Joel Brooks: If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Mark chapter 3 as we continue our study in the gospel of Mark. As you're returning there, I I'd like to ask you the important question. Are there any fans of Creed here, the band Creed? We've got a few we we actually have an elder who was in a Creed cover band. And somehow, he went through our screening process.
Usually, I mean, at least there's like, I think I saw 3 hands here. You you do realize they sold over 50,000,000 CDs. So there's a lot more Creed fans here than willing to admit it. And I'm betting that, when Arms Wide Open comes on in the car, I mean, who here doesn't crank it up? You're probably even doing the whole motion, singing your heart out.
So we have a lot of in the closet Creed fans, I know, but, I I read recently an article that kind of depressed me. They they now have been reduced to a band on a cruise ship. So that's what they do. You could take a Creed cruise and, be stuck on a boat, listening to Creed for I don't know how many days. It's it's astonishing to me that you can have a band as popular as them.
I mean, once again, over 50,000,000 actual physical CDs sold sold to being reduced to just the band playing on a cruise ship. But that's how fans are. They're fickle. And in one moment, you're really popular, and the next minute you're on a cruise ship. Jesus knew this.
And what we're gonna look at this morning is, how Jesus, at the height of his popularity, with all the fans surrounding him, he leaves the fans on his own. And he calls just a few to himself. So Mark chapter 3, we'll begin reading in verse 7. Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed him from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea, and from beyond the Jordan, and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that He was doing, they came to Him.
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 the mountain, and he called to him those whom he desired.
And they came to him, and 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, He appointed the 12, 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 Boenarghus. That is sons of thunder. Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Him.
Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. This is the word of the Lord. You would pray with me. Amen. Father, we thank You that, You are not a distant God, but You are a God who delights in being with us.
We thank You that You have adopted us and You have made us part of Your family. I pray that we would grow into a greater understanding and appreciation of that immense love you have for us. Spirit, would You open up the word that we have just read that we might receive it? I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So here in this chapter, we see Jesus. He's at the height of his popularity. People were flocking to him because being around Jesus was, it was quite the spectacle.
Crazy things were happening wherever Jesus went. You know, roofs were being torn apart, people lowered down. Normal people, at church sitting in pews all of a sudden would stand up and scream. That doesn't happen every day. They would just start screaming, you are the Son of God, and then Jesus would cast out a demon, and they would convulse on the ground.
Sick and lame people were being healed right before your eyes. And then there was this growing tension, and now just outright fighting between Jesus and the established religious authorities. So if you wanted to be near the action I mean, you you wanted to be near the the the dead center of all the action. That meant you needed to be near Jesus, and so everyone was coming to him. We read that he came people were coming from all these different towns.
Those names, I'm sure, mean nothing to you, But just know this, some of these towns were more than a 100 miles away. People were traveling more than a 100 miles to come and to see Jesus. Just a little over a week ago, I I flew out to Vegas to go see U2 in concert at The Sphere. It was a whole lot of time and money, and totally worth it, because it's what you will do. You'll travel any distance if you really want to see the show.
And some of you have mocked me. Some of you who I know are going to the Netherlands to see, Taylor Swift. Now, come on. I mean, I I don't think Travis Kelce is gonna go that far. That's that's I've exhausted my Taylor Swift knowledge.
But you'll travel any distance. Spend whatever money. Do whatever it takes in order to see certain shows, to be around certain people. These people, these crowds, some of them packed all their bags and walked for literally over a week. Traveled for over a week just to get near Jesus.
And I know we have this picture of Jesus when we see Him ministering to people. It's usually like with 1 on 1 conversations, or maybe in quietness on a hillside with just, you know, few people, and those things happen from time to times, time to time, but more often, being around Jesus, I mean, he was completely surrounded. It was like the paparazzi around a celebrity, everybody trying to get a Jesus sighting and to get near him. Swarms of people around him. Dangerous swarms from what we read here.
