Introduction
Has anyone ever considered you to be crazy? How about demon-possessed? I know some women who have suspected the first of their husbands and the second of their toddlers! If you have been accused of either of these conditions, take heart; Jesus received the same diagnoses.
Crazy 21-22
His family believes that he is suffering mentally. Mark starts the story by describing yet another crowd scene. 20 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. This is Mark’s third reference to Jesus being at home or in a house. Note the progress of the crowd. In 1:33 the “whole town” gathers at the door; in 2:2 so many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door; now, so many had gathered that Jesus and his disciples could not even eat. They can’t even get to the refrigerator!
Jesus’ family is understandably concerned about the situation; but instead of attributing the problem to a crazy crowd, it’s Jesus they are alarmed about. 21 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” We have got to be careful here, speculating over Jesus’ domestic relations. Besides what is in the chapter and in chapter 6, when Jesus’ hometown neighbors refer to his mother and siblings, there are no other references to Jesus’ family by Mark. John comments in his gospel in 7:5 that Jesus’ brothers did not believe in him. It would seem from this episode that Mark indicates the same. But we can’t be sure about Mary. Is she in agreement with her other sons’ assessment. Is she still “treasuring in her heart” what the supernatural affirmations of who her son is? Maybe she is like John the Baptist, confused by her expectations and Jesus’ actual behavior.
Did Jesus cause a rift in the family growing up? It is easy to speculate how he could. My sisters and I would have gotten a bit peeved with our older brother, if he had let it be known that he was the Messiah. Clearly Jesus would have been different somehow from all the other children, and the difference would have only become more marked as he became an adult. And once he publicly began his ministry, being mobbed by adoring crowds on one side, and venomously criticized by religious authorities on the other, his family certainly would have been concerned for his welfare. Maybe the pressures of crowd-management have gotten to him, they worry. Maybe what they have heard other people claim about him has alarmed them. He has authority to forgive sins? He calls himself Lord of the Sabbath? He’s touching lepers? Something must be wrong.
Demon-Possessed 23-30
That is a situation we can understand and even smile about. We parents do tend to over worry about the mental stability of our children, and it is not unusual for one sibling to suspect what is going on in the mind of another. But this next scene is nothing to smile about. The remark above is spoken out of concern; the next remark is spoken out of malice.
22 And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.” This is a disturbing statement for three reasons: who is saying it, to whom they are saying it, and whom it is about. Mark tells us they are the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem. If you are reading from other Bible versions, the term might be “scribes.” Let me explain again who these men are. They are the authoritative teachers of the law. They are the preachers and seminary professors who have studied the scriptures and commentaries. They are the most qualified to interpret whether a person’s actions or teachings are in accord with God’s Word. Mark implies here that a delegation of these authorities have been sent from Jerusalem, the capital of Jewish orthodoxy and authority, to examine Jesus’ ministry and render a judgment. This is not unusual. The early church leaders did the same thing. Christians had taken the gospel to Antioch and established a gentile church. The Jerusalem Church then sent Barnabas to check out this new development. He reported what he saw as evidence of the grace of God (Acts 11:23).
But that is not how the teachers of the law regard Jesus’ ministry, specifically his ability to drive out demons. They pronounce that he is possessed by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, and that he is empowered by this prince to cast out demons. That is a serious charge to make, perhaps the most serious of all. And it is all the more serious because it is made by those trained and authorized to render such judgments. These are not some wise-guys just shooting off their mouths. What they say becomes what is accepted.
Whom do they say it to? Mark does not explicitly say, but the context makes it clear that this is a public pronouncement. They are saying it in front of a crowd, and no doubt their intent is to turn the crowd away from Jesus, if not against him. And this crowd, by the way, is composed of the Jewish people, the people for whom the Messiah had come. Do you see what is happening? The very leaders of God’s people are trying to turn them against their Messiah.
