Mark No.6 The Band

Shout for joy and sing your praising to the King. Lift your voice and let your hallelujah ring. Come before His throne to worship and adore.

Enter joyfully now the presence of the Lord. You are my Creator, You are my Deliverer, You are my Receiver, You are Lord and You are my Healer. You are my Provider, You are now my Shepherd and my Guide.

Jesus, Lord and King, I worship You. Shout for joy and sing your praising to the King. Lift your voice and let your hallelujah ring.

Come before His throne to worship and adore. Enter joyfully now the presence of the Lord. You are my Creator, You are my Deliverer, You are my Receiver, You are Lord and You are my Healer.

You are my Provider, You are now my Shepherd and my Guide. Jesus, Lord and King, I worship You. We come to You, we listen to Your call.

We may receive from Him, we still hold our trust. Just listen to the melody. We work too hard for Him.

In faith we come to Him. The presence of the Lord moving in this place. Whatever your need, whatever your burden, whatever your heartache.

We come together in vain unless the Lord is here. We come not just to hear His word, though that's important. We come to recognize the presence of the King.

We want Him to meet the needs of everyone. To forgive our sins, to restore our integrity and dignity. To help those who are enfeebled by the passing of the years.

To find the grace and the courage to continue. To heal marriages, to heal bodies. To take the failures and by His grace to forgive and to turn those of us who feel so wretched into successors.

He's here to do this. This is not psychology, this is not mesmerism. This is the working through of the apostolic message which was designed to change communities.

Not just designed to enlarge our understanding of the being of God, but to enter into something of the power of God within our lives. So that we can give an expression to this world that we are the people of God. Lights that illuminate and salt that savor.

The church, the most important organism that there is without which society would crumble. We want to know that renewing power in our lives of the beloved Savior. Moving His spirit amongst us.

Let's turn to Mark's gospel. Have a look at the second chapter in verse 13. Once again Jesus went out beside the lake.

A large crowd came to Him and He began to teach them. As He walked along He saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax collector's booth. Follow me, Jesus told him and Levi got up and followed Him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Him and His disciples. For there were many who followed Him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw Him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked His disciples, why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners? On hearing this Jesus said to them, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. I wonder if Jesus had a chuckle in His voice when He said that. Verse 13 of the third chapter.

Jesus went up on the mountainside and called to Him those He wanted. And they came to Him. He appointed twelve, designating them apostles, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.

These are the twelve He appointed. Simon, to whom He gave the name Peter. James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John.

To them He gave the name Boanerges, which means sons of thunder. Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot. Or Judas of Kereoth, you could translate it, who betrayed Him.

Well, I commenced and we've already had the tremendous input of Tim also in this particular series, but when I had the privilege of opening it up on the first occasion that we looked into Mark's gospel, I mentioned Nelson Mandela and said that South Africa is going through a new opportunity, the possibility of the rebirth of the nation, as she puts on one side certain things which have perhaps caused her problems in the last few decades. Now, at the beginning of this gospel you find that there's a new start highlighted in the opening verse. It speaks of our beloved Lord Jesus who comes in the beginning of the gospel to proclaim the message which actually is involved in His life as well as part of His preaching.

For Jesus not only proclaims the gospel, He is the gospel. And He comes to preach this message when Israel is in a desperate condition and if ever a nation needed to be reborn, it was that nation. And Israel, I reminded you, was actually federated as a nation when she moved out of Egypt and came to the promised land.

And it's interesting that you read in the opening verses of this chapter, the first of Mark's gospel, that there was a voice crying out from the wilderness and the voice was that of John Baptist. And Jesus, who will be representative not only of all Jews but representative of total humanity, He moves out into the wilderness. He's baptized by John and then in the wilderness He goes through this ordeal of being tempted by the evil one and then He comes back into Israel, into Palestine, preaching the gospel.

And the gospel is about a new kingdom. He is the king and He's looking for citizens. And as He is identified with the sins of those who are going to become members of His kingdom, so with a message and a method, He now looks for the missing ingredient and that is men who will continue His ministry when He is no longer present.

You see, the ministry of our Lord Jesus is revolutionary. It is a matter of life and death for the Jewish people. It is a matter of life and death for the world.

