Mark 1:16-2:17
Listening guide
Sermon
What 2 or 3 things did you discover you’d like to set right in your life?
I bet we all have things. For me, one thing I said, I’d like to work on my boundaries and clear up my roles. People have told me, I have a number of roles in my life where I’m
And some people say, that’s not a big deal.
All of us have things we’d like to see made right.
I just want you to have the right person make the right things right.
What do I mean?
Let me give you an example. Take a dishwasher.
For most dishwasher problems in my house, my kids are more than capable.
When the countertop is full and we don’t have dishes for dinner, they can handle that. Run the dishwasher.
When it stops with 1:47 flashing on the clock, they can handle that. They push the start button. The toddler paused it.
If we load it and supposedly start it then come back later and all the dishes are dirty, someone forgot to push the start button twice.
But what if the dishes don’t come clean? What’s the problem? How do you make that right?
You might think, there isn’t enough soap. So you add more soap. The dishes still don’t come clean so that’s not actually the problem.
You might think, I need to scrape the dishes before I put them in.
You might think, I need to reorganize the dishes. So you move them around.
The thing is, none of that is actually the problem, and while what you do might help a little it doesn’t actually fix the problem.
When the dishwasher stops getting the dishes clean, the kids know to get me and tell me. Why? Because my kids know with our dishwasher the problem is much deeper. It means the food is blocking the arms. So they call me to take it all apart. Then I have the use the air compressor and blow out the arms.
Someone has to make the right stuff right.
That’s the thing. You have to have someone to make the right stuff right. If you’re dishwasher is plugged and you dump more soap in it, you aren’t going to fix the problem. You’re going to make mess.
Adventure
This is what we want to get today.
In talking to many of you, I get the sense that we’ve got big, hard problems.
What I really need is someone to get the right stuff right.
I’m talking about someone to fix not what I think is the problem, but what is actually the problem.
What is the right stuff to make right?
Development
That’s what we want to see today. Jesus is not just someone to make stuff right. He makes the right stuff right. This is what Jesus does in the beginning period of his ministry as Mark reports.
To help us see this, let me give us a quick overview of the first chapter and a half or so.
Mark 1:9-15 God presents his Son Jesus as the one with whom he is “well-pleased”. He says, here is how you respond: repent. Then Jesus gets busy.
Mark 1:16-20 calls disciples
Mark 1:21-28 he drives out an evil spirit from someone in the synagogue
Mark 1:29-34 he heals many sick people and drives out demons at his mother in law’s house
Mark 1:35-39 prayer but notice “driving out demons” at the end
Mark 1:40-45 heals a leper
Mark 2:1-12 forgives a man and heals his paralysis
Mark 2:13-17 eats with tax collectors and sinners
What do you notice? First, who. Who did Jesus work for.
The demon possessed man was in the synagogue. He was at least
Sick people
Leper
Paralytic man and his believing friends
Tax collectors
He did all this for both religious and irreligious. It wasn’t like one group of people got his help and another group of people didn’t. Or one group of people needed
Jesus works for both religious and irreligious people. Everybody needs his help. Everybody is worthy of his help.
Second, what. What is he doing.
Sick, leper, paralytic = external, physical
Evil spirit, tax collector = internal, spiritual
Jesus fixes both physical, external problems and internal or spiritual issues.
Here is what I notice. Except for 2 times, as Mark tells us the beginning of Jesus ministry or work, Jesus was busy making things right. He fixed problems.
There were clearly some things he wasn’t doing.
he wasn’t making money, he wasn’t raising an army, he wasn’t building his platform. Not all bad things at the right time. Just not his main things.
I’m not saying he wasn’t teaching. He was. That was mentioned a few times. We don’t know the content. I think it is fair to say he wasn’t advancing his own agenda. New politician, CEO, leader, they usually explain and advance their own agenda.
Jesus fixes problems, both external ones and deep interior ones.
Couple of commentators point out what Jesus does here. From the start of his work, Jesus deals with physical issues and the spiritual reality behind those issues. That’s what we call sin.
What is sin? Common understanding sin is disobedience. That’s right, but that is not enough.
Demon possessed guy
Paralyzed – did he disobey? No. But at the same time, his paralysis is not okay.
