Going to Pick a Fight

This is week 38 of the Gospel of Mark. And so obviously can't recap everything, but we've been looking at, just starting in verse one, this is the beginning of the good news. Good news just means gospel. So when you hear that word, gospel, it just means good news. Lots of people have good news. This is the good news about Jesus. That's what we read in the Gospels. The gospel accounts, the good news accounts about Jesus, the Messiah, the son of God. And so we're just gonna jump into this. In 1995, an epic movie came out called Braveheart. And so I know it's probably over, whatever. Let me just get into it. This passage reminds me a little bit of Braveheart. Okay, let me explain, because you have the English, the armies, this powerful institution, and then you've got the Scottish, right? This band of warriors that are gonna try to fight the man, right, to try to fight against England. And I love these scenes where you can see kind of the generals, or the nobles, in this case, that they're kind of surveying the land and they're getting the. You know, who's going to. When is the caliber going to come in and when are they going to flank and when are we going to, you know, pull up our big wooden sticks when their Calvary's charging in? And they just kind of figure out, right, as. As surveying the land. And we see this last week. Last week, Ben preached through this, and it was a long text that he had, and so he kind of picked a scene. So we need to kind of go back a little bit and figure out what's going on to lead us to where we're going to be at today. It says this, and Jesus entered Jerusalem. So this is what's historically been called the triumphal entry. And so Jesus enters into Jerusalem. There's this huge parade, and everyone's celebrating Jesus as the Messiah, as the anointed one, as Hosanna, the king. So he enters that. This whole scene happens. And what does he do? He goes into the temple, and when he looked around at everything, it was already late. And he went out to Bethany with the 12 with his disciples, right? He's just surveying it like a general, trying to figure out what's about to happen in this space. And what we're gonna see today in the passages is this amazing scene from Braveheart when the nobles are going out and what happened, The English usually go out and they say, scottish, if you will surrender, you know, we'll give you nobles more land, right? And William Wallace doesn't want that to happen. So what's he do? He goes, he's riding out there and his little buddies, his little band of buddies, like, Wallace, what are you doing? And he's like, I'm going to pick a fight, right? It's just. He's not gonna let this happen. He's not just gonna let the Nobles win. He wants to go pick a fight. And so that's the title of the. Whoops, sorry. Before I get in there, let me explain this. This is from Paula Fredrickson. She says a straight line connects a triumphal entry and the crucifixion. I mean, where we're at in Mark, the rest of the time is gonna be this in one week of the life of Christ, from entering in all the way to his crucifixion and resurrection. There's a straight line connects the triumphal entry in the Crucifixion. A pilgrim crowd noisily proclaiming the coming of the kingdom, not to mention the coming of their king, would certainly provoke Pilate, who is the procurator of the Roman area there. It would have gained his attention and concern with much less provocation. He had swung into bloody action before. Pilate's killed people for far less than what has already happened on that moment when Jesus enters. E.P. sanders says this. The gun may have already been cocked, but it was the temple demonstration which pulled the trigger. And so that is why I've titled this sermon Going to Pick a Fight from Mark, chapter 11, 2712. I've already read, so I may not reread the whole thing just for time's sake. Right now, Jesus is going to confront, right? He's going to confront these powers and it's going to be at great personal cost. And he's going to call his followers ultimately to do the same thing. It's costly and trusting that Jesus or God and his vindication, it might seem like a failure, it might seem like a loss now, but ultimately he wins. Ultimately, he wins. He wins the ultimate victory, even if it doesn't seem like it is immediate. So let's just broke this down into kind of three sections. Jesus sees in Acts, Jesus doesn't back down. And Jesus weighs the cost. Let's look at Jesus sees in Acts, and they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple. We think about the temple in Jerusalem. It's massive. Just the space and area. It was about 20 acres that this would have taken up. And if you don't know what an acre is, that doesn't really help a whole lot. I probably could have found something else that would have been a similar size. My guess is like two CHS fields. Would that be about approximately 16 to 20 acres? All right. If you're familiar with CHS field, that would be pretty close to that. I'm looking at the guy who might know. He's like, what are you talking about, acres? I know hectares, not acres. Big area. Okay. And the outside area there kind of that inner. I mean, it's huge. These walls are huge. Built by Herod the Great right at the end of the well, right at like 0 BC, right when Jesus was being born. And so you have this huge outside area that was called the Court of the Gentiles. And that's where these scenes are taking place. You have the Court of Israel, the court of the women and the court of priests. Jesus didn't go in that area. Maybe he went into the Court of Israel a few times, but he was mainly in that outside area. And this is where everything's going to take place. Jerusalem was a city approximately of about 50 to 80,000 people normally. But over Passover, this would increase by 100 to 150,000 people. So twice, or maybe almost three times as many visitors and foreigners as there were locals and natives to that city. Huge population and mass of people increase in this space. So this is where Jesus is. He's in this court of the Gentiles on the outside around the temple. That temple there is 16 to 20 stories tall. So it's no small building, says. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. That's specific. What's going on? And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. What's happening? And he was teaching them, saying, is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers. What in the world is going on? Maybe some of you have seen the AI rendition of this where Jesus is flipping tables, but he's doing backflips over tables. It's a different way to think about that. I don't think that's what happened in the situation. He is flipping tables, right? He's overturning these tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. So what in the world is going on in the ancient world in the first century, there there was money, right? Like we would have today. But money could be used all over the place there was Egyptian money and Phoenician money and. And the Roman money denarius. And the Jews had their own money. The shekel. The shekel, though, had, first off, no pagan symbols on it. And it was the most pure as far as silver was concerned. The others were about 80% silver. The shekel was 90% silver. And so when people would come in as foreigners, as pilgrims would come into Jerusalem to the city to perform a sacrifice, the religious leaders would stop them at the gates and say, if you want to buy a sacrifice, if you want to pay a tithe, it has to be done in our local shekel. And there is also an exchange rate. And the exchange rate was incredibly steep, like 50% increase. Okay, so if I had four denarius, the exchange rate was four denarius. All right. So it's a wild concept that was happening. That was the. I don't know, the power manipulation that was happening in this situation of saying, oh, no, no, in order to do this thing, there's gonna be this rate that we're going to exchange from that. There can't be any pagan symbols on the money. It needs to be pure silver. This is the house of God, by the way. It needs to be pure. And then there's the pigeons. The pigeons were for the poor. Leviticus 7 highlights this. It talks about how that there needs to be a certain sacrifice for a bull for this, an o, a lamb for this. But if you're poor, in Leviticus 7, you're allowed to bring two pigeons. But we have even accounts where people would bring two pigeons and the priest would stop them and say, no, these are blemished. You can't use these ones. You need to buy our pigeons. Again, at that rate of interest exchange. It was a captive audience. It was exploitation of a vulnerable and captive audience. They went to the temple to worship the way that God had commanded them to worship. And the religious leaders that were in charge of that temple said, no, you can't do that unless you pay me. It's like going and trying to buy water at a baseball game, right? We've all been there. I'm dying of thirst. I go and it's 499, right? For a bottle of water. Exploitation of a vulnerable and captable. So that's a little bit of the context going on. It says, he doesn't let anyone pass through with anything. There was actually laws written that you weren't allowed to make shortcuts through the temple. It was supposed to be sacred. This is the house of God. And you're using it as a way to get from point A to point b. Because it's 20 acres. You don't want to walk around it. You're just going to cut through. And then, most importantly, he says, my house shall be called the house of prayer for all the nations. These are foreigners trying to come and worship at the house of God. And the religious leaders are literally stopping them at the gates because they don't have the finances to do so. They are limiting the worship. Second point here is Jesus doesn't back down, says they came again to Jerusalem. So this is just the next kind of pricope, the next story, the next thing in line, and they come to Jerusalem again. So he goes back into Jerusalem where the conflict was. And as he was walking into the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him. And they said to him, right, this is what typically is called the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin are the kind of the religious court of the day. It would have been made up of Sadducees and Pharisees. There was one high priest, so there was 70 members, plus the high priest, Caiaphas. And they're saying, hey, we're in charge of this temple. We're in charge of the temple grounds. We can't let this guy, just this person, come in and start disrupting our order. And think about all the money we lost yesterday. There's a power dynamic and a struggle that's happening here. So he goes back in and they confront him. They test him. They say, by what authority are you doing these things? Or who gave you the authority to do them? They're trying to trap him. If he says he's doing