The Way of the King | Mark 1, 5, 8
Brad O’Dell | April 6, 2025

Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Mark 1. That’s where we’re going to be this morning, Mark 1. What we’re doing in this sermon is and we’re starting just a short little series that’s going to lead us up into the teaching that we’re doing in Holy Week. So for Holy Week, starting next Sunday at the triumphal entry and through the week (Easter Sunday being the Sunday after that), we’re going to be using Mark’s Gospel.

What I wanted to do this morning is maybe a bit of a unique message in that I just want to take a few different scenes from Mark’s Gospel. These are just stories, little dramas that we get that present Jesus to us and introduce us to him. And what I want us to do is catch what Mark wants us to see so far in his gospel before we enter the Holy Week narratives that we’ll cover in the coming weeks.

So here’s the outline. We’re just going to talk about:

1. The Person of Jesus
2. The Salvation of Jesus
3. The Way of Jesus

I want you to notice something. If you count it up, there are a lot of verses listed up there. We’re going to read them all, and I want you to kind of be aware of that. These are all stories, like I said. Sometimes when there’s a lot of Scripture it can make you glaze over or check out or be overwhelming. We are not going to try to get all the stuff out of all these verses and teach everything in there. That’s not what we’re going to try to do. We’re going to try to get into the narrative. We’re going to try to enter the drama a little bit of what has been happening in the Gospel of Mark, so that we are kind of with Jesus and the disciples, as it were, as it comes into the triumphal entry next Sunday.

So, even as we’re reading through some of these, maybe it’s helpful for you to not try to follow along in your Bible or the screen, but just kind of close your eyes and just kind of try to envision the story, because Mark communicates as a storyteller, and he’s trying to do something for us, help us see who Jesus is as we go.

So we’re going to be in Mark 1:21. The first little account we’re going to hit is in verse 21. Before we read that, I just want to catch you up in the Gospel of Mark to this point. There are only twenty verses before this, but a lot has happened. Mark is a really fun Gospel to read. Everything happens so fast in the way that Mark tells it as a storyteller.

When it starts out, John the Baptist is already on the scene. Right? There’s no birth narratives, there’s no genealogy, there’s no backstory in Mark. John the Baptist, he’s just here, and he’s preaching. He’s in the middle of his ministry, and he is the promised Elijah, the new Elijah who’s going to prepare the way for the Messiah.

Before we’ve really gotten much of an introduction to John the Baptist, just a few verses in, the Messiah, he’s already here. The one who’s going to replace John the Baptist, he’s already here, and he’s being baptized by John in the Jordan River. And the heavens are torn open, and God the Father is speaking audibly: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” and we’re astounded by the scene.

But before we even get to get into it, boom, Jesus is gone. Now he’s out in the wilderness, and he’s there for forty days being tempted by Satan, and just as suddenly, boom, he’s back, and he’s preaching, and he’s preaching a very direct message. He’s just saying, “The kingdom of God is here. Let’s repent and believe.” It’s almost like if you imagine it, you’re like, “Woah. Repent of what? Believe who? What’s going on? What kingdom is here?” Right? It’s happening so fast, it’s almost the pace of the narrative.

Then it’s like as Jesus is preaching he just looks to his side and he sees some guys fishing. He just says, “Hey, stop fishing for fish, and won’t you follow me and come fish for men?” And you can see them holding their nets, and they just say, “Okay!” And they drop their nets, and they go with him.

Then he goes down the coast, and he finds a few other fishermen. He said, “You guys too, get over here.” And they said, “Okay,” and they leave.

Now Jesus has got a crew, and they’re charging forward, and they’re on mission…and all that happens in the first twenty verses, right? I mean, it is just action-packed.

Mark is writing his gospel this way for a reason. That’s why I wanted to start out like this. Mark is trying to tell us something in this dynamic writing style, and that’s this: “Something big is happening. Something new is here. Someone important is here, and he’s shaking things up. Pay attention, because things are happening, and it matters for you.” The world is about to change, and he wants to capture us with that dynamism that happens when Jesus comes on the scene.

That’s kind of the point of the gospel of Mark. Mark is very focused on telling us who Jesus is, and he is presented some through Jesus’ teaching, but not so much teaching as the story of Jesus, these scenes, these interactions with people in the life of Jesus. Who Jesus is, and because of who Jesus is, that should matter for you in your life.