Jesus' disciples essentially had to act like bodyguards. I mean, people are crushing him, and he's like, get the boat ready. Just like a celebrity might say, keep the car near me and keep it running, because I might have to make a speedy getaway at any point. At one point, we read this later, Jesus, He would actually get in a boat, and He would just cast off from shore, and He would teach there, just as a way as keeping a little buffer between Him and the people. We know that He had 1,000 and tens of 1,000 coming to hear him speak and to heal.
Why? Why were they all coming? Well, I mean, there were a few that were there to hear Him teach, I'm sure. Probably, mostly, they were coming for the show. Many, I'm sure, came to be healed.
I mean, if you actually hear hear that somebody can legitimately heal you of an ill illness, there's no there's no distance you will not travel. I mean, if if some of you had cancer or if if your parents had cancer and you knew that there was a doctor, guaranteed results. You have heard it from so many people. This doctor can heal you. Is there any distance you wouldn't travel or any money you wouldn't spend?
And so people, they've, they caught word. There's an actual healer. It's over a 100 miles away, but He can legitimately heal. And these people are going. The lame and the sick, they're coming.
And I also envision many parents carrying their children for over a 100 miles, just in the hopes that they could get close enough to Jesus, fight through the crowds, perhaps they could touch Him. They could get their child to touch Him, and their child would be healed. It's hard for us to even, you know, fathom the scene, the craziness that surrounded Jesus wherever He went. And we read that Jesus, He had compassion on these people. He took the time and he healed them.
Despite whatever motives they might have, he healed them. Now, if if you were to put a label on these people, that were flocking to see Jesus, I think the best label that you could give is that of fans. They were huge Jesus fans. I mean, if Peter had thought beforehand to set up a, you know, a Jesus merch table, He and, you know, sell the Jesus t shirts, the Jesus ball caps. He would have made bank at this, because everybody would have bought one.
I mean, I I grew up in a time in the church where that's what you did. You know, I had the the God's gym shirt. My my favorite was this bloods for you. I mean, you you had the you had the coffee mugs that were the Jehovah Java. Get that?
Yeah. You got you had to have one of those. I mean, if Peter, the disciples had thought to set up those things, I mean, they they could have funded their college, you know, their kids' college education. These were fans with a religious fervor coming to see Jesus. But Jesus here, he doesn't want fans.
He wants followers. He didn't come here to start the Jesus fan club. He doesn't want a fan club. He wants followers. And we all know the difference between a fan and a follower.
Don't we? Fans, they're they're fair weather. A fan of Jesus, well, that's someone who wants to be around Jesus when it's just really easy and convenient to be around Jesus. A fan loves getting with other fans. A love a fan loves singing with other fans, listening to sermons with other fans, as long as it doesn't cost you anything.
A fan loves being part of a youth group or part of a college ministry, perhaps going to a Christian retreat or a Christian camp, as long as that's what all their friends are doing. But if at some point, it starts to get a little costly, Perhaps costly to your reputation, costly to your friendships, or to your career, or to your time, or to your money. Well then, it's, it's time to leave the Jesus fan club and pack up and go back home, or go back to your lake home, or wherever it is, just get away. Watch the game fit in with everyone else. It's easy to be a fan of Jesus when he's popular, but what about when he's not?
And Jesus knows he's not always gonna be popular. Well, what about when the media or the laws begin to go against Jesus? What about when the social media post or the news articles begin mocking the teachings of Jesus? Mocking what Jesus says about sin, or about marriage, or sex, or evangelism, or money, or things about judgment in heaven and hell. When a culture turns against Jesus and his teachings, then will you will you be a fan?
Will you still be a fan? Fans are fair weather. They kinda put their finger to the cultural winds and see which way it's blowing, but a disciple follows Jesus even when it gets hard, even when the crowds leave. Hear me. In America, we have lots of fans of Jesus.
Our churches are filled with fans of Jesus. In Iran, no fans. But you have followers. You can't be a fan of Jesus there because it will cost you. But make no mistake.
