MISREADING THE WORKS OF JESUS – Mark 3:19b-30

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What a serious passage this is! So then; let’s take our time to look closely at it. We pick it up at Mark 3:19; where we read that, after Jesus had called His twelve apostles to Himself, and had given them the authority to heal the sick and cast out demons, “And they went into a house” (Mark 3:19b).

This might have been the same house in Capernaum that they had been in before—the house of Peter and his brother Andrew. And if that’s the case, then it would mean that they were still in the place where people had seen so many of His miracles. It was not long before this, you’ll remember, that Jesus had cast an unclean spirit out of a man in the local synagogue—so that the spirit cried out in fear of Jesus and said, “Let us alone! What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” (1:24). It would have been the same place where Jesus, a short time before, had healed a man with a withered hand in the synagogue; and where the whole town had come to Jesus with their sick and their demon-possessed folks, and saw Jesus heal them all. Word was getting out about Him, and many were coming to Him.

But it’s not the house that’s the important thing. Rather, it’s what happened once they went into it. It’s then that we begin to see the indications of trouble—trouble, in fact, from the people who most ought to have been receptive to Him. We begin to see . . .

1. THE INCREASING MISUNDERSTANDING.

We’re told,

Then the multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, “He is out of His mind” (vv. 20-21).

Who were these people that Mark calls ‘His own people’? I believe we see who it is in verses 31-32; where we’re told,

Then His brothers and His mother came, and standing outside they sent to Him, calling Him. And a multitude was sitting around Him; and they said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are outside seeking You” (vv. 31-32).

Imagine that! We’re being told that our Lord’s own earthly family—His mother and His half-brothers, and perhaps even some others of His relatives and friends—were coming to apprehend Him and take Him away. Why would they do this? Perhaps the clue is in the fact that He was in a house with so many followers and so many people crowding in around Him that He and His disciples couldn’t even so much as eat. Perhaps this troubled ‘His own people’ greatly. “This is getting out of hand,” they may have been thinking. “He is allowing His own popularity to get the better of Him. He’s not even listening to us anymore. He’s not even eating. He’s going way overboard; and it’s going to destroy Him and those who follow Him. He’s out of His mind. He’s lost His senses. He’s beside Himself. We need to go in and get Him and take Him home.”

Now, when we come to verses 31-35 during a future time together, we’ll consider how it was that He answered their concern. But for now, let’s just think of how even His own family members misunderstood and misinterpreted who He was, and what it was that He was doing. That shows us that an attitude of misunderstanding was growing in and among those closest to Him.

If I may offer an aside: That certainly illustrates what happens when we decide to follow Jesus in a devoted way; doesn’t it? People misunderstand our devotion, and misinterpret our actions as unhealthy fanaticism. Think of it. You can get fanatically excited over just about anything else in this world. You can be so devoted to a football game that you can show up to work with your face painted in the team colors, and wearing a jersey, and talking about the upcoming game non-stop; and no one will think anything bad about you for it. You can be so devoted to a political cause or a social concern that you give all your time to it, and collect petitions for it, and seek to recruit other people to join you in it; and everyone will think that that’s noble. I’ve even heard of people so devoted to Star Trek that they spend money decorating their home to look like the Enterprise; or so devoted to The Hobbit that they show up for work looking like one; and everyone thinks that’s cute. But if you try to live as if the message of the gospel is true, and if you live with anything like the appropriate kind of devotion to Jesus that He truly requires—if you respond with genuine gratitude to Him for the forgiveness of your sins, and go on to live your daily life in deliberate and intentional fellowship with Him—you’re getting ‘too fanatical’ about it. People get offended at you; and they misunderstand your devotion, and misrepresent you as being a fanatic, and try to talk you out of it.

Well; we should just know that even the Lord Jesus felt that. He felt it deeply—from even His own family. We shouldn’t be worried or fearful if people misunderstand our devotion to Jesus, or misrepresent it as if it was something that had gotten out of balance, or say that we’ve gone off the deep end. We should keep on living for Him, and following after Him step-by-step in obedience; and pray that their eyes would be opened to His love—just as ours was.

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Now; the reaction from His family might be safely considered a “misunderstanding”. His mother—especially!—would certainly have known who He is; and yet even she misunderstood and thought He was getting carried away. But what happened next was not mere misunderstanding. It was what we instead might call . . .

2. THE DELIBERATE MISREPRESENTATION.

We’re told that a group of scribes came to Galilee from Jerusalem. The scribes were the religious scholars of the day—the professors of the law of Scripture. They were the ones who, in the opinion of everyone else, offered the expert opinion on matters of religious faith and scriptural truth. They must have heard about the things that Jesus was doing; and they came all the way from Jerusalem to Capernaum to see it all for themselves.

Perhaps some of them had heard that Jesus had cast a demon out of a man in the synagogue. And perhaps they even saw for themselves how unclean spirits would see Jesus, and fall down before Him in terror, and cry out saying, “You are the Son of God” (v. 11). It may be that they saw these things, and heard various other reports about them; but however it happened, they had to come to a conclusion concerning the things they saw.

And what official conclusion did they come to? Mark tells us;

And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebub,” and, “By the ruler of the demons He casts out demons” (v. 22).