For God has no other word to speak to our world than He speaks through Jesus Christ. And what He speaks is the message of the kingdom. And He says that believing Jew and believing Gentile can be born again, federated into this international community of people who acknowledge God through the Lord Jesus Christ and can fulfill their destiny in terms of why they were brought into this world, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

Now, in those days, our beloved Lord did not have such modern media as, say, Fever Radio or Christian publicity organization to carry His word on the ether or to put it down in print form so that it could be published in books and handed out in tracts by the thousands. Inimical to the ministry of Jesus then, who has a method and a message is men. And I use that generically because I'm using it also to embrace the need for women to come into the kingdom.

And one of the first things that you find our beloved Lord doing when He returns from the wilderness is He calls a couple of men to be His disciples. And then, later on, He adds to the number. And you find in the 13th verse through to the 17th of the 2nd chapter and the 13th verse through to the 19th of the 3rd chapter an illustration of the call of Jesus upon a disciple and also the listing of the full complement of those who would come so close to the Lord Jesus.

And when He has returned to glory, will continue His ministry to the extent that it was said of them that they are as the body of Christ on earth. To use C.S. Lewis' daring phrase, they are little Christs. To use Paul's phrase, they are in Christ.

The ministry and life of Jesus perpetuated through the men and women who are part of His band. Well, I suggest to you from the 13th through to the 17th verses of the 2nd chapter you get what I will call a role model. Not a role model of necessity in terms of classic discipleship but a role model as to how Jesus goes about calling disciples.

And from the 13th through to the 19th verse of the 3rd chapter, you've got a role call. It's almost like a teacher coming into class and opening the register and calling out and pupils saying, yes sir, or yes mom, or whatever they do today, I'm going back a few years. A role model? Isn't it interesting that when you get to the 13th through to the 17th verse of the 2nd chapter that actually you don't find much information about this man who is going to be added to the complement of disciples.

So far there are two, now comes number three. But the spotlight is not on Matthew. Matthew is a tax collector.

And Matthew, well we know quite a bit about him by pulling information from the synoptics, that is the gospels either side of Mark. But it's not so much Matthew per se, Matthew as a person who is here underlying. It is the summoner and the summons rather than the summoned.

That's why I say here is a role model. You see, you come into the tab this morning and you're just about beginning to pick up where the preacher is going and you're already disconnecting yourself from the main thrust of what he has to say. A disciple of Jesus, not me, because well, disciples of Jesus, that sounds a little bit too spiritual.

Disciples of Jesus, that sounds something like the type of attitude I would need if I was going to go into a monastery or a convent. Because people have clearly wrong views about Jesus in the 20th century from what Jesus taught about discipleship in the first century. In fact we have wrong views in terms of what it means to be religious.

We make a distinction between the secular and the sacred, the Bible never does. We make a distinction between the clergy and the laity, the Bible never does. What the Bible indicates is that when our Lord was on earth equipped with a message and with a method, the message, the kingdom, the method of preaching, he needed men.

And the way Jesus selected his men, he and me, in those days is precisely the same way in which he selects men and women today because he needs bands of disciples, he really does. Well, this sort of role model in terms of the summons and the summonser, how does Jesus go about selecting people? Well here he chooses the man that everybody loved to hate. Now I'm not suggesting that all civil servants are like that.

But I mean this fellow Matthew, can you imagine Peter and John, they've just been linked into the discipleship of Jesus Christ, okay? Now here is the civil servant who's in Capernaum, the possibility is that he was taxing fishermen for fish that they got out of Capernaum, out of the sea, out of the lake of Capernaum or Galilee as it's sometimes called. I mean I don't expect that if they had a card vote, they would have thought that Jesus got it right in selecting number three, this man who'd been taxing them, this man who was hated so much. But it was this fellow who Jesus called to belong to him, not the righteous sinners Jesus came to save.

Then, now. This man that everybody loved to hate received a call that only Jesus could issue. Follow me, Jesus told him.

And Levi got up and followed him. You cannot become a Christian unless you hear the voice of the Lord Jesus speaking to you. You say, now how does that happen? Well, maybe you go through a period in your life of utter discontent.

Maybe like me when you look into a mirror you think to yourself, if only people knew what I was really like. Is there not some outside agency that can step into my life and right the wrong and give me back integrity and credibility? And the answer is there is. And you would not be asking that question unless by the strange providence of God's grace he was saying to you, you can follow me.