There are followers of Jesus in places like that. And Jesus came not to recruit fans, but to recruit followers. He did not come into this world in order to win a popularity contest. He called that He might have all of us, all of who we are to come and to follow Him. And so what Jesus does here is at the very height of His popularity is He actually leaves the crowd, and He goes to a mountain, and He calls a smaller group of people to come and to follow Him.
So from this crowd, Jesus specifically calls 12 men to be His disciples, to be with Him, to travel with Him, to learn from him as he goes from town to town. And we looked at this a few weeks ago, but there's nothing remarkable about these men. They're just ordinary people, a bunch of nobodies and misfits, really. But Jesus called them family. We're gonna look at that next week, how He makes us into a family.
But here, we see Him turning them into a group of people that will go on to change the world. And this is how He turns them into His disciples who will change the world. 1st, He calls them away from the crowds, away from just being a fan, to be off with himself, and there, he gives them a new name and a new identity. Verse 14, we read, that he named them apostles. Notice we don't read that he called these 12 men apostles.
There, they received a name. He named them apostles. And then he's gonna go on to name Simon Peter, and then name James and John sons of thunder. One could actually argue that this entire section here is really about Jesus giving names and a new identity to those who follow him. Now you need to understand that Jesus names things differently than we name things.
We name things as way of describing them. For instance, our office, the church's office, they're across the street at a place called 4th and Spring or the Glass House. It's very descriptive. It's 4th and Spring because it sits on the intersection of 4th and what used to be Spring Street. And it's a glass house because, if you've seen it, it's a glass house.
The whole thing is just glass. And that's how we use names to describe something. Many of your names here in this room are they come from descriptions of your ancestors. And so if you're named your last name is Baker, well somewhere along the line, one of your ancestors used to bake bread probably for a living. If your last name is Shoemaker, guess what?
You probably had an ancestor somewhere along the line that, they made shoes, and that's what they were labeled as, named. And so that's where we get names like Fisher, or Cook, or Carpenter, or Tailor, or Forester, or names like Brooks. You know, my name, it probably came from my ancestors who lived by a mountain brook. So I'm actually a brookie, people. Somewhere along the lines, it's there.
I'm a brookie. Jesus, however, he does not name people like we name people or things. He does not name to describe who they are. He names them to describe who he will create them to be. He actually creates by naming.
You see this in the first pages of your Bible in Genesis, how God created the world. He said, let there be light. Well, light had never existed before. The word light had never existed before. He's naming light.
And when he names light, light comes into existence. He names land, and land comes into existence. He speaks us, He spoke this world into existence by naming it, and He does the same with us. Here in this story, we see Him once again creating, creating a new humanity. The first name he gives to all 12 of these men is the name apostles.
And once again, notice He does not call them apostles. Mark is very specific to say here, He gave them the name apostles. And since apostles had never existed before, these men probably had the same reaction that you would have had if Jesus had named you apostles. You would have been like, What does that mean? My mom gave me the middle name, Eugene.
It's my middle name. Who laughed? Someone over here. Find you later. Alright.
So so my mom, she gave me the middle name, Eugene. I don't know why. It's not it's not a family name. I was always embarrassed by it. I didn't even learn to spell it probably till the 5th grade.
I didn't even know e's could be silent, and who begins a name with the letter e. And so it was confusing to me. And I'm sure that the apostles here, when they're given their name apostle, they're like, What what does that mean? Why is the t silent? I mean, they they probably don't have time spelling it too.
But what Jesus is doing is he's taking a verb, the word, apostoline, which means to send off, And he turns it into a name, a noun, a name. And it basically, he's saying, from now on, I name you the sent ones. You are the sent ones. To be called by Jesus is to be sent out by Jesus. In verse 14, we read that these men were to be sent out to preach and to have authority over, the demons to cast them out.
We know from the other gospels that they were also given authority to heal people of diseases. And these 12 men, they certainly have a unique status, within the church, but know that our calling to follow Jesus is not dissimilar. We are called by Jesus to go out into this world to proclaim the gospel, to bring healing to those who are hurting, and to go to battle with the evil powers of this world. That is what the church is called to do. And we know this is because this is what Jesus He told us as his last words to his followers before He ascended to heaven.