this under his own authority, well, then he's a lunatic. He has no right. He can't do this. And if he says he's doing this under God's authority based on what he did yesterday, he blasphemed the temple. He desecrated the temple. God would never do such a thing. We've got him. This is a catch 22. He's in between a rock and a hard place. No matter what he says, we've got him. It's actually a very brilliant question. But Jesus is more brilliant. Jesus said to them, I will ask you a question. Answer me. And he's gonna almost ask the exact same question. He's gonna say, by what authority? I will tell you by what authority I do these things. If you answer this question, by what baptism was the baptism of John, the baptism of heaven, or of man, answer me. So he's going to ask pretty much the same question. And it says, they discussed it with one another saying, if we say from heaven, he will say, why did you not believe him? And if we say from man, they were afraid of the people, for they did not. They believed that John was really a prophet. Okay, so what's happening? John the Baptist going all the way back to the beginning of Mark Jesus, older cousin by six months. He's in this baptizer movement. He's like a megachurch pastor. People are coming from all over the place, going to the wilderness. But what does John the Baptist do as he's dunking people in the river? He's saying, down by the river. Focus. And he says, he's putting them in the river and he's bringing them up out of the water. And he says, I want you. I want all of you to follow him. This is the Lamb that's gonna take away the sin of the world. I must decrease, he must increase. And Even of the 12, we know of at least two, maybe even three of Jesus, 12 disciples that were followers of John the Baptist. So Jesus says, well, tell me, where do you think John came from? Where do you think his baptism dunking under the river and popping back up? What do you think that symbolizes? And who do you think that that's from? Well, if we say that that's from man, there's gonna be a riot. People are gonna kill us if we say it's from God. Well, that guy said that Jesus was the Messiah. So we can't really answer this, can we? And I think that we can stop and really reflect on this, right? Because the Pharisees here, the Sadducees, the religious leaders, they don't care about theological clarity. They do care about theological clarity if it benefits them. They care about their image. This has deep political and power dynamics and motivations. And Jesus exposes this. And so I want to just look at this, maybe just take a moment and just think about this. Where do we care about our image or political correctness over and above theological clarity? A good litmus test, maybe, for trying to get to the bottom of what I was trying to get with this question is how do I react when somebody labels me? When someone puts a label on me? Brian, you're a bigot. Brian, you're a feminist. Brian, you're a conservative. Brian, you're a liberal. How do I feel about that? Do I care about the label over and above what I believe Scripture teaches? This is my highest authority. And so If I really have convictions over this and I've studied this and I've thought through this and I've wrestled with it and I've talked with others about this and I say this is my conviction and someone labels me because of my conviction, am I okay with that or am I willing to compromise my convictions? Because I just don't wanna just that label. Ah, I don't wanna be identified in that. We don't like being the villain. We don't like reading ourselves into the story. And in this particular story I think we're supposed to read ourselves in as the religious elite. I don't know everyone's background here, but I know a lot of us and a lot of us are the religious. I don't like the word religious. I don't like it when people say I'm religious, I don't like religion. I know it sounds weird and I don't have time to unpack that. But people, it's just how we are. We're labeled as religious and we get blinded though by our knowledge, our understanding and even how our theology might even serve us. Or maybe we take that theology because it's self serving rather than glory giving to God. So they answered Jesus, and what is their response? We don't know. We're not going to tell you. We're not going to answer that. And Jesus said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. They say we don't know. You can imagine if you were a religious leader and someone asked you a religious question and you say, I don't know. It's difficult. Sometimes they're humiliated in front of this large Passover crowd. But what I think we can see from this passage is that being a follower of Jesus doesn't mean necessarily being a pushover. There's a time for humility and meekness and silence. We see all of that from Jesus, but we also see Jesus going to pick a fight. Jesus doesn't back down, he stands up for what is right. And like Jesus, it might come at a cost. Standing up for the vulnerable might cost us. We might get labeled as something. The title of the sermon is going to pick a fight. Not necessarily a fight comes for Jesus. Sometimes, like Jesus, we need to take a stand against unjustice. And that might be individually, spiritually, it might be individual people. And in this instance it might be spiritual abuse. The last point here is Jesus weighs the cost. He began to speak to them in parables. I'm gonna have to move quickly here. I already read it. So I'm not gonna try to reread it. But what happens? He speaks in parables. And this is the only parable that we get outside of chapter four. So chapter four is full of parables, but now we've got one in chapter 11. So it should. Mark is no idiot. Mark is saying, hey, pay attention to this one. Something's going on here. And he talks about this vineyard. This should be old news to the Israelites, to the Jewish leaders that are listening to this parable. Trust me, the lights are flashing and all they're thinking is, aw, this is about us. Jesus is gonna quote almost specifically Isaiah 5 and other passages. Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved has a vineyard on a very fine, a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and he planted it with choice vines, and he built a watchtower in the midst of it. He hewed out a wine vat in it. And he looked out to yield grapes, but he yielded wild grapes. So something going on here, same language. Gonna have a fertile vineyard, but the vines are gonna be different, right? It's yielding wild grapes, not regular. The grapes that were planted originally. So what's going on? Again, I'm not gonna reread it, but the hero of the story, just to recap, is the landowner is the owner of the vineyard that is representative of God. And Jesus isn't pulling his punches. It's a parable, but he's not being cryptic here of what in the world he means the landowner is God. Israel knew that the people that were standing there fully understood that the caretakers or the tenants, those are the Israelites, specifically the religious leaders, specifically the Sanhedrin. And they know that we know that because at the end of the end of the story, they go, he's talking about us, right? And the servants in this passage are the prophets sent to Israel. So the prophets are sent to Israel, and what are they? They're beaten. They're killed by the tenants. And then it says, and still he had one other, a beloved son. People already know there's been two occasions in the life of Christ where in the last couple years where Jesus does something at his baptism as he's pulled out of the water, and the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove. There's a voice from heaven that says, this is my Son, whom I love, and does it again two times on the Transfiguration as well. And Jesus says, and he still had one other. This is different from just the normal prophet. This is Different. This is entirely other. He had a beloved son. He had a son whom he loved and finally sent him to them, saying they will respect my son. But those tenants said to one another, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours. And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What is Jesus saying? He's saying, I am the son whom the Father loves, and he sent me to you, and you are about to kill me. Jesus has weighed the cost. Jesus knows what's about to happen. You're about to kill me and you're about to throw me out. As Sanders said, as I mentioned at the beginning, a gun might have already been cocked, but this is what pulled the trigger. And I think it's obvious now, as we maybe get a fuller understanding of what's happening, these religious leaders were thinking only of themselves. And if we can kill God, then we can become gods. I can control my own destiny. I can make power for myself. I can choose what makes me happy. I can determine what's bad for me. No God, not some ethereal being in the sky, not some text or some sacred order is going to tell me what to do. It's backwards, it's foreign. I can choose my own destiny. It's the same thing we wrestle with in our culture today. And Jesus then says, have you not read the Scripture? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Jesus here quotes Psalm 118. But in their so doing, they're in their killing of God, they actually seal the victory of God. This is the greatest plot twist that's ever happened in the history of plot twists. It seems as though the tenants will wreak, will wreck the owner's vineyard, but they don't prevail, nor can they ever win. Jesus seeming defeat is the victory. The vineyard is not destroyed and it never changes ownership. That's never an option in the whole scenario. The ownership of the vineyard doesn't ever change. It's always under the control of God. So I wanna just apply this. I wanna spend a little bit more time and maybe you've picked up on the last few times I've preached. I'm just applying this a little bit more and I may change it and play with this a little bit more, but I wanna apply the text. But when Mark wrote this gospel, he wrote it to Gentile Christians in Rome. We are not Gentile Christians in Rome. We are gentile Christians in St. Paul. 2,000 years later. It was not written to us, but it is for us. We can glean from this. We can pull things out of this text. But I want to stay honest to the author's original intent, if that makes sense. There's three ways we can understand and apply this passage. Number one, God is in total control. Jesus here knows what he's doing. He knows what he's facing. And even in losing his life, he still wins the greater victory. So the question is, how do we trust God when it might cost us, like actually cost us something? How do I confess sin to my friend, to my small group, when their opinion of me might change? This might hurt my friendship. This might hurt my relationship. It shouldn't if they understand the gospel the way that you do. But