Faithful to the Will of God.

The Will of God

Today’s sermon is titled Faithful to the Will of God. In Genesis 3 Adam and Eve were not faithful to the will of God because they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The first sin was because Adam and Eve failed to be faithful to the will of God. They didn’t do what God their Father told them to do, and like the children they were they ran and hid.

In Mark today we see Jesus telling his followers, a band of tax collectors and other sinners, those who do the will of God are my family. You are my family.

There are always going to people and things that try to pull us from doing the will of God. In Genesis it was the serpent. In Mark it’s the pull of family and the religious elite of Jesus time that tried to pull him off doing the will of God.

What was the will of God? The will of God for Jesus was spelled out in Mark 2:16-17

Mark 2:16–17 NLT

16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?” 17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

As we wrestle with this text, the main point is to be faithful to the will of God. Don’t let anything pull you from doing God’s will.

Crazy and Possessed

In today’s scripture Jesus family thinks he’s crazy and the religious leaders think he’s possessed. How did we get here?

In chapter 1 Jesus heals many with unclean spirits, and people begin to talk about this new rabbi. However the one that put Jesus on the radar of the religious leaders was healing the leper. Jesus dare touch the leper. He heals the paralytic by forgiving sins. He calls a tax collector to be his disciple while at the same time eating with other tax collectors and sinners. He heals on the sabbath. Great crowds begin to follow him. Jesus picks his disciples then returns home. Now here we are in Mark 3:20-35.

Remember the main point is being faithful to the will of God. In Genesis the serpent pulls Adam and Eve from doing what God wanted them to do. In Mark the serpent is replaced by two forces trying to pull Jesus off what God sent him to do. One is his own family who thinks he’s gone nuts and have come to stage an intervention. The other is the religious authority who claim he’s possessed.

First, lets tackle Jesus family. After appointing his 12 apostles, Jesus returns home. Crowds again gathered around Jesus to the point they could not even eat. His family heard of it and they went out to seize him, because they thought he was out of his mind. Did Jesus family actually think he was crazy or was it discomfort for all the attention and followers he was getting? Either way they believed the family needed to stage an intervention and went out to collect him.

If you read this account in Matthew and Luke they leave out the part that they came to collect Jesus and pull him from the work God has given him to do. We’d be left to think Jesus is just being rude and ignoring the family. Mark which was the first gospel written gives us the details.

Jesus family arrives and one of his followers says, your family is here looking for you. Jesus doesn’t do what many of us would expect. For him to greet his family with a warm embrace. Instead he looks around at the band of misfits, tax collectors and sinners, and says “Who are my mother and brohters? Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

Whether it was because they thought Jesus was nuts or afraid of the attention Jesus was getting, his family came to collect him and unintentionally pull him from the work God had given him to do.

The second pull was that of the religious leaders of the day, who began telling everyone he was possessed of Satan and that’s where he gets his power. The people who claim to work for God are actively trying to undermine the work of God through Christ. They are labeling Jesus work as the work of the devil. Was this an attempt to pressure Jesus to reform and stop hanging out with such scum? Was it an effort to undermine and mis label the work of God?

This was an effort to disrupt the will of God, by none other than the people who work in the temple, the house of God.

Jesus response to them, was the parable of the divided house. That house won’t stand, and the pronouncement of the unpardonable sin. The religious leaders should have recognized the work of God in Christ. Instead they actually call it the work of Satan. This is blaspheme of the Holy Spirit. To call something the work of Satan when it is actually the work of God.

Both of these outside pulls of family and the religious leaders was an attempt to pull Jesus off the work God had given him to do.

Mark 2:16–17 NRSV

16 When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 When Jesus heard this, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

How Can we Be Faithful

Jesus throughout his ministry is reaching out to those others would reject. Weather it’s the leper, the tax collector, or another class of sinner. Our job as the church, the body of Christ at work in the world, is to be like Jesus.

If Mark 2:13-17 were written today what would it look like? Who are the people the religious leaders of our day reject? Think on that for a moment. That’s where you find the will of God. Be faithful to it no matter who or what may pull you from it.