So after Jesus rose from the dead, and 40 days later, when He ascends to heaven, and his disciples are gathered there, his last words were this. Go, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And lo, I'm with you always to the end. Jesus' last command is to be the church's first priority. Jesus made disciples, and then he told his disciples that part of being a disciple was then to go and to make disciples.
And what is a disciple? Well, it's someone who wants to be with Jesus, someone who will worship him, will follow him, will obey Him, no matter the cost. I grew up a time, in a time not just when you had to have the Christian t shirts or hats, but in a time where every church had to have, I mean, was all in on mission statements, vision statements. I know that churches today still have the mission statements and vision statements, but not like the churches in the eighties nineties. I mean, we were all about it.
I feel like every year was the whiteboard coming out. We gotta come up with a new mission statement, and, and everybody's throwing up some theological buzzword or some, you know, cultural term, you know, buzzword that's there, and you write it down, and somehow you gotta formulate it into something, that was coherent, and maybe said what you wanted to do. Not only did my church have its own vision statement, our youth group had its own vision statement. Then I went to college, and there we had to have our own vision statement. And I kid you not, it was so long.
It was longer than the book of Philemon, yet we were able to fit it on a t shirt. And so, so people would have to, like, get really close to read, like, your mission or your vision. And those those can have value. But make no mistake. We know what the church's mission is.
And usually, all of those mission or vision statements, they're really just a new way of expressing that we exist to make disciples. That's the church's calling. We exist to make disciples. We follow Jesus, and we call others to follow Jesus. We are not in the business of becoming popular.
We don't listen to our culture. We listen to Christ. We're in the business of calling people to follow him. And that's what these 12 did. When Jesus named them apostles, they weren't already apostles, But he empowers them to become this, to become sent out, to become ambassadors for Christ.
And he would use them to go on to change the world. But but they didn't change the world likely in the way that you think. I know we typically think of those early apostles, you know, Pentecost, Peter's running out of that upper room here on fire, people getting saved left and right, churches exploding in this massive, huge growth from the start. But that's actually not really the case when you look at the numbers. Do you know how many Christians, according to historians, how many Christians there were at the end of the 1st century?
65 years after Pentecost. There there were 60,000,000 people living in the Roman Empire. 65 years after Pentecost, 100 AD, they best estimate there were between 7,510,000 Christians. That's it. You're like, what?
What happened? I mean, you had thousands to tens of thousands of people flocking all around Jesus. Well, they were fans. Most historians, they they say, you know, 10,000 is the upper end of the number. And the reason so is because persecution hit the church.
And when persecution hits the church, well, it gets rid of all the fans. It also gets rid of a number of the followers as well. It was easy to follow Jesus when he just went around healing and feeding everyone, but when following Jesus meant losing your house, or it meant being thrown to the lions, the Jesus fan club got really small quick. And those who remained in it were often killed. However, those those who who survived, those who were living, they kept going on.
They they kept calling others to come and follow Jesus. I'm following Jesus. I'm inviting you to come and to follow Jesus. And they did this in the midst of persecution. And so by 150 AD, the church had grown to about 40,000 people.
By 200 AD, it had grown to about 200,000 people. By 250 AD, it had grown to over a1000000. And by 300 AD, over 30,000,000. It had overtaken the Roman Empire. And you look at that and you think, oh, wow.
That's so that's when the church exploded those last 50 years. Actually, no. It was the slow, steady growth of 40% every decade. That's how you get to overtaking the Roman Empire. So a 1000 people, 10 years later, would grow to be 1400 followers of Jesus.
It was the seed like growth. What Jesus said was going to happen. You're going to grow like a powerful seed into my kingdom. But if you stand firm, you follow me, I'm with you, and you will grow. And these men faithfully kept sharing with their coworkers, with those who they lived next to.