So that’s all that’s happened so far in the first twenty verses, and now we pick up in this first tone-setting scene in Mark 1:21. It reads like this—I’m going to read through a little of it, explain, and then kind of read through other portions as we progress through.

“And they went into Capernaum, and immediately [that’s Mark’s word] on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.”

Now, this is pretty common in that day and age. Jesus isn’t doing anything unique just by going and teaching in a synagogue. The synagogues were a little different than the temple. The temple was the realm of the priest, and the priests are the ones who ministered in the temple. Only they had access to certain parts of the temple. Only the high priest had access to other parts of the temple. But the synagogues are a little more open. Traveling scribes come in and they teach, and it’s more like a church service for the common people throughout Israel in their towns.

So now these rulers of the synagogue, who actually don’t do much of the teaching, they just kind of facilitate some of these traveling scribes coming in, or maybe even some of the lay people in the town doing some teaching. So here is Jesus, doing what scribes and rabbis do in that day. He steps in, and he’s going to teach a little bit that day. But his teaching, that’s where the normalcy really breaks down. His teaching is unlike anything they’ve ever heard, “for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.”

See, the scribes, when they taught, they essentially were just reporting what other people had said about the word of God. It was kind of dry. There wasn’t much unction to it, as it were, and there wasn’t much calling to it. They were just saying, “Okay, here’s the Bible passage, and this is what Rabbi Hillel has said about this passage. And Rabbi Gamaliel actually says this is representative of this. And Rabbi Eliezer, he actually has said that this is what we should take out of it,” and they’re just kind of talking like this, so the people know, and they say, “Okay, use your wisdom to apply that in your life.”

But Jesus doesn’t teach like that. He steps up and he says, “You have heard it said to you this and this, but I say to you today, this.” And he says it with authority, and people feel it, not only in his verbiage, but also in his person that is communicating with authority that’s unlike anything they’ve ever heard.

As people are kind of astonished and coming to terms with this new teaching and how different it is, chaos erupts right here in the synagogue, and this is how it reads.

“Immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.’ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him.”

You can imagine just this chaos scene; everything erupts. Here’s a man screaming. They don’t even know what Jesus said, but they know he looked at him, said a word, and a demon just threw this guy to the ground, and then screamed and came out of him, and then it’s just silence.

“What just happened? And who is this man, that even the unclean spirits respond to him?” That’s what they say.

“And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, ‘What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.”

Jesus has come on the scene, and something new is here, and new things are happening. You see, the main point of what Mark wants to draw attention to early in his Gospel is that Jesus is the one with authority. That’s who he is. That word is repeated twice: “authority.” He has a teaching of authority, but also he has authority in his personage, such that when situations of need come to him, he responds and things happen because he is the one with authority.

This is a big theme in the Gospel of Mark, this idea of authority, and we’re going to try to trace it a little bit today in the sermon to see some different examples of it. But this is what Mark opens up to us: Jesus is the one with authority. He is God’s anointed one. He is God’s beloved Son whom God will speak audibly from heaven to verify. He is the Lord. He is the King.

I just want to take this from this first little instance, the first little scene we get from the Gospel of Mark that we’re covering today—a couple questions that we might ask ourselves.

Do we walk before Jesus as those who are under authority, who are under the authority figure? Do we treat his word or his teaching as authoritative in our lives? You know, I think what can happen is we can know that Jesus is this person, but we can also fall into treating him casually. I think in our day and age, we treat most authority figures casually.

You know, “Hey, don’t call me Mr. O’Dell; that’s my father. Just call me Brad.” You know, “Hey, don’t call me Professor so-and-so; don’t call me Doctor so-and-so; that makes me feel old. It makes me feel too official. Just call me Steve. I’m just Steve.” Right?

We do this. Most of you, if you work in a job where you have a boss, you probably just call your boss by his first name instead of Mr. or Mrs. (last name).

We’re a culture that treats authority casually, maybe for a lot of good reasons. Maybe there’s a correction that we are trying to establish. We’re also a culture that treats authority with skepticism a lot of times, sometimes properly, for good reasons, because that authority has been misused and abused in some ways by others; maybe improperly, also, and we have an over-skepticism to it.