Leper
Sin is not conforming to God. What you do or who you are . Let me give us an illustration.
I’m sure some of you have smashed playdoh through a mold to form it into something.
The playdoh gets remade from a blob into something that is a specific shape and size.
This is what sin is. Not just I did something wrong or We see our sin when we realize that
Now, God’s mold definitely includes more variety, more beauty, and more differences than a playdoh mold. Every little thing that is pushed through a playdoh mold comes out the same shape and size. God doesn’t make us all be exactly the same. But whenever your life is formed be like someone or something other than God, that’s sin.
You know what this might feel like? Think about something like peer pressure.
If your life is formed to be like and shaped to be like anyone other than God, that’s sin.
All these events, and forgiveness in particular, show that our problems are not just that we disobey God. Certainly that. But even more, we’re being shaped and formed and molded by all kinds of things. The deeper problem is that we aren’t conforming to God.
This is the right thing to make right.
He closes this section and he says, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (verse 17)
Do you know what that might look like?
CS Lewis tells this story of a little boy named Eustace. He is an awful boy. He is selfish, mean, and nobody can get along with him. He hates everybody and everybody hates him.
But he finds himself magically taking a trip on a boat. At one point, the ship lands on an island, and Eustace wanders off the boat to find a cave. The cave is full of diamonds and rubies and gold and Eustace shouts, I'm going to be rich. And he starts thinking delightfully evil thoughts. He thinks how now that he is rich he will be able to get back at everyone who hurt him. Like a lot of little boys, he thinks, “Well, she did it first!” Eustace eventually falls asleep on the pile of gold. And because he falls asleep on all that dragon gold with evil thoughts in his head, he turns into a dragon.
And it’s awful. He wakes up. He can’t get on the boat with the others. He can’t get off the island. He has to hunt and chase down his own food and he burns everything. Everyone is afraid of him. He can’t do anything with the gold. The only thing he can do is kill and scare people. No love, no friends, no happiness. Nothing. He’s depressed.
One day the lion Aslan shows up and says, do you want to get out of these dragon clothes? Okay, come undress and jump in this pool. Eustace realizes he has to take off the scales. So he tries. He tries to rip them off. He gnaws and he tears and he pulls. He finally gets a layer off, but sadly he realizes he still has another skin. He tries again. And another skin.
He is heartbroken. The lion says, you’re going to have to let me undress you.
Eustace says he was very afraid of his claws. … The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like bill oh, but it is such fun to see it coming away. … He peeled the beastly stuff right of just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt.... Then he caught hold of me and threw me into the water. … Then I saw all the pain had gone. And I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again." (C.S. Lewis, Voyage of the Drawn Treader, 89-91)
This is what Jesus means when he says, I’ve come to call sinners. He says, I’ve come to take you as someone conformed to this world and its sin and I'm going to reform you, remake you to be like God.
You and I might think we can make the right things right if we get just a little bit of help or work a little harder.
But we had to let Jesus come in with his claws and go all the way to our hearts and minds and guts to remold us.
That’s what he did for us.
He was flogged
Jews were flogged 39 times – 40 times minus 1. Jesus was flogged by the Romans. He was flogged outside of God’s control.
He says there is nothing I would not go through so that you could be shaped into God’s image. No matter how bad it is in your life, no matter how much sin has to be pulled out, he says, I will go through it all
He was formed by sin at his very deepest, all so that sin would no longer form you and me. He lost his shape as a son of God so that you and I could be shaped like God.
Bottom line: Jesus makes the right stuff right. Jesus ruins the very form of sin in our lives.
Action
Friends, I know that sin has messed up a whole bunch of our lives.
I’m hurt as I listen to you and I hear what sin has done to you, to your families, to your workplaces. I know that we are so much more formed in our lives by sin than by God. You know what, I say it is time for that to end.
It is time for our lives to be formed by the one who lost his form to sin so that we can have the form of God.
I asked you in the beginning to have those 2 or three problems that you would like to have made right.
Just dream of this – what would it look like if just one of those problems was not formed by sin but reformed by God.
What is it going to look like
What you see, with eyes of faith, is what it looks like when God makes the right things right.