And eventually, we see the gospel overtaking the Roman Empire. Now this didn't happen overnight, and it did not happen overnight with these apostles either. It actually took a long time for the seeds of the gospel to really grow in their lives. It took a long time for these men to grow into their names. They didn't immediately become who God had said they were.
Took them a long time. I mean, God named Simon Peter or Petros. It means rock. So so Peter was the original rock. It didn't go over the 8 o'clock service either, and I told them I was I was gonna stick with it, and I'm going to.
11:15 getting the same joke, people. Won't share it again. Jesus' name's Peter Rock, but he was anything but a rock, wasn't he? He then names James and John the sons of thunder, which we're not entirely sure what this name means, but sounds awesome. Likely, I think he gave them this name because they were hotheads, and he wanted to change their hot headedness into a passionate resolve for Jesus.
You actually see their hot headedness in Luke chapter 9. After Jesus preaches at a certain town, the town rejects him and his disciples. And so as they leave the town, it's James and John, the sons of thunder. They're almost giddy. They're like, hey, Jesus.
You want us to call down fire from heaven and kill them all? Jesus is like, who are you? No. Come no. But he's trying to change that that hot headedness and, like, I could change that.
I will change that, and you will be passionate in your boldness for me. It took a while for these men to grow into their names, but they most certainly did. And do you know that Jesus has given you a new name as well? Each and every one of you is given a new name. We read about this in Revelation 2, in which Jesus says, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
To the one who conquers, I will give him some hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on that stone that no one knows except for the one who receives it. Now, I have no idea what that means either, Jose. I don't know. But I know it at least means this. Jesus gives each one of us a new name.
And that name, He has declared over us, and it is already shaping who we will become. He's spoken that name, and we will inevitably become that, because what he has started, he will finish. And just like the disciples, I'm sure this is gonna take a lifetime, a lifetime of being around Jesus and obeying Jesus. It's gonna take a lifetime to live into that name, but Jesus will make us into a new creation. And the more time you spend with Jesus, the more you will become that new creation.
And that's really what this story is about. And I wanna end here. Don't miss this this main point of the the story when we read it. Jesus is calling these disciples, these men, away from the crowds in order to just be with them. He wants to be with them.
Look at verses 13 and 14 again. And He went up on the mountain, and He called to him those whom He desired. And they came to him, and He appointed 12 whom He named apostles, so that they might be with Him. The desire of Jesus is to be with you. He doesn't care about being the most popular guy in the room.
What he cares about is being with you, and he he longs for this. He he wants to call you away from just being a fan, call you away from all of the chaos, and he wants to just be with you. We read about this in Revelation 3. It's an invitation from Jesus. He says, behold, I stand at the door and I knock.
And if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to him and I will eat with him and he with me. And Jesus is not saying this to non Christians. These words were spoken to Christians. And he's saying, hey, there are times that through my spirit, I will come to you in the midst of your busyness, your busy lives, your busy days, and I'm gonna knock on the door of your hearts. Don't turn me away.
I just want to be with you. Have you ever felt that impulse of the spirit at times, usually at the most inconvenient times of your life? The Holy Spirit just kinda prodding you saying, I wanna I wanna talk. I wanna be with get away. Take time now, pray.
Take time now to be with me. Do you stop during that moment, or do you have more important things to do? I mean, you see how Jesus lived His life. It was during this time here, the chaos all around. His Father calls him off to the mountain.
And you read in the gospel of Luke, he actually went away to pray through the whole evening. Left the busyness because he heard his father knocking, saying, I wanna be with you. And Jesus does the same with us. Stop whatever important thing you were doing at that time and open up that door and just listen. Sit in his presence.
And I wanna invite you to do that now. Let's go to him in prayer. Jesus said, it's mind boggling that the one who spoke the world into existence just wants to be with us. And, Lord, that you have spoken over us. You've given us a new name, and you are creating a new identity.
You're making us into a new person. Thank You. And, Lord, we know that it might take a lifetime, but we wanna follow You to the end where You have promised You would be with us to the end of the age. So Jesus, thank You for Your love for us, and we pray this in our name. Amen.