26 – Keeping It Simple
Series: Acts
Chuck Sligh
September 13, 2020
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TEXT: Mark 6:6-13 – "And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching. 7 And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits; 8 And commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse: 9 But be shod with sandals; and not put on two coats. 10 And he said unto them, In what place soever ye enter into an house, there abide till ye depart from that place. 11 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city. 12 And they went out, and preached that men should repent. 13 And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them."
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever heard the acronym K.I.S.S. before? It means, “Keep it simple, stupid” or “Keep it simple, silly” and Wikipedia gives about three other variations of what it stands for. They all pretty much mean the same thing and are a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960. The KISS principle, according to Wikipedia, states that “most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore, simplicity should be a key goal in design and unnecessary complexity should be avoided.”
In the Christian life we sometimes greatly complicate things while Jesus often reduces things to their bare simplicity. Illus. – This is illustrated by an Andy Griffeth episode titled “The Sermon for Today.” They all went to church one Sunday when there was a guest preacher all the way from New York City who preached on “What’s Your Hurry.”
Mayberry was a pretty slow-paced place, but this preacher was preaching from his perspective in stressful, busy New York. He waxed eloquent on how everybody is on the run these days, and how we don’t slow down an enjoy the pleasures of the past…a stress-free breakfast or a relaxing band concert on the village green. He ended saying, “We should strive to recapture this simple pleasure. And so, I say to you my dear friends, ‘Relax. Slow down. Take it easy.’”
Now I don’t know what that has to do with the Gospel, but this was an Andy Griffeth episode after all, not a Billy Graham crusade, so hang with me for a minute. After Sunday lunch, everybody decides to try to put the sermon into practice, so they plan a concert on the village green that very evening. Of course, they have to repair the bandstand, mend the band uniforms, and rehearse the band. As you can imagine, they spend the next few frantic hours working feverishly to get to the point where they could slow down, until they give up, worn out and exhausted. The comical point of the show was that it’s good to simplify, but you ruin it if you have to work too hard to simplify.
In today’s text, we’ll see how Jesus sends out his disciples, but He gives them simple instructions and a simple message. Let’s dig in.
I. FIRST, WE SEE THAT JESUS EXTENDS HIS MINISTRY IN VERSES 6-7 – “And he marveled because of their unbelief. Then he went about the villages, teaching. 7 And he called the twelve, and began to send them out two by two; and gave them power over unclean spirits”
You’ll recall that in verses 1-6, Jesus had returned to His hometown of Nazereth, and rather than cheering for their hometown hero, the only one in Jewish history to rise to prominence, they rejected Him and did not believe in Him. After their reaction, Jesus was not deterred—He just extended His ministry further out.
First, verses 6 tells us that He just went about the villages teaching, reinforcing that fact that communicating truth by his teaching and preaching was His main goal.
Demon exorcisms and miraculous healings were a response to human suffering, but mainly they were meant to be validation of His power and authority as God. Jesus kept it simple: the important thing with Him was always teaching and preaching. Doing good to help others and performing miracles did not necessarily challenge observers to commitment. Observers might be impressed, but often miracles did not challenge them to consider the significance of these events in their lives personally. Teaching gave Jesus a way to present a clearer and more precise picture of who He was and what His mission was, leading to greater understanding and more chances of people responding in faith in and commitment to Jesus.
In verse 7 Jesus extends His ministry even further. He calls and commissions His twelve apostles to go out two by two. He gave them power over demons, and as we’ll see, the power to heal as well, so that people would recognize that the apostles were ministering as representatives of Jesus Himself. The phrase translated “two by two” in the Greek is “duo, duo,” so these were the original “dynamic duos!”
Traveling in pairs served several purposes [ADD 3 POINTS TO SERM. SLIDES]:
• First, it afforded the disciples companionship and fellowship.
Paul almost always traveled with others. Ministering alongside others for the same cause allows us to be enriched by companionship and fellowship and mutual encouragement.
• Second, it allowed them to minister with complementary gifts and abilities.
Where one apostle might be weak, the other might be strong. Those listening would be further enriched by two perspectives and the doubling of the work that could be accomplished.
• Going out two-by-two also gave them greater authority to Jewish listeners.
The apostles were acting as representatives of and bearing witness to Jesus. But who could verify that what they were taught or that the miracles they performed actually happened? Deuteronomy 19:15 stated that a matter was established by the testimony of two or three witness. The witness of two added weight to their teaching and activities.