And that’s the third point; they are speaking against the Messiah. If there ever was a purpose for which they have been placed in their position, for which they have trained all their lives, it is to prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah and then declare his arrival when he comes. What has been denied to all the great prophets and holy saints of Israel, is now being given to them – the wondrous privilege to welcome the Messiah and point him out to God’s covenant people. The Messiah stands before them. They have heard him preach, seen him heal; they have watched him drive out demons, the enemies of God; and they tell God’s people that he is one of those wicked, unholy enemies.
Where did they get this from? It is one thing to claim Jesus is delusional; it is another to accuse him of being diabolical. They evidently made the same claim about John the Baptist. In Matthew 11:18, Jesus says, For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon.” Apparently this is their conclusion for anyone or anything that opposes what they think is right. Jesus and John don’t fit in with their theology; therefore, they must be of Satan.
Jesus, in my mind, shows tremendous self-control and responds with reason rather than his own accusations (though there are other times that he spells out their true standing before God).
23 So Jesus called them and spoke to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. 26 And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. 27 In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house.”
“Listen to yourselves,” Jesus is saying. “You concede that I am driving out demons. I am restoring the covenant children of God to their peaceful states and ridding them of these wicked spirits. If I were of Satan, why would I do that? I would be working against the very kingdom that I supposedly represent. And if my power comes from the “prince of demons,” why would he empower me to oppose his demons? Empowering me and setting me loose to work against him means defeat. And speaking of Satan defeated, who is proving himself to be stronger? My power cannot be denied. I have proven myself to be greater than Satan, my kingdom more powerful than his. That is how I am able to rob him of his captive souls.”
We look at this answer and almost want to reply in our contemporary idiom, “Duh!” What’s going on? Were the teachers of the law, who were trained in debate, that dumb to set themselves up with an obvious answer? Or was Jesus naïve in understanding their comment? Obviously they were accusing Jesus of being deceptive, only pretending to work against the devil. Satan, after all, is the father of lies and can work what seem to be good miracles in order to lead God’s people astray. Did Jesus not realize that?
No doubt he did, but there is one thing that Jesus never did care much to do. That is to prove himself. A couple of times in the gospels he refers to his miracles as evidence that he could be believed, but usually he left his claims to stand for the taking or rejecting. And how would he have refuted the teachers? He has produced the acceptable signs that he is from God – healing and casting out demons – and they have turned these things against him. What we have here is not a failure to communicate, but a failure to accept the truth.
And it is a serious failure. 28 I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. 29 But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.”
30 He said this because they were saying, “He has an evil spirit.”
“Be careful of what you are doing,” Jesus says. “It is one thing to have doubts about who I am, but you are attributing what is the work of God’s Holy Spirit to the spirit of Satan. It is one thing for ignorant people to mistake the activity of God’s Spirit for something else, but you are the teachers of God’s people; you are the ones most knowledgeable of God’s ways, and here you are labeling the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in me as the indwelling of Satan. It is one thing if I have taught heresy, or acted wickedly, but I have taught about the Kingdom of God and I have lived a life of piety and compassion. What miracles I have done have been done to heal and cleanse and make whole.”
These men supposedly are speaking for God. They are the authorities who decide what is orthodox and what is heresy, and they brand Jesus not merely as heretical, but as demonic. And they persist in doing this in the face of the truth he preaches and gives clear evidence of.
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD (Isaiah 11:1-3).
The teachers of the law should have been proclaiming to the people, “Here is the one of whom Isaiah prophesied. The Spirit of the Lord has rested upon him.” Instead, they say that the spirit that has rested upon him is the spirit of Satan.
Be careful.
Lessons
At this time I am suppose to discuss the “problem” of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Just what is it? We want to make sure we don’t commit it, right? You who have been born again have within you the Holy Spirit. Don’t worry, or more accurately, don’t give yourself so much credit; you don’t have the ability to commit the blasphemy Jesus speaks of. The Holy Spirit, who is within you, is far greater than you and will not let you cross such a line.