You see, the thing is that the person who never becomes a Christian never thinks about becoming. He, she never actually recognizes the hunger. What creates the hunger? I say although you can't understand it at that time, you can't theologize it like this, the very hunger, the very desire comes through the working of Jesus' spirit within you.

He still speaks and calls men to himself today. Do you have that sort of desire? This man that everybody loved to hate received a call that only Jesus could issue. I mean one moment there he is looking after his tax affairs and the next moment he's following Jesus.

It really is quite extraordinary. Jesus speaks to him in such a fashion that everything that he's hung on to up to that point now becomes secondary of utter unimportance. He leaves off and follows Jesus, the man that everybody loved to hate receiving a call that only Jesus could issue to a fellowship meal that only Jesus could throw.

Now look at that quite carefully, will you, in the actual text. Here is our Lord and he's called Matthew to follow him and Matthew seemingly, or Levi as he's called here in Mark's gospel, he throws a party but actually when you read it carefully you discover that the host is not so much the tax collector that was but our beloved Lord. I mean the pivot is round him.

When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees, verse 16, saw him, Jesus, eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples why does he eat with the tax collectors and sinners? And then Jesus takes responsibility, verse 17, and says I've not come to call the righteous but the sinners. Now listen, don't you understand that in the Old Testament and played out particularly more fully in the New Testament is the concept that the king who comes in his kingdom spreads a banquet for his citizens. I mean in the book of Revelation, chapter 3, our Lord Jesus talks about coming and supping with men and women.

In Matthew's gospel in chapter 8, the reference is made of our beloved Lord at the end time being seated with Abraham and the patriarchs and all the redeemed community and they're having a party. And here anticipating this is our Lord seated with the man who others loved to hate and having meal fellowship with him. For to this day in Semitic communities in the Middle East if you spread a table and invite someone in, you're not just feeding them you're extending your fellowship, you're saying you are part of me, you are as one of my family.

And this is how our beloved Lord called Matthew, a role model. You see it's not so much Matthew you see here. It's not so much Levi that you're meant to envision.

It's yourself. Unlikely? Absolutely astonished that he should have an interest in you. Amazing grace.

How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour's blood? Died he for me who caused his pain? If you lose the sense of astonishment that he loved you, I wonder to what extent you are in a condition of grace. Here is a role model.

But then I move you on. Because our Lord having now got in the bag so to speak three unlikely men, the third being the most unlikely of all thus far, he now goes to the mountainside at the back of Capernaum and there he calls others to flesh out the number that he needs for his apostolic college. Jesus chapter 3 verse 13.

Went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted and they came to him. Notice first of all the location. A mountainside.

Now remember because I've tried to spell this out and you've got it also in Tim's addresses too, that Mark is not working in a vacuum. Mark is a Jew and our Lord is a Jew and the whole of the gospels have got a Jewish scenario. So you've got to interpret them through the prism of the Old Testament.

As Israel was born in the wilderness and as Jesus comes out of the wilderness for the new Israel to be reborn as a result of his offer of the gospel. So you remember that in the Old Testament mountains played a great part, not so. And no more than Sinai.

And no greater figure or hardly any to touch Moses in Old Testament times. When you go back beyond Moses to the patriarchs, you have in front of you the patriarch Jacob. How many sons does he have? Twelve.

Twelve tribes of Israel. Our Lord calls not eleven disciples, not thirteen disciples, but twelve disciples. Twelve groupings within Israel for the holy nation.

Twelve disciples call to the mountain to receive their orders from the king in terms of the kingdom. And a realization that the king who has a message and a method also needs men. Our Lord goes up to the mountain.

And you'll find him going up to the mountain on several occasions during his ministry. Which mountain is utterly unimportant? What is important is that here is our Lord almost with an Old Testament role. Finding on the mountain the men who are to follow him.

Discovering on the mountain that recapitulation of past glory when he's transfigured. Would you remember? The mountain. The wilderness.

Constantly these feature in Mark's gospel. For our Lord comes from Judaism in which the wilderness and the mountains play such a great part in its history. The location? Well, what about the selection? As I've mentioned, not eleven nor thirteen, but twelve.

