Sending The Twelve - Mark 6:7-13 Series

Mark 6:7 Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits. 8 These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9 Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. 10 Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them.” 12 They went out and preached that people should repent. 13 They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

Jesus the Prophet

We left off last time with Jesus being rejected by his own hometown—Nazareth. And when that happened, this is what Jesus said:

Mark 6:4 Jesus said to them, "Only in his home town, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor."

Jesus classified himself as a prophet. Now, we know that Jesus was much more than a prophet, but he wasn’t less than a prophet. He is the ultimate prophet that was promised way back in Deuteronomy 18:18. And when I say “ultimate,” what I mean is, he is God’s last word.

Hebrews 1:1 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.

All through the OT God used to speak through lots of different prophets in lots of different ways, but not anymore. Now God speaks to us in only one way: through Jesus, the ultimate Prophet. And in today’s passage, we’re going to see exactly how that works. And this is going to be a great study for us because as we go through these verses we’re going to see Christ’s glory from a half dozen different angles. We’re going to see six different facets of his glory, and the first one is the one I just described: Jesus the prophet.

A prophet is someone who speaks the word of God to people, and calls them to repentance. Jesus’ job is to do that to the whole world. He came to reveal God to the entire world and call all men and women to repentance. But how does one man do that—especially given the fact that Jesus never wrote anything? He’s going to do it through his Apostles.

When Jesus called these men Jesus told the disciples I will make you fishers of men (Mark 1:17). Three chapters later he was a little more specific.

Mark 3:14 He appointed twelve-- designating them apostles-- that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach 15 and to have authority to drive out demons.

That was why Jesus called them. But what have they done since then? Crowd control and boat rigging—that’s about it. Up to now, all the preaching, all the healing, all the talking, all the ministry has been done by Jesus. The Twelve have just been watching and learning. But now, after all that training, it’s finally time. Mark 6:7 Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them outFinally, he’s sending them out on a mission. What mission? Exactly what he had told them back in ch.3—preaching and miracles.

6:12 They went out and preached that people should repent. 13 They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

Now, if that sounds familiar, it should because it’s exactly the same thing Jesus has been doing the entire book so far: preaching, driving out demons, and healing people. It’s the exact same ministry described with the exact same terminology so that we understand—Jesus is sending them out to do his work by his authority with his power.

Authoritative Message

And if you want to see how far that authority goes, just look at v.11.

11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them.”

That’s a bigger deal than it sounds like. To us, it doesn’t sound like much. You’re there with your partner, you knock on a door: “Hello, we’re here to talk to you about Jesus of Nazareth.” “Get lost!” SLAM! You look at each other. “Ok, well, I guess that’s a dust shaker,” and you take your sandals off, knock off all the dirt, and move on to the next place. Why does Jesus tell them to do that?

Shaking the dust off your feet was something Jews did after they had been in Gentile territory. Those Gentiles are so unclean that we don’t want any of their unclean, defiled, dirty dirt to contaminate our clean, pure, holy dirt here in the holy land. That was their normal practice. So can you imagine what the people in these Jewish villages? These two guys blow into town, start telling us about this Jesus guy and saying we need to repent or we’ll be shut out of the kingdom of God. So we told them to take a hike. And now, wait, what are they doing? Did he just…? Tell me they didn’t just shake the dust off their feet! That’s what you do when you leave a Gentile town. Are they calling us unclean Gentiles? Yes, that’s exactly what they were doing.