But I think what happens is this can kind of sneak into some of our disposition toward Jesus, and we don’t really know how to respond to an authority figure. We don’t know how to sit as people under one who has the authority in our lives. We don’t have lords in our society. We don’t have kings in our society. These are foreign concepts to us, and I wonder if some of this dynamic sneaks into where we just treat Jesus with a casualness. He’s mostly just a buddy. He’s mostly just a friend. He gets us. We get him. And we can be a little lax in our relationship with Jesus.

I think sometimes we can have that same dynamic before the word of God. Yes, we understand that the word of God is authoritative, but sometimes our approach to the word of God doesn’t really communicate that. You know, we’re kind of checked out, we’re thinking about other things. “This is kind of important, but I also kind of have other important things to do in my life and focus on.” Maybe there are parts that really fill up our hearts and motivate us and fill us with joy when we receive those, but then we get to other parts and they challenge us and we kind of just gloss over those and we’re like, “I’ll do something with that later,” and we just kind of let it fall by the wayside. There’s a casualness that can come into our walk with the Lord.

I think it’s just worth asking, as we see how Mark wants us to see that Jesus is the one with authority, where we fall into treating Jesus a little casually in our lives, and see if we can grow in that.

So that’s this opening presentation. Jesus is the one with authority.

2. The Salvation of Jesus

Now we get to see how this authority plays out in some different scenes. Go over to Mark 5. We’re going to read all of Mark 5. It’s a long passage, but again, these are fun stories to read. Just try to imagine the stories. Try to imagine the scenes as we go.

“They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’ For he was saying to him, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ And Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion, for we are many.’ And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, ‘Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.’ So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.

“The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. And he did not permit him but said to him, ‘Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.’ And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

“And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.’ And he went with him.

“And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, ‘If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.’ And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, “Who touched me?”’ And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’

“While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?’ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, ‘Talitha cumi,’ which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise.’ And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.”

This is a chapter of Scripture that has a lot of interesting things going on. We’re not going to be able to open up all of them, but I think what we really see are three very, very sad conditions.

We get this man who’s utterly oppressed. His sanity—his very humanity—has been stolen from him. He’s absolutely alone. He’s self-destructive. He’s completely uncontrollable, either by others or himself. He’s a man who’s completely helpless.

We see a woman who’s severely ill, with all the pain that comes from that, but also because she’s a Jew, and in that day and age she would be considered unclean. Being unclean, she would have been like a leper, likely. She would have been removed from her family, from her community, so that her uncleanness didn’t spread to them. She would have felt herself removed from God, because she couldn’t join the public worship. She couldn’t approach God through the sacrifices that he put in provision. She’s hurting, she’s ashamed, she’s desperate, she’s out of options, she’s hopeless.

Then we see this little girl on the brink of death. That’s a tragic situation that should never happen, right? And we see a father who, understandably, is in fear and desperation and bewilderment, helplessness, and he just wants Jesus to get there. And the crowds are keeping him from getting there, and they’re going slow. And then there’s this account with this woman, and he’s not sure if he’s got time for this. Sure enough, people come to him and they just say, “Hey, your little girl, she’s gone. Don’t bother the Teacher anymore.” So now we have the anguish of soul that comes from a tragic loss, the unimaginable horror that comes with it.

Three very, very sad situations. I think a lot of times when we read through the Gospels, we kind of know what’s going to happen, and we’re really interested to see what Jesus does. We get really interested in some of the side accounts. “What about the pigs? What’s up with them?” Right? We miss these humans and these human situations here.

Jesus doesn’t miss it. He has compassion, and he sees them. That’s where he brings his authority to work.

You see, all the miracles of Jesus in the Gospels are also parables. A parable is a story that communicates spiritual truths, and Jesus’ miracles kind of work the same way as his parables did. They communicate truths about humanity or the world, and they also exemplify something about Jesus, some truths about him or his mission or his power, something. Right?

I think when you read these three stories and you see what they’re communicating, they communicate something of a striking presentation of the plight of those who are under the curse of sin and the reign of Satan. That’s what you see in these three accounts.

