Jesus Stayed The Course Series

A. You all are very familiar with the Beatles. Right?

1. By 1966, the Beatles had become international stars and had achieved unprecedented levels of critical and commercial success.

2. Their popularity caused John Lennon, the 26 year-old member of the Beatles to tell a London reporter: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now…”

3. How’s that for an example of allowing popularity to go to your head?

B. By chapter three in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ popularity had also reached incredible heights, but our Lord and Savior did not allow His popularity to go to His head.

1. Instead, as we will see in our study today, Jesus “stayed the course.”

2. Jesus knew what His mission was, and He knew the dangers and the traps of popularity.

3. Jesus would have agreed with what one person said about popularity: “I don’t want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.”

4. And Jesus would have agreed with an English politician from the 1980s who said, “I do not care one straw about popularity, for I know that it is generally purchased by a sacrifice of the truth.” (Hensley Henson, elected Head of the Oxford House in 1987)

C. Last week, we noticed that Mark showed us a number of encounters that Jesus had with the religious leaders and how Jesus stood strong in the midst of the controversies.

1. In spite of the miracles Jesus had performed and the authority with which He taught, the religious leaders were growing more and more resentful toward Him.

2. Jesus forgave the paralytic’s sins and then healed him, and they accused Him of blasphemy.

3. Jesus called the tax collector named Matthew to follow Him, and then ate a meal with Matthew’s friends who were the outcasts of Capernaum, and then the Pharisee’s questioned why Jesus would eat with sinners.

4. Then they questioned Jesus about why His disciples weren’t fasting, and why His disciples picked grain on the Sabbath, and why He healed on the Sabbath.

5. The pressure on Jesus must have been immense and intense.

6. Jesus’ every move was watched by His enemies and the worst interpretation was placed on everything He said and did.

7. Jesus knew what awaited Him at their hands, and He knew that they were quickly trying to bring about that end, but it wasn’t that time yet, so Jesus withdrew from Capernaum to the countryside along the seashore.

D. But in spite of the fact that Jesus was despised by the religious leaders, He was adored by the general population.

1. The crowd was amazed at what Jesus was doing and His fame and popularity were increasing.

2. Mark wrote: 7 Jesus departed with his disciples to the sea, and a large crowd followed from Galilee, and a large crowd followed from Judea, 8 Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and around Tyre and Sidon. The large crowd came to him because they heard about everything he was doing. (Mk. 3:7-8)

3. Mark wanted his Roman readers to know that Jesus was not just a local Messiah or one who was only honored by His own people, so Mark gave a more complete list of where the people were coming from than did the other Gospel writers.

a. We would expect that a large crowd from Galilee would follow Jesus since Galilee is where Jesus had been spending His time.

b. But Mark pointed out that there was another large crowd from Judea and Jerusalem which is south of Galilee.

c. But then Mark added that people were coming from Idumea, which is a desert region south of Judea, and others were coming from beyond the Jordon, meaning east of the Jordon river outside of the nation of Isreal.

d. Finally, Mark concluded the list with people from Tyre and Sidon, which are Phoencian cities along the cost of the Mediterranean Sea north of Galilee.

e. Surely this diverse crowd included Jews and Gentiles.

E. Then Mark described the reason the large crowds were coming and what precautions Jesus had to make for His own protection.

1. Mark wrote: 9 Then he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him, so that the crowd wouldn’t crush him. 10 Since he had healed many, all who had diseases were pressing toward him to touch him. (Mk. 3:9-10)

2. Can you picture the scene? Can you feel the press of the crowd as people clamor to get near Jesus?

3. Crowds can be scary and dangerous.

a. We’ve all seen the news stories of people who have been crushed or killed in a crowd stampede.

b. We experienced a scary moment in a crowd in a hallway at the Carrier Dome a few years ago when no one could move in one direction or another and everything got tighter and tighter as everyone was pushing forward.