II. NOTICE JESUS’ SIMPLE INSTRUCTIONS FOR THEM IN VERSES 8-11.
1) First, he gave them simple instructions about WHAT THEY WERE TO TAKE. – Verses 8-9 – “And instructed them that they should take nothing for their journey, except a staff—no bag, no bread, no money in their belt: 9 But to wear sandals; and not put on two tunics.”
Jesus told them to travel light—to go out with the bare necessities. They were allowed only a staff as a walking stick and protection against animals, a tunic, a belt and sandals for the stony road, but nothing more. Such things as a bag slung over the shoulder to carry food, money, medicine or an extra tunic were forbidden.
These were the exact same belongings God instructed the Israelites to take on their flight from Egypt according Exodus 12:11. Like the Israelites, the apostles must be as free from encumbrances as the Israelites were in order to serve God in a new and exciting era of God’s working.
I think Jesus wanted them to travel so light for a couple of reasons.
• First, I think He wanted to teach them total dependence upon God for both food and shelter. Could they trust God with only these bare essentials? This was their first great test of faith.
• But there was a practical reason too—they were also to depend on the hospitality of others, which gave those who took them into their home the opportunity to share in the experiences of the disciples. – They would be the direct recipients of the apostles’ spiritual food while their hosts in turn shared with the apostles’ their physical food and shelter.
2) In verses 10-11, Jesus gave the Twelve simple instructions about HOW THEY WERE TO ACT. – “And he said to them, ‘In whatever place you enter into a house, stay there until you depart from that place. 11 And any place that will not receive you, nor listen to you, when you depart from that place, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them. Truly I say unto you, It will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.”
Whenever the Twelve entered a house as invited guests, they were to stay there, making it their base of operations until they left the town. They were not to hop around from home to home seeking better accommodations. They were to be grateful guests in whatever situation they found themselves in.
Illus. – When we were raising support to be missionaries, our mission board told us to be satisfied with whatever accommodations we were given. In some churches we went to, we were put up in really nice, fancy motels, and at times we were put up in run-down, stinky motels. In some churches we were sent to stay in beautiful homes of obviously wealthy people who treated us like a royalty, and sometimes we were sent to houses of really poor people who had little to offer in the way of amenities, but were rich in their love of God and missionaries.
And the food varied in quality as well. Back in those days—the early 1980s—a common song at the end of a service was, “Where He Leads Me, I Will Follow.” In our missionary orientation we were told to remember a new version of the song: “Where He leads me I will follow; What they feed me I will swallow.”
Jesus was teaching His disciples that they were not to focus on physical comforts in their service of God. Wherever they were offered a house to stay in, a common custom in Israel’s towns and villages, they were to stay put and be grateful guests.
If they went into a town that would not receive them or listen to their message, they were to shake off the dust under their feet as a testimony against them. This sounds odd to us today, but Jews in Jesus’ day would immediately catch the significance of doing this. Whenever a devout Jew travelled to a Gentile area, upon leaving the borders of that area, they would shake off the dust under their feet as a way of dissociating themselves from Gentile pollution. When the apostles did this, they were telling Jewish people in the village that they were acting like pagans by rejecting their message and was a warning to them that the apostles’ responsibility to them had been fulfilled and they would have to answer to God for their rejection. Jesus said it would be a “testimony to them” meaning that it might cause some to think more carefully about the apostles’ message and result in some to change their minds and listen.
III. IN VERSES 12-13, WE SEE THE RESULTS OF THEIR MISSION TRIP TO THE SURROUNDING TOWNS AND VILLAGES – “And they went out and preached that men should repent. 13 And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them.”
The apostles were commissioned and given power and authority and they went out and did what they were called to do. They experienced great power in bringing the Gospel to unbelieving Israel. It resulted in repentance, deliverance and healing, just as if Christ were physically there. This was a foretaste of the amazing things the Church would do down through the centuries.
Jesus said in John 14:12 – “Truly, truly, I say to you, He who believes on me, the works that I do will he do also; and greater works than these will he do; because I go unto my Father.” \
How could His followers do greater things than He did? Have you seen or heard of the Church doing greater things than Jesus? What did Jesus mean? R. Kent Hughes tells this true-life story that may help us understand:
During the war in the Pacific, a sailor in a United States submarine was stricken with acute appendicitis. The nearest surgeon was thousands of miles away. Pharmacist Mate Wheller Lipes watched the seaman’s temperature rise to 106 degrees. His only hope was an operation. Said Lipes: “I have watched doctors do it. I think I could. What do you say?” The sailor consented. In the [tiny] wardroom, …the patient was stretched out on a table beneath a floodlight. The mate and assisting officers, dressed in reversed pajama tops, masked their faces with gauze. The crew stood by the diving planes to keep the ship steady; the cook boiled water for sterilizing. A tea strainer served as an antiseptic cone. A broken-handled scalpel was the operating instrument. Alcohol drained from the torpedoes was the antiseptic. Bent tablespoons served to keep the muscles open. After cutting through the layers of muscle, the mate took twenty minutes to find the appendix. Two and a half hours later, the last catgut stitch was sewed, just as the last drop of ether gave out. Thirteen days later the patient was back at work.