Jesus says in John 10, speaking about the enemy, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” And I think we see that’s what Satan has done in each of these people’s lives, right? Either directly, as with the demoniac man, or indirectly through the corruption that he has helped seed into creation, he’s stolen and he’s destroyed and he’s killed in these people’s lives. We just see how wicked of an enemy he is, and what it is to be under his terrorist reign.

As I thought about this, and as I studied this and meditated on it, I kind of recognized that it’s speaking to more than just the enemy out there; it’s speaking about the condition of sin. I think more discouraging is that we don’t just have an awful enemy out there, but if we have sin in our hearts (as we all do), we have an awful enemy in here as well.

You see, sin in our hearts, what it does is it will conspire with Satan and his ways to keep us under this oppression. And, yes, we have this enemy who deceives and afflicts, but maybe worse than that, our own sinful pride and our lust agree with his lies, and they warp our affections and our wills, such that we willingly give ourselves to sin. I think that’s really our greatest enemy that this passage brings to mind. It’s our own sinful hearts. It’s what the parable of these miracles are showing us.

John Owen has a good quote. I’ve found it helpful for many years, and I found it to be so true in my life. I think you probably will as well. He says this:

“Sin aims always at the utmost. Every time it rises up to tempt or entice, might it have its own course it would go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could. Every covetous desire would be oppression. Every thought of unbelief would be atheism, might it grow to its head. Every rise of lust, might it have its course, will come to the height of villainy. It is like the grave that is never satisfied.”

Isn’t that so true of sin? It’s never satisfied. It always wants more. It always wants to go deeper. It always wants to get into more and more corruption, pervertedness, what have you. That’s what sin is like.

When we look at this, what we see is that, especially when we see ourselves in it, we just have to respond, “Boy, we need salvation from this.” We need salvation from this.

We need one, first of all, who’s powerful enough to save us, but also we need one who’s compassionate enough to enter into our darkness, to be able to bring that power to bear on this condition of ours, this condition of sin, and that’s what we see from Jesus in these accounts. He is the one with authority.

But the way he uses that authority is he uses it to save people who are under the domain of Satan and under the reign of sin. In John 10, when Jesus says, “The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy,” the second part of that verse says this: “but I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” That’s who Jesus is, and that’s what he came to do.

Jesus is telling us something about himself through these miracles. He’s telling us that yes, he’s full of power, but also he’s full of compassion to save. That’s what we see on these occasions. With the man, he delivers him, and he sets him free. With the woman, he heals her and he makes her whole. With the child and the family, he rescues and he revives. He is the Savior from the curse of sin and the tyranny of the evil one.

I think the application for us as we meditate on this, as we try to enter into this story, is this: salvation from sin and Satan is in Jesus, and we need to turn to him. Salvation from sin and Satan is in Jesus alone, and we need to turn to him.

I say that for those who never have. Maybe you’ve never had a moment where you’ve turned to Jesus and you said, “I need deliverance from this sin in my life. I need deliverance from these demonic enemies that I just know are in my life, and they’re too strong for me. I need salvation. I need power outside of myself. I need you to save me,” and you put your trust and belief in him.

But also for those who have done this—you’re a follower of Christ, you believe in him—I think this is something that we regularly need to do. Turn to Jesus for salvation. A lot of times we can have little functional saviors. We have believed in Jesus, but now we have to figure things out on our own. You know, when Jesus comes preaching the gospel of the kingdom, he says, “Repent and believe,” and the idea is that you would repent of your sins, turn away from those things, and also the functional saviors, the false functional saviors that you’re using besides Jesus, and turn to Jesus, because salvation is found in him. Believe in him, that he can save.

3. The Way of Jesus

Let’s turn to Mark 8. That’s where we’re going to go for the next scene. So, Mark so far has presented Jesus to us as one with all the authority, and we’ve seen how he uses that to save people who are under the reign of Satan and under sin’s power.

At this point in the Gospel of Mark, it kind of takes a turn. If you’re reading through, there’s a hinge point in the Gospel of Mark, and it really kind of turns on this confession of Peter’s faith in Jesus that we’re about to see here in a minute. What happens here is this is where Jesus intentionally starts going toward Jerusalem, and that is toward the point for which he came, and that is toward the cross. And so he’s got his face set towards Jerusalem. They’re on that journey.

