With Jesus or Against Jesus

As we are proceeding through the gospel of Mark we are asking the question, who is the real Jesus? Not a Jesus we make up, or a Jesus of our society or our culture, but the Jesus of the Bible. For it is only the real Jesus who can change you and transform you. It is only the real Jesus who can comfort you or challenge you. It is only the truth of Jesus that can set you free. So who is the real Jesus? In this passage we are exploring this morning we will be confronted with two truths. The first is the reality of false claims that are made about Jesus. In vv.20-21 we see that even Jesus’ own family thought him to be crazy so they did not understand who Jesus was and what he was all about. And then his opponents made the false claim that his work was being done through the authorship of Beelzebul and the prince of demons. Jesus, of course, refutes this and how does he do so? That is our second point, the true reality about Jesus. Here we see that he is the divine Warrior who binds the strong man in order to plunder his goods. And also in vv.31-35 that one of the practical realities of belonging to Jesus is that you get a new family. That Jesus if forming a community, a new family around himself.

One of the connections we can make here is to go back to Genesis 3:15 and recall that very first gospel promise. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Jesus has entered the strong man’s house as a divine warrior, to do what God promised all the way back in the book of Genesis he would do. Satan bruises Jesus’ heel on the cross, but Jesus crushes Satan’s head. Jesus is the divine Warrior who defeats evil. Through the cross. Through making himself weak, he displayed the greatest strength and defeated evil by succumbing to its worst. And in doing so he bound the strong man in order to plunder his goods and bring us into his family.