And these men, they're varied, are they not? There are some professionals, a couple I would argue, but it seems as though the majority have got a working class bias. Here's an amalgam then of the professionals and the business people. Here is one who, if you understand the word zealot as indicating nationalism, a nationalistic party, who was given to the overthrow of Rome.

Here, that's Simon the Zealot. Here is another, Levi, who's just been called to belong to our Lord Jesus. And here he's referred to in verse eighteen by his name Matthew.

Who, far from being a nationalist, is a quizling. One has planned for the overthrow of Rome, the other is collaborating to sustain Roman practices. One of these disciples, he seems to be an impetuous sort.

Another, a meditative, contemplative, depressive man. I refer to Thomas. Bring them all together.

They're, if you like, a cross-section of any society. Bound together by two things, the magnetism of Jesus and the courage on their part to go up to the mountain to have audience with the Lord. The location, the mountain, the selection, we've looked at without going through the names.

The intention, why did Jesus bring these men together? The answer, surely, can be worked out in terms of the first verse, first and second of this passage. Jesus, verse thirteen, Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted. And they came to him, he appointed twelve, designating them apostles.

And then, continuing, that they, verse fourteen, that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. The intention was for them to be with him where he was and to go for him wherever he bade. There would be two characteristics about their discipleship.

One would be action and the other would be unction. For action, there would be a task to perform. In terms of unction, the power with which to do it would be supplied.

They were to go with the ministry of Jesus as their model and with the authority of the Lord Jesus as their court of appeal. They would reproduce what he had to say and declare it in the same power that also belonged to him. They would be kingdom men.

What a description. This motley little crew, kingdom men, twelve including a dud. Do you mean that God will pour all his purposes for future days into the lap, so to speak, into the psyche, into the souls of these men? And the answer is yes.

Because when kingdom men are empowered with the Holy Spirit, when they have the authority of the Lord Jesus behind them, they are utterly unstoppable. And it's from these almost primitive beginnings that our Lord Jesus sets up the foundation for his kingdom. These will be the men who will go into various parts of the world, who will circumnavigate the globe, who will penetrate society in their day, so that at the end of the century it is being said of these men and their like, they have turned the world upside down.

I sometimes think that the greatest proof of Christianity is the weakness of its apologetics. You say, what do you mean by that? I unscramble my statement. If I had been engaged in this sort of activity, wanting to create a new organization, I doubt whether one of these guys would have ever gone through the screening process.

But God chooses the weak things of this world. He chooses the things that are despised. He chooses the things that seem to have little potentiality.

And by his divine grace he uses such and releases them in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that the only explanation for the achievement is it is God manifesting his power through broken lives. As it was then, so it is today. Away with this idea that church is for successful middle class or high class people.

That is a load of rhubarb. The church of Jesus Christ is for those who have failed. The church of Jesus Christ is for those who have come to an end of themselves.

The man who they love to hate is called to be disciple number three. Disciple one and two have actually got a great deal going for them in terms of the influential charts in Jerusalem. And from this particular second narrative to which I've drawn your attention, you discover that time and time again when reference is made to the followers of Jesus, it is in that corporate term, the twelve.

Jesus with the twelve. The twelve this, the twelve that, the twelve the other. Because the twelve are vital to Jesus who has a message and a method and he's now got men.

So let's come to some conclusions. Let's engage in what I'll call a role review. We've had a look at a role model and a role call.

Let's review the role, some of the things we've already touched on. The choice is astonishing but it is Jesus' choice. Look at verse thirteen, chapter three.

Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted. Get exactly the same idea in the second chapter concerning Levi. As he, Jesus, verse fourteen, walked along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax collector's booth and Jesus says, follow me.

Lloyd-Jones says, you and I would probably never have called most of the apostles who were fishermen and unlearned men. We would have called a series of men noted as philosophers and so forth. Now, Jesus still calls men and women who recognize themselves as being sick.

This is a slightly humorous comment in the seventeenth verse of the second chapter. Who am I interested in? Well, it's not that healthy. Do you go to a doctor if you're healthy? Do you say, hey doctor, have a look at my muscles, see my chest, check my heart.

You know, doctor, I really am the most healthy person that you've got on your list. You're absolutely blessed by having somebody like me. Well, he'd probably want to check your mental health even if your physical one was okay.

I mean, you don't go to a doctor if you feel healthy, it's when you're in difficulty. And Jesus says, that is the yardstick by which I judge potential disciples. Those who need me, those who are inadequate, those who've blown it, those who've failed.

