Doing The Will Of God Series

ESSENTIAL KING JESUS: DOING THE WILL OF GOD

MARK 3:20-35

#kingjesus

USE AUDIO BIBLE: Mark Chapter 3:1-35 [3:51]

https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Mark.3

INTRODUCTION… https://listverse.com/2009/03/15/10-incredibly-eccentric-people/

People can be pretty eccentric. I bring this up because in the passage we are going to look at today, some people considered Jesus “eccentric” “beside Himself” or “out of His mind.” To warm us up to this idea, I’d like to share about some eccentric people I learned about on the interwebs!

Hetty Green (1834-1916): Hetty Green was an eccentric miser who became known as the “Witch of Wall Street.” With her business acumen she accumulated such wealth that she was the richest woman in the world. In order to save money, Hetty would work out of trunks at her local bank so she wouldn’t have to pay for office space. When her son fell ill, she disguised herself and took him to a charity hospital; when they realized who she was, she fled claiming she would cure her son herself. She always wore the same black dress and never changed her underwear unless it wore out. She moved back and forth between New York and New Jersey in order to avoid taxes.

Simeon Ellerton (1702-1799): Simeon Ellerton lived in the 18th century and was a fitness fanatic. Because he loved to walk long distances, he was often employed to carry out errands or act as a courier for the locals. On his many frequent journeys he would gather up stones from the roadside and carry them on his head. His aim was to gather sufficient stones to build his own house. Eventually he had enough stones and he made a little cottage for himself. Having spent so many years carrying extra weight, he felt uncomfortable without it, so for the rest of his life he walked around with a bag of stones on his head.

Sir George Sitwell (1860-1943): Sir George Sitwell was a very bizarre man in many ways. He was a keen gardener who was annoyed by the wasps in his garden so he invented a pistol for shooting them. After he moved to Italy to avoid taxes in Britain, he refused to pay his new wife’s debts which resulted in her spending three months in prison. He was such an avid reader and collector of books that he had seven libraries in his home. He tried to pay his son’s school fees with produce from his garden. But perhaps most bizarrely, Sir George had the cows on his estate stenciled in a blue and white Chinese willow pattern in order to make them look better. To top it all off, he had a notice hung on the gate of his manor in Derbyshire, England: “I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me or differ from me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of my gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night.”

Francis Egerton (1756-1823): Francis Egerton became famous for his unusual dinner parties which he threw for dogs. All of the invited dogs would be dressed in the finest fashions of the day – including shoes. Another eccentricity was his manner of measuring time; Egerton would wear a pair of shoes only once – when he was done with them, he would line them up in rows in order to count the passing days. He also kept pigeons and partridges which had their wings clipped so he could shoot them for sport.

Jemmy Hirst (1738-1829): Jemmy (James) Hirst was so famous an eccentric in his own time that King George III summoned him to tea and he declined stating that he was training an otter to fish. Jemmy loved animals and he trained his bull to behave like a horse. The bull (named Jupiter) would draw his carriage about the village and Hirst even rode him in fox hunts. Instead of dogs, he used pigs that he had trained as hunt dogs. He regularly blew a horn to invite the poor to his home for free food – which was served out of a coffin. When he died, he requested 12 old maids to follow his coffin to the grave, as well as a bagpiper and a fiddler to play happy music.

I think those stories about those folks are quite humorous!

In verse 21 of Mark 3, Jesus’ family arrives and they want to take Him away from the crowds and the pressures because they think He is not acting like Himself and He is not acting in His best interest. Verse 20 tells us that the crowds were so big and pressing and demanding that Jesus and the disciples could not even eat. I imagine Jesus was teaching at all hours and the demands on Him were overwhelming. Jesus’ family sees the pressure and the activity and they come to take charge of Him, but they find Him doing exactly what He wants to be doing… He is doing the will of God.