#44 Okay, Let’s Roll Series

#44 Okay, Let’s Roll

Series: Mark

Chuck Sligh

April 25, 2021

2 self-serving disciples tried to talk Jesus into giving them the greatest seats of honor and power. In this text, Jesus teaches His disciples that the way to be first is to be a servant and a slave, a concept that upends the world’s and the apostles’ values.

NOTE: PowerPoint presentation is available for this sermon by request at chucksligh@hotmail.com. Please mention the title of the sermon and the Bible text to help me find the sermon in my archives

SRIPTURE READING: Philippians 2:3-11

TEXT: Please turn in your Bibles to Mark 10:3

INTRODUCTION

Illus. – Perhaps the most famous of all the unexpected heroes of 9-11 was a 32-year-old Oracle salesman named Todd Beamer, the determined Christian on Flight 93 who called up a GTE operator to find out what was going on. When the operator got him in touch with a CIA officer, he briefed Beamer about what had happened, and what was likely happening now on his plane. He and others hatched a plan, and then Beamer prayed the Lord’s Prayer over the phone, added, “Jesus, help me,” after which he said, “Okay, let’s roll!”

With those words, he led 6 other men to the pilot’s cabin to stop the hijackers from harming our the U.S. capitol by downing their plane in a Pennsylvania cornfield. These brave men went heroically to their deaths following Todd Beamer’s lead.

Beamer sounds amazingly like Jesus in our text, but Jesus’ followers weren’t at all heroic! We’ll see how Jesus tells them even more details about what lay ahead for Him—and them—and then He heads straight into the jaws of death in Jerusalem. It wasn’t as much that His disciples were unheroic as that they were just clueless. As usual, they misconstrued everything Jesus told them, saw the kingdom in a skewed way, and required Jesus to give them another “teaching moment.”

Let’s look and see what I’m talking about and what God wants us to learn from this story:

I. FIRST, IN VERSES 32-34, JESUS LEADS THE DISCIPLES TOWARD JERUSALEM AND WARNS THEM A THIRD TIME WHAT WOULD HAPPEN THERE.

Verse 32 says, “And they were on the way up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went before them, and they were amazed. And as they followed, they were afraid. And he took again the twelve and began to tell them what things that would happen unto him.”

We come to a crucial place in the Gospel of Mark… a turning point in the life and ministry of Jesus. Jesus knows what’s ahead, but He says in essence, “Okay, let’s roll.” He starts His fateful trip to Jerusalem, and leads the way—a fact that should remind us that to know Jesus is to follow Him…even on the road to suffering.

That Jesus’ face was set like flint on the road to Jerusalem astonished His disciples. They knew that this marked a dangerous and dreaded path, for Mark tells us in this verse that “they were afraid.” Everything from this point on in Mark happens on the way to Jerusalem, or IN Jerusalem and the sufferings, the cross, and the resurrection that road led to.

For the third time, Jesus told his disciples what was ahead in verses 33-34 – “saying, ‘Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles: 34 And they shall mock him, and scourge him, and spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again.’”

Notice the steady beat of polysýndeton: the repetition of “and, and, and,” (9 times) which has the effect of emphasizing each individual event all the way to His death and without skipping a beat, to His resurrection! All the evil characters in the story that would unfold would do their worst, but then God would have the final say through Christ’s glorious resurrection!

This is the longest and most explicit prophecy by Jesus of what lay ahead.

CHART (NOTE: This chart is available upon request at chucksligh@hotmail.com): This chart shows certain things Jesus mentioned in the Mark 8:31 and 9:31 predictions, but note that today’s text contains them all, plus more:

• He would be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes (He’s more specific than He had been in chapter 9 where he simply referred to them as “men.”)

• Rather than chapter 8’s more general “rejected” by the elders, Jesus emphasizes that they would actually condemn Him to death.

• Facts not mentioned in the prior 2 chapters are that Jesus would be delivered to the Romans (3.), and that they would mock, spit on and scourge Jesus (4.).