I've not come to call the righteous but sinners. An astonishing choice. And these men, Levi and the rest of the bunch, they will now move into what I will call a radical change.

I'll tell you something about the United States of America. Two phenomena. One, they drive on the wrong side of the road.

And secondly, they don't get worried about it. A.W. Tozer says, The new disciple is like the man who learns to drive in a country where traffic moves on the left side of the road and suddenly finds himself in another and forced to drive on the right. He must unlearn his old habit and learn a new one.

And more serious than all, he must learn in heavy traffic. And that was a challenge for those disciples. And it's a challenge for you and me.

To drive on the other side of the road. In heavy traffic. A radical change.

A remarkable challenge. These men are going to hazard everything for Jesus. I mean, you take Matthew.

In one sense, I think that his call was more difficult than Peter's and John's, don't you? I mean, here is Peter and his brother and Jesus says, Well, leave off your nets, fellas. And so they came and later on they go back. And even after the resurrection of our Lord, you find them back.

Nothing wrong with that. But as far as Matthew was concerned, he literally burned his boats behind him. I mean, he would never regain the job that he lost.

For Matthew, it was utterly radical. But the challenge was clear cut. He was going to leave all behind him with no possibility whatsoever of returning.

And that is the basis of discipleship. Taking up the cross and following Jesus almost in blind faith. But you know something? When Matthew laid down his job of assessing men for life, he would be given a better job.

Blessing men for eternity. When he left his pen and stopped writing the accounts in Capernaum, it would be later on to take up his pen and start to write a glorious account of the life of Jesus who came not to tax men, but to bless them with his grace and to make it possible for sins to be forgiven and for them to enter into a faith relationship with God. Charles Spurgeon had two sons.

I have a picture of one of them in my office. And on one occasion, Spurgeon wrote to one of his boys and he said, If God meant you to be a missionary, I would never want you to be a millionaire. God has always got a great job to do.

Far greater than anything that you could have conceived of in terms of its importance prior to Jesus calling you. It may not be actually a shift of circumstances, but a heightening of your worthwhileness in what you're doing. You may be a single person.

You may be a mother. You may be an accountant. You may be someone who God is going to pluck out of worthing and take you to another country to work for him.

Really, it doesn't matter the way that God does what he does. The constant is this. That when you are called to follow the Lord Jesus, he will take you as you are and he will lift you.

And he will give you dignity. And he will give to you a sense that what you are doing in this earth counts for something. Even if you're an older person, coping with the enfeebling of the years and maintaining a good testimony.

I was telling one of our brothers yesterday, you preach to me far more than I ever preach to you. Far more eloquently. For you give me an illustration of how you cope with the deteriorating condition of your wife.

And remain true to her and true to God. The ennobling that the Lord Jesus brings, making the humdrum and the mundane have spiritual and eternal significance. So you see how blessed we are that we were able to look at this narrative.

Here is the role model. Matthew, who he was, utterly important. He stands for a type and Jesus still takes that despised type.

Here is the listing of the full complement of disciples. As one day God will call the role of all those for whom Jesus died. And today we've been able to assess our own attitude.

Our own response to the call of Christ. Is he your Lord? Is he your Saviour? May it be. You're in his bond.

Amen. Take me, mold my life and make me Into a child who longs to stay by your side And learn of your ways For when I sought you, Lord, you heard me You delivered me from fear And by your grace and mercy You have brought us both so near I want to kneel before your feet, Lord And to gaze upon your face For the God who asks for my life Loves me completely and always My heart I want to give you my heart In service to the Lord, the one who cares To ask for my life Take me, mold my life and make me Into a child who longs to stay by your side And learn of your ways For when I sought you, Lord, you heard me You delivered me from fear And by your grace and mercy You have brought us both so near I want to kneel before your feet, Lord And to gaze upon your face For the God who asks for my life Loves me completely and always For when I sought you, Lord, you heard me You delivered me from fear And by your grace and mercy You have brought us both so near I want to kneel before your feet, Lord And to gaze upon your face For the God who asks for my life Loves me completely and always Father, we thank you for your grace The man who loved the man that others love to hate Thank you that we find ourselves in the latter category But loved by the Lord Jesus Thank you, Lord Amen God bless you