What a great story! What they did was a great thing, not because it was better, but because of Wheller Lipes, the human instrument. A humble pharmacist’s mate, untrained in being a physician, performed a surgery in less than ideal conditions to do something amazing.
In this way with the apostles, the Church and we Christians today can do “greater works”—not because those works are better than Jesus’ works—because we do not have His miraculous powers as God—but because we are frail human instruments being used as God’s instruments to do His will on this earth. Knowing who we are, it is amazing He uses us at all!
CONCLUSION
The story of Jesus sending out the Twelve is unique; that is, it is not a blueprint for the way the Church was to later evangelize. In this story, the Apostles were given special authority and power not given to those who followed. In 2 Corinthians 12:12, Paul refers to the fact that he possessed “the signs of an apostle,” indicating that there were powers that were unique to apostles alone. Jesus gave this authority and powers to the Twelve as the true representatives of Christ on earth and to later validate their authority in the early church and to be the authoritative authors of the New Testament scriptures.
Once the New Testament canon was finished and the Apostles passed from the scene, there was no need for these miraculous validations. The New Testament itself is self-validating and is “alive and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit” and has the power to perform the greatest miracle of all: to save souls from sin and birth them into the kingdom of God.
So, though this story is specific to the apostles, let me share three simple timeless truths I see from this passage that apply to God’s people in every age:
First, I think in any age, Jesus wants us to travel light and not let “stuff” slow us down.
Jesus told His disciples as they went out to minister to travel light.
Illus. – Do you know someone who overpacks for a trip? – Here’s some good advice: when you pack your suitcase, when you’re finished, take half of it out. Nobody here this morning is going to follow that advice, but in the Christian life, God wants us not to be slowed down in our walk with Christ with “stuff.”
The problem with most of us is that we have over-packed our life suitcases because we love our precious stuff. The great American dream involves spending money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. We spend our adult lives accumulating more and more stuff. We have so much stuff now that we have to rent storage buildings to hold all our excess stuff that we can’t keep in our own houses. It’s all about the stuff!
God wants us to travel light in life. Here’s a life changer for you: Unpack your life’s suitcase. Sell, or better yet, give as much of your stuff away as you can. Don’t worry, God will take care of your every need. Don’t let stuff slow you down. Pack light for life’s journey.
Second, though our mission is different than the apostles mission during Jesus’ lifetime, we too have a commission to reach our world with the Gospel.
In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus gave us our marching orders. – He said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19 Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: 20 Teaching them to observe all things all that I have commanded you. And, behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”
God has called each of us to go and share the Gospel with others and to lead them to baptism and discipleship and obedience to His commands. Are you actively reaching out to others with the Gospel?
Last, as you share the good news with your friends and neighbors about Jesus, don’t let rejection get you down.
Jesus knew the disciples wouldn’t be welcomed into every village, so He gave them this advice, “And any place that will not receive you, nor listen to you, when you depart from that place, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them.” (Mark 6:11)
Jesus said this would be a testimony against them. He didn’t want to punish the people of a city who rejected them. He just didn’t want that kind of dusty, dirty attitude to linger on the disciples. What did Jesus want them to do?—He wanted them not to worry about what appeared to be defeat, but to keep going, ministering where they could receive receptive hearts and minds.
Illus. – Clebe McClary is a wounded Vietnam Veteran who lost an eye and an arm fighting for our country. He had an acrostic he lived by: FIDO. He said it stood for “Forget It and Drive On.”
Bad things happen in life, he said, and when they do, FIDO: Forget it and drive on.
You meet some bad people in life, and when you do, FIDO: Forget it and drive on.
As we serve the Lord in this day and age, we have to be honest and say that the message of the Gospel is increasingly unpopular. When you feel bad about that: FIDO: Forget it and drive on. Just keep on serving Jesus. Keep on keeping on. God will reward you in the end.
Paul exhorted the Corinthian believers in 1 Corinthians 15:58– “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
Similarly, he told the Galatian believers in Galatians 6:9 – “And let us not be weary in doing good: for in due season we will reap, if we do not faint.”
May God give us the power to carry out the Great Commission with great perseverance no matter what the opposition may be.