For those of you who have not confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior, beware. Don’t be quick to dismiss or denounce him, and be careful of persistently speaking against him. No one knows the heart of another, and to be frank, no one really knows when anyone has committed the unpardonable sin; but Jesus’ warning was real, and it is a warning that everyone, who has yet to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God that he claims to be, should heed. According to Jesus, what we do with him is in reality what we do with the Holy Spirit of God. We can be as religious as we like; as moral as we think of ourselves; but how we regard Jesus ultimately reveals what is truly in our hearts.
This warning especially applies to ministers and religious authorities. Beware of using one’s influence to speak falsely of God’s Redeemer. There are many preachers using their pulpits to teach those who are seeking the truth not to believe what he has said about himself. There are many who portray a false picture of him. They will be held accountable. Jesus is not a mere interesting religious topic. He has come as the Messiah to save people from the guilt of their sins and to give them eternal life, and to portray him as something else is a matter of eternal consequence.
I want you to consider two other lessons we can glean from this passage. Jesus should be quirky to the world and even to us. But our response should be to examine our presuppositions, not try to change or discount him. The things Jesus does are surprising. A lot of what he says is shocking – the claims he makes about himself, the ethics he teaches, the very images and illustrations he uses, and so on. If we are comfortable with all that he says, it most likely means that we misunderstand him.
Jesus should not make sense to the world. How can he? He preached repentance. Repent of what? I’m doing the best I can. How can God be judgmental? Jesus preached the Kingdom of God is near. What kingdom? I don’t see it. Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, not in the sense of we all being children of God, nor in the New Age sense of we all being divine. He meant it in the Jewish way of thinking, that he was separated from mankind as sharing in the divine nature of God. He meant he was God, not a god. This is repugnant to the world. It speaks of megalomania. Jesus claimed that he had come to ransom us from our sins through his own death. That is absurd to the world.
The whole thing is ridiculous, which leaves the world with two options – dismiss Jesus or change him. Either reject him as a madman or evil man (the very claims in our text) or reject what we read and turn him into what we can accept – a good man who came to show us how to love; that’s all. These other messy things attributed to him…well, they must have been made up by the church or the gospel writers.
We Christians are not immune to the same problem. We acknowledge Jesus’ claims about himself, but we are still quite capable of ignoring his commands on how we are to live. It is not a coincidence that we interpret many of Jesus’ teachings in ways that allow us to be comfortable. Turn the other cheek, deny yourself, love your neighbor as yourself – how fully have we explored what Jesus really means for us? We have got to be careful that we don’t make Jesus comfortable. Our fault will not be to accuse him of being crazy or demon-possessed. We will not make that mistake. But it is easy for us to tame him so that he suits us better.
Finally, understand that what is said of Jesus will be, and should be, said of us. Remember what I said about Jesus’ disciples? If they followed him, eventually he would rub off on them. They would in time become like him. That is what should happen to us, and if it does, we too will become quirky. We will become foolish in the eyes of the world.
It has to happen. It always has. The Greeks in Athens laughed at Paul when he spoke of the resurrection. The Roman Festus thought Paul was insane when he gave his testimony. What else can the world think? We act surprised that the world doesn’t see how sensible and agreeable the gospel is. To them it is incredulous that an intelligent person or a broad-minded person could believe it. We actually take this stuff as really happening? We are going to actually devote ourselves to a myth? We must be under a lot of pressure; something must be troubling us to turn to such silliness. Perhaps we should consider an anti-depressant or a visit to a good therapist.
Let me close with a paraphrase of Jesus’ words to his disciples the night he was betrayed. 18 “If the world [misunderstands] you, keep in mind that it [misunderstood] me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would [accept] you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world [misunderstands] you. 20 Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they [misunderstood] me, they will [misunderstand] you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me (John 15:18-21).
Don’t be shocked or offended when the world rejects you, but pray that you may faithfully show forth the light of Christ whether you are regarded as a fool or worse. Your Lord has experienced the same rejection. Know that whatever you share with him in him will result in true honor and joy.