What Mark uses is this phrase “on the way” to denote this journey. “On the way,” Jesus is doing this, and on the way he’s teaching them. This comes up a lot of times in this section. It’s on the way to Jerusalem. “The way” is a good word, because it has two ideas in it. That’s, first of all, the idea of a direction, right? You know that you can tell someone, “Go this way,” and you’re giving them directions. But it’s also something that denotes a method. You can do something this way, right? So you can go this way, you can do something this way—direction and method.

I think we’ll find both here in this section of Scripture. As Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem with his disciples, and especially on the way to the cross, he is, in a much more focused way than he has been heretofore in the gospel, trying to teach them the way of self-sacrificial love and to get them to understand that this is where he’s going and he’s calling them to the same. So we’re going to see that as we read.

We’re going to read Mark 8:27-9:13. Again, it’s a good chunk of Scripture, but more stories. Just try to get the big ideas here.

“And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they told him, ‘John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.’ And he asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Christ’ [and Matthew adds, ‘the son of the living God’]. And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

“And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.’

“And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

“And he said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.’

“And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified. And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, ‘This is my beloved Son; listen to him.’ And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only.

“And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean. And they asked him, ‘Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?’ And he said to them, ‘Elijah does come first to restore all things. And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.’”

This is a pretty interesting little section in the Gospel of Mark, and I think what sticks out to us is this transfiguration account. Man, what’s going on there? Jesus just becomes radiantly, intensely white. The glory of the Lord starts shining out of him. Let’s talk about that!

What we see is that Jesus’ authority is really unveiled for Peter and James and John and that his glory is visibly shown in a way that it hadn’t been. There’s a lot going on there. Right? There’s a high mountain, Moses is there, there’s tabernacles that are mentioned, God shows up in the cloud. There’s a lot of imagery that brings Mount Sinai into view.

If you’re a part of our Mark class on Wednesday nights, we would have gone into all that, but we’re not doing it here this morning. You have to show up to the class and get all the good stuff. No; what we’re doing here this morning is I really want to focus on the big idea. Here we just get this little scene where Jesus’ identity, his authority, is verified for us. But I think what is more interesting—and what I think is actually the big focus of Mark and Jesus in this section of Jesus’ ministry—is this: these two little accounts that are on either side of the transfiguration, making a little bit of a sandwich, where these two things are very similar, and then we have this thing in the middle that’s supposed to be understood in light of what is surrounding it. We get these two little scenes that I think are really important, and they encapsulate Jesus’ main focus here.

In the first instance, Peter has this accurate confession of faith: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” This is actually the first time in the Gospel of Mark that a true confession of who Jesus is has come from the mouth of one of his followers. Before this, it’s essentially only been God the Father and demons who recognize who Jesus is accurately. But here, finally, one of his disciples has an accurate confession of faith, and that’s a really good thing. So what Jesus does is says, “Yes, you recognize who I am,” and he uses the title Son of Man, a very exalted title for himself. But then he starts to really change their expectations of what this means, and this is going to be difficult for them. And he says, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected and be killed, and then after three days he’s going to rise again.”

This is very interesting to them, and they don’t really like this, and they are struggling to come to terms with it. In fact, Peter tries to even take Jesus aside and rebuke him for this type of talk, and Jesus rebukes him right back.

Then, coming down from the Mount Of Transfiguration on the other side, here he is again. He’s talking about rising from the dead, and they’re, again, confused. They’re kind of trying to figure this out. They’re questioning what this rising from the dead might mean. So, in some way to kind of get around this, they bring up this idea of Elijah, the prophecy of Elijah. “Hey, when Elijah comes, he’s supposed to be the one who ushers in this new Messiah who’s going to come in glory and conquer all of our enemies, and a big triumphal day is supposed to come in for the people of Israel.”

So they’re kind of trying to say, “Hey, Jesus, don’t you remember that’s kind of what we’re about, right?” And he says, “That’s true to a degree, but tell me this: how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt?” And then he says, “By the way, Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it was written of him,” speaking of John the Baptist. What did they do to John the Baptist? They beheaded him. He says, “As they did whatever they wanted with John the Baptist, so they’re going to do with the Son of Man.”

