelated to the gospel. Everything, all our counseling is, is that, well, you need Christ, right? And if we could get people to come to us, saying, tell me what the Bible says about my problem. Oh, you need Christ. I mean, what could we ask for a better opening to share the gospel than that? So that's why I like to do this ground wire thing, this online chat counseling. And I'd recommend that to anybody that, any of you who have some time to spend. They train you and then anytime you want, you can just get online and these chats come through to your computer. And if you can take it or not take it, and if you hit accept, You just say, what's on your mind today? And they say, oh, I'm depressed. My girlfriend dumped me or whatever. I don't know what to do. And most of them are coming from a website called jesuscares.com. So they know it's going to be a gospel-related thing. Share the gospel with them. And man, it's just a great thing. Great opportunity for those of us who aren't great at striking up conversations out of the blue, gospel conversations out of the blue with strangers. Have them come to you and ask you. It's called GroundWire. JesusCares.com is their website. And if you go to JesusCares.com, you can click on something, how to be a counselor, or you can just email me. I can set you up with the, get you in contact with the guy that I got started with. And they have a mentor that watches your chats for a while until they're comfortable that you kind of know what you're doing. And there's always a coach, trainer kind of coach online at all times. So if you get in trouble, you can kind of revert over. You can just say, here, you take this guy. I don't know what to tell him. Mystery. Do you do it once every day? No, I do it once a week. For an hour or two? Yeah, a couple hours. I just don't have that much time now. Mark is really time-consuming. So I usually do it on Sunday afternoons. It's satisfying. You get off and people are like, wow, thank you so much. This is so helpful. Yeah, they're going to be leading the 12 tribes of Israel. So where does Paul fit? Is he 12 or 13? I don't know. I don't know. I think Matthias was legit. I think, and my reason for thinking, Matthias was the one they replaced Judas with. So once Judas was gone, they said, we've got to find a twelfth guy. So they picked Matthias. And I believe that that was God's will, because if not, that's the only prayer in the whole book of Acts that God doesn't answer. And I don't see any indication of that. So I think that he was legit. But I don't know if he was temporary until Paul came along. Or Paul's just number 13, or what, I don't know.