Beelzebub was the name of the ancient pagan god of the Moabite people. You can read about their worship of this false god in the first few verses of the Old Testament book of 2 Kings. And in time, the Jewish people referred to this false god derisively as “the lord of the flies”; and they came to associate him with Satan—the ruler over the demons. And so; what these scribes were doing was to say that Jesus was deceiving everyone—casting out demons by the power of the devil himself.

Now; I ask you to think carefully about this. There is a remarkable testimony of the truth being given to us here. In our day, when people want to deny that Jesus is the Son of God, they simply deny that any of the miracles that the Bible tells us about ever actually happened. They simply dismiss it all by telling us that it was all a bunch of myths and legends—one big, giant “fish story”—that grew, and grew, and got passed down from generation to generation for which there never was one shred of truth. You hear that all the time. Unbelieving scholars, living twenty centuries after the facts, write whole books and give lectures to show that none of these ‘inflated miracle stories’ ever actually happened.

But when it came to the unbelieving people of Jesus’ day—those who were the closest in time to these events—that’s not how they argued against them. They didn’t say that the miracles never happened. They weren’t trying to suppress stories that people were inflating about Jesus’ works. They were trying to put a different ‘spin’ on His works as they happened. They didn’t say that Jesus didn’t heal the blind or the lame, for example. They admitted that He did; and they complained instead that He was a a lawbreaker because He healed people on the Sabbath. And note here that the scribes didn’t argue that demons weren’t really being cast out of people. They clearly couldn’t deny the things that were happening before them. They testified in their complaint that Jesus really did seem to have the authority to cast out demons. Perhaps we could say that by accident, they were testifying to us—living twenty centuries later—of the truth of the things they saw.

But rather than allow the truth of what they saw to sink in, they reinterpreted the Holy Spirit’s testimony to them; and put an angle on it all that freed them from a sense of personal conviction. They argued that Jesus really did these things—but did them in the power of Satan. That way, they wouldn’t have to believe what the facts were telling them about Jesus. They wouldn’t have to think through what the demons were saying when they cried out that He is the Son of God. They wouldn’t have to submit to the convicting testimony of the Holy Spirit, as He worked through Jesus before their very eyes. They wouldn’t have to admit that the kingdom of God had come upon them. They just deliberately misinterpreted and misrepresented it—merely dismissed it all by saying that He did it in the power of Satan—and they then wouldn’t have to respond with repentant faith.

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Now; there’s a very important element in all this. The way this reads in the original language of Mark’s gospel, it’s apparent that they weren’t saying these kinds of things just this one time. Mark tells us that they had and ongoing habit of saying that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of Satan. Perhaps they gave the same spin on the matter each time they saw Him exercise His authority.

And that’s when we read of . . .

3. THE REASONED RESPONSE.

We’re told that Jesus called them to Himself. And I love that about our Lord. He didn’t hide from the false accusations. He didn’t try to ignore them. He boldly faced them head-on; and courageously confronted their phony interpretation of things. We’re told that He addressed the matter in “parables”; and I don’t believe we’re meant to understand that He therefore spoke to them in perplexing stories. The word “parable” means “to place one thing along side another”; and that’s what it seems to me He did. Mark tells us;

So He called them to Himself and said to them in parables: “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end. No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house” (vv. 23-27).

Think of His argument—and how He demonstrated the absurdity of their claim. They had been claiming that He had cast out demons by the power of the one who was the prince of the demons. But how could that even be possible? “How”, He asks, “can Satan cast out Satan?” If Jesus was casting out Satan, then logically, it couldn’t be Satan that was doing the ‘out-casting’.

He argues from common sense. A kingdom that is divided against itself cannot stand. A house—or an estate—that is filled with internal fighting is doomed to fall. And if Satan has risen up against himself, then he—like such a kingdom or such a house—cannot stand. His kingdom will eventually fail. If the scribes really believed that Jesus was casting out demons in the power of Satan, then they shouldn’t complain. Instead, they should celebrate! They should stand back and watch Satan to destroy himself!

But Jesus instead forces these scribes to the very conclusion they are trying so desperately to avoid. Just as no one can enter the house of a strong man and rob him of his precious goods without first binding him—proving that he was stronger than the strong man; Jesus was proving to them that He truly is the Son of God by plundering the devil of his kingdom. That’s why the demons cried out in terror when they saw Him.

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Now; these were things that the Holy Spirit was testifying to them through the works of Jesus. They could see with their own eyes who Jesus was proving Himself to be; and they could feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit to repent of their hardness of heart and believe on Him.

But they wouldn’t do so. In fact, their persistent hardness of heart was leading them to do something dreadful—to blaspheme the work of the Holy Spirit that they were witnessing, and repeatedly slander it instead as being a work of the devil. And that leads us to what I believe is meant to be taken as the main point of this passage . . .

4. THE SERIOUS WARNING.

Jesus tells them,

“Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation”—because they said, “He has an unclean spirit” (vv. 28-30).

What a terrible thing it is to continually resist the Holy Spirit, and to persistently harden one’s own heart against His testimony of Jesus, and to refuse to submit to His work of conviction. Soon, such a person’s heart becomes so permanently hard that they blaspheme the Holy Spirit’s ministry to them. And when they get to that point—and they will no longer hear the Spirit’s call—there’s nothing more that can be done for them. They cannot be brought to repentance and be saved. There is no forgiveness for them; but they are subject to eternal condemnation.