it might cost. How do I lovingly correct somebody I care about if they might turn away from me? That's difficult. But we have to remember that God is in control. He already knows the outcome of this. It might cost, but he ultimately wins the victory, even if in the immediate, it feels like it's a loss. Secondly, Jesus is the cornerstone, the chief cornerstone. He is seated on his throne. So when it seems like I'm losing, when it seems like I'm losing my fight and my battle with sin, when it feels like I'm losing the best idea of myself as a parent or a friend or I'm. I'm losing my patience with a coworker, or even looking at the state of the church in the United States and saying it's losing, what are we supposed to do about this? Jesus is the cornerstone. God is in control. Politics aren't gonna fix this. Jesus will. The gospel does. And he is the king. The vineyard will never change ownership. You are never beyond the reach of the gospel. Maybe you've compromised your theology to appease friends and family. Maybe you've held too tightly to a non gospel conviction that has turned others away from the faith. Maybe you've taken advantage of someone who is vulnerable. Physically, monetarily, mentally, spiritually. We've all cared about our image. At the sacrifice of personal conviction, I'm sure it's some way or another. And that could be individually or corporately, systemically. So all of these three, I don't. I have doubts. I don't think that God's in control. I lack faith. I don't really believe that Jesus has won and he's seated on his throne and I've really messed up. I've hurt people. Have. I got news for you. This went way better in my head. This went way better in my head. Here was the commercial. This is an Insurance commercial from Chicago. Anyone know this Eagle Man? Did anyone grow up in Chicago? Do you remember Eagle Man? Yeah. All right, this is a real commercial. It's two ladies driving a car. They hear a loud thud on their roof. They get out, and this giant eagle is standing there. And they're like, it's eagle man. And then the eagle squats down and it lays an egg. And they go, ah. And the egg cracks open. There's this little baby bird, and it's got a piece of paper in its mouth. And they go, look at those low rates. I was gonna push it a lot further, but I won't. I was gonna say something like, jesus isn't just about low rates. He's about free accident forgiveness for eternity. But I would never do that. I would never say that. Here's the point. There's good news. There really is. It's so easy to beat ourselves up. It's so easy to read a passage and go, holy cow, I am a piece of garbage. Jesus died for you. He paid for your sin. He offers forgiveness freely so we don't just have to sit and self wallow in pity and feel like we're just losing and losing and losing. Even if we are losing and losing, he gives us a way out. He can forgive us. We can trust in that he is in control. So an application. Are you willing to stand with the vulnerable even when it costs you? And trust that Jesus already paid the price that you can't? We're gonna move to a time of communion. We do this every week here at Hope Lowertown. And this is it. This is the price that he paid. We get to taste and see. We get to visualize. We get to taste it. The sacrifice that he did full well, knowing what it was going to cost him. He went to the cross for you and for me so that we could be free, so that we could have life. And he stands up for the vulnerable. He stands up for those who can't help themselves. And every single person in this room could not help themselves. We cannot help ourselves when it comes to earning salvation. We cannot help ourselves when it comes to earning a right place or position or view of God the Creator. We can't do it. He paid that costly price. He stood up for us when we couldn't stand up for ourselves. And we get to remember that you don't need to be a member of this church or any church, but if you're a follower of Jesus, you go, yeah. That king, that one who died for me, that servant leadership, the one who Stood up for the vulnerable. Yes, I'm trying. I'm failing a lot, but I'm trying. If that's you, I would love for you to take these elements. We've got a gluten free option on the left. The bread symbolizes the broken body of Christ. The juice represents his blood that was shed for us. He played the ultimate price so that we don't have to, because we can't. Let me pray. The worship team's gonna come back up, sing two songs, so grab those elements as you see fit. Let me pray. Father, thank you for our time together this morning. Thank you. That you are good, that you are the owner of the vineyard. Thank you. That you sent your son. God, I pray that we would be not so high and mighty in our religious understanding or even our theology to look down on others. But at the same time, I pray that we would weigh the cost, that we would think about our convictions based on scripture and not compromise to stand true the way that Christ did. It would have been so easy to step aside, to allow the status quo to keep happening there in the courtyard, to let the religious elite to keep doing what they were doing. And he could have saved his life. He could have slowly helped people eventually. But he didn't do that. He died so that we might have life. God, I pray that you would just be honored and glorified now as we take these elements. We love you and it's the name of your son, Jesus Christ. I pray. Amen.