What we see here is surrounding this premier display of Jesus’ authority and power on the mountain, we get these descriptions of how Jesus is actually going to use that authority. As the King of glory, with all authority in heaven and earth, he’s unexpectedly going to exercise his authority in humbling himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. Right here, as he’s on the way to Jerusalem, he’s walking this path of suffering that will culminate in him laying down his life for the sake of others.

Jesus says this in John 10: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.”

Jesus is the one with all authority, resplendent in glory. And how does he use that authority? He uses that authority to lay down his own life and then to take it up again for the sake of others.

This is the wonder of Jesus, right? Though he is God incarnate, he’s the one who becomes a servant for us, and though he’s the one who is resplendent in glory, pure in holiness, he takes our payment for sin. He takes the curse of sin on himself so that he can set us free from its power. That’s why a week from now we’re going to celebrate Holy Week, the pinnacle of the Christian calendar, that focuses on these events and lays the very foundation of our faith.

But what we see in both of these accounts is something interesting, and that’s the disciples at this point in this ministry really wrestling with this idea of a suffering Savior or the idea of victory that would come through apparent defeat.

Glory, power, deliverance, victory—all these things make sense to them. They’ve seen a lot of this in Jesus’ ministry. We’ve seen a lot of that in Jesus’ ministry, right, this morning. However, suffering, persecution, death—they still don’t really understand this aspect of Jesus’ ministry. Peter even tries to rebuke him for it. They still have a lot to learn about the way of Jesus. B

ut, of course, this is what’s really important in the account. Jesus isn’t just saying, “This is my path that I’m going to go,” but he’s also calling them to follow him down the same path. And he does the same for us.

“Whoever would follow after me, let him take up his cross and follow me. Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”

See, at this point in the Gospel of Mark, as they’re on the way to Jerusalem, the disciples are wrestling with these questions. “Is Jesus serious right now? Is this the kind of Jesus I really want to follow? Is Jesus worth it? Are we actually willing to lose our lives to follow him?” These are the questions Jesus keeps putting before them over and over and over again on his way to the cross.

I just think it’s an appropriate question for us, a week out from Holy Week, to ask ourselves as well. We could just maybe say it like this: What do I still love more than Jesus? What do I still love more than Jesus in my life? If I’m honest with myself, what do I really struggle to give up to follow Jesus? What are some of the idols in my life that I’m still struggling to leave behind for his sake? We might ask what false expectations of the Christian life I maintain or hold on to that lead me to fall short of Jesus’ call on my life.

I just think, looking forward to Holy Week, Mark wants us to ask these questions of ourselves as we’re reading through the gospel, as we kind of walk with Jesus on the way. As we prepare our hearts to hear, in the coming week here, the old, old story again and spend some time thinking about these things, I want us to spend this week thinking about the things that the disciples were thinking about at this point as they walked with Jesus to Jerusalem.

Is Jesus worth it? What in my life seems to indicate that Jesus is not worth it for me? Can I recognize those things? Can I confess those things? Then, let’s let God bring the good news of the gospel to bear on those things over the next two weeks.

Let’s pray.

Lord, we thank you for your word. Jesus, how wonderful to just be able to read about who you are, to get this beautiful presentation of your heart, of your life, of your power, of your grace, your mercy, your compassion. Lord, we need that. We are people in need of compassion. We have an enemy that deceives us regularly. We feel that sometimes the whole world is set against us, and we need a God who sees, who knows, who cares, and who we can come to and know that there’s grace for every need. Lord, we have sin in our lives. We know that we willingly give ourselves to that sin, often, and that our hearts are warped. They’re corrupted still in various ways. Lord, we thank you that you’re a God of compassion, that Jesus, your heart is to come and to set people free from that. So Lord, we ask that you would do that in our lives, that you would set us free, that we’d be a people who walk in the newness of life, that as you said to this woman, go in peace and be healed. Lord, we want to be able to go in peace, walk in peace, because we know that you have healed us, you are healing us, and you surely will heal us completely.

Jesus, as we look forward to Holy Week, we ask that you just prepare our hearts to receive the stories of the gospel, the gospel events, in a way that maximally impacts our lives and calls us to your purposes and shapes us into the image of Christ more and more; that you would be honored in our praise and our worship; that we would be in awe and amazement of you, as your word says so many times. Lord Jesus, you are worthy of it all. It’s in your name we pray, amen.