Sermon Tone Analysis

Great to be back together today as we continue our walk the Mark.

If you were with us last week, we looked at the beginning of chapter nine and witnessed this incredible mountain top experience that Jesus had along with Peter, James and John.

Just a s a quick recap.

The four of them went high up one of mountains where they were spending time praying together.

Then, all of a sudden, Jesus was “transfigured” or “metamorphosed.”

The text says that:

“…his clothes became radiant, intensely white as no one on earth could bleach them.”

Then Jesus was joined by Moses and Elijah, the great law-bringer and the great prophet, and they were talking about Jesus impending departure.

And as if that’s not enough, then the mountain was overshadowed by a cloud and the voice of God himself came and said:

“This is my beloved Son; Listen to Him.”

We said that this mountaintop experience was recorded for us for a few reasons:

We got a glimpse of Jesus’ true essence

"For a brief moment the veil of Jesus' humanity was lifted, and his true essence was allowed to shine through” - Kent Hughes

2) Moses (the founder of Isreal’s religious economy) and Elijah (the restorer of Israel’s economy) were the ultimate summary of the OT, and they were talking with, and presumably encouraging and strengthening Jesus to fulfill his mission.

Brings unity to the testaments

3) The presence of God, the shekinah glory of God showed up, something that hadn’t happened in ~600 years (since Ezekiel), and not only that, the humans that were on the mountaintop, didn’t die in God’s presence.

Tim Keller helpfully wrote (once everything had disappeared and it was just the disciples and Jesus:

This moment of quiet is Mark's way of saying:

Moses is gone, Elijah is gone, and Jesus is able to bridge the gap between God and humanity.

Jesus is able to give what Elijah couldn't give, what Moses couldn't give, what no one else can deliver.

Through Jesus, we can cross the gap into the very heart of reality.

Jesus is the temple and tabernacle to end all temple and tabernacles because he is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, the ultimate priest to point the way for all priests.

Keller goes on to say:

"When the cloud comes don, now only do the disciples not die, they're surrounded and embraced by the brilliance of God.

They hear God the Father speaking of his love for the Son, just as he did when Jesus was baptized at the beginning of Mark...James, Peter and John have experiences WORSHIP...Worship is a preview of the thing that all our hearts are longing for, whether we know it or not.

Which brings us to:

4) Because of Jesus, when we gather, we too can experience just a little piece, a “foretaste” a hint of the glory of God, because as we “worship” and we share in God’s love through song, scripture, being together, prayer, etc.” we can experience the love of God, and we can move beyond simply knowing/believing things about God, but also having an experience with Him.

Finally:

5) We need these collective mountaintop experiences.

Not only them, we can’t stay on the mountain (like Peter suggested by building houses for Jesus, Moses and Elijah), but we need them so that we can be reminded of the goodness of God, the love of God, our ultimate future with God and b strengthened to “go back down the mountain” which is where we find ourselves heading in today’s text.

Now one last thing before we move into today’s text.

These verses talk once again about demon possession, and point to a spiritual realm beyond all that we can see.

So if you’re here maybe for the first time, maybe exploring this church thing, this may come across as really weird if you’ve never heard anything about it before.

But I’d ask that maybe just go with it for this morning as we look at Jesus, and I’m happy to have further conversations about it afterwards or at a later time as well.

Let’s dive in:

“And when they came to the disciples,

they saw a great crowd around them,

and scribes arguing with them.

Jesus, Peter, James and John come back down the mountain to rejoin the other nine disciples.

Imagine the conversations that the four of them would have had on the way down?! We said last week it probably took the better part of the day to climb up the mountain, so it would have been a fair bit of time coming back down.

Have you ever had a “mountaintop type” experience with God?

Maybe at a summer camp or retreat, or outreach trip or even serving here in the Valley.

These experiences are moulding, they’re shaping, and often we return giddy from them, and just can’t wait to tell everyone about what we’ve learned or experienced.

That’s probably how Peter, James and John were feeling, blown away by this experience, and then maybe even more encouraged and challenged by the conversations they had with Jesus (which aren’t recorded here for us, it’s safe to assume Jesus said more things than what we have written down), while they were coming down the mountain.

But.

They get down the mountain, and into chaos.

Again, a “great crowd,” and confrontation between the scribes and the disciples.

And immediately all the crowd,

when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him.

And he asked them,

"What are you arguing about with them?"

If we skip ahead, or are familiar with this story, we know that among the crowd was a father who had brought his son hoping to bring him to Jesus.

But Jesus wasn’t there, so this father asked the disciples for help.

Something we need to remember, is that earlier in Mark, Jesus had given his disciples “authority to cast out demons (3:14-15), and they’s also been sent out without Jesus and “cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.”

(6:13) So what is being asked of them is not something they’ve never done before.

The other thing we see in these two verses is Jesus seeming to confront the crowd, which would have included the scribes.

Once again we need to put ourselves back in the first century to totally understand what’s happening here.

See, in those days the abilities of the followers lent credibility to the leader.

Maybe that’s still sort of the case today, but probably less so.

So, the fact that the disciples had failed to deal with the boy’s evil spirit led the scribes to deride them for their powerlessness, and the ascribe that same lack of power to Jesus himself.

Basically, as one commentator put it, the scribes were saying to the disciples “you’re all phonies, and so is your master!”

I picture Jesus in this moment posturing himself between his disciples and the crowd, something like a protective parent shielding their kids.

Jesus knows his guys.

He knows that they still don’t have everything figured out, so he steps in the gap.

But before Jesus question was answered:

And someone from the crowd answered him,

"Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute.

And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.

So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able."

Enter the father.

This father is desperate.

adds that he came and got on his knees before Jesus.

tells is that this is the mans only child.

A combination of the three gospels gives us a picture of the boys existence [Hughes]:

The demon seizes the boy (9:18)—the child screams ()—the spirit throws him to the ground, and he foams at the mouth.

He grinds his teeth and becomes stiff as a board ().

Many times he has been cast into a fire or water by the spirit (), so that he is covered with burn scars.

But even worse, the spirit has made him deaf and mute (, ).

He lived an aquarium-like existence.

He could see what was going on around his pathetic body, but he could not hear or speak.

When we have previously looked at parts of Mark with demon-possessed, we’ve noted that the goal of Satan, the devil, the adversary of God is to destroy those created in the image of God, humans.

Kent Hughes is helpful:

[this boy is] a perfect example of Satan’s motivation, which is to destroy the image of God in mankind—as we see also in the pathetic condition of the Gadarene maniac (who was even compelled to engage in self-mutilation, 5:1–5).

Satan is at war with the image of God, the Imago Dei.

Anything he can do to destroy this in man is for him, in his twisted thinking, a triumph over God.

The disciples tried to help the boy, but were unsuccessful because {spoiler alert} they weren’t praying.

For whatever reason, they’d come to the place where they thought they could simply take care of these spiritual battles all under their own power, perhaps having a sense of pride trickling in and clouding their vision.

They had underestimated the power of evil in the world.

It’s interesting (actually essential) to note that the father of the boy is the only one in this scene who is acknowledging his weakness and admitting that he doesn’t have what it takes to deal with the suffering and evil that he faces.

He’s our example (outside of Jesus) in this story.

And he answered them,

"O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you?

How long am I to bear with you?

Bring him to me."

This is a heartfelt, lament of a statement directed at Jesus’ disciples, he’s calling out their lack of faith, not their lack of power.

And they brought the boy to him.

And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.

And Jesus asked his father,

"How long has this been happening to him?"

And he said,