Cost of Service (Mark 6:1-29)
Linda, who teaches first grade in Dallas Texas, has an interesting job, especially when it comes to helping children adjust to their first whole day of school. Little Ryan was used to going home at noon in kindergarten; so when it was time to go to lunch with the rest of the class, he got his things ready to leave for home.
Linda asked him what he was doing.
“I’m going home,” he replied.
Linda tried to explain that, now that he is in the first grade, he would have a longer school day. “You’ll go eat lunch now,” she said, “and then you’ll come back to the room and do some more work before you go home.”
Ryan looked up at her in disbelief, hoping she was kidding. Then, convinced of her seriousness, Ryan then put his hands on his hips and demanded, “Who on earth signed me up for this program?” (Wanda Vassallo, Dallas, Texas, www.Preaching Today.com)
Sometimes we feel a little like Ryan when we start serving Christ. It’s a lot harder than we thought. We get some criticism. & We wonder, “Who signed me up for this program.”
It is to such people that Mark wrote his gospel. His original audience was suffering under Nero’s persecution for their commitment to Christ. Serving Him was much harder than they expected so Mark shares with them some stories from the life of Christ to encourage them.
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Mark 6, Mark 6, where we’ll look at three such stories.
Mark 6:1 Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. (NIV)
Jesus is going back to Nazareth, where he grew up, returning as a teacher surrounded by his students, showing them what ministry is all about. You see, He’s about to send them out two-by-two, and they need to have some idea of how to minister to a community.
Mark 6:2-3 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. “Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, a Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. (NIV)
Literally, they stumbled over him. They were scandalized! They could not explain him, so they rejected him (Kenneth Wuest). They dishonored Jesus. Jesus’ own relatives and childhood friends insulted him.
You see it in the questions they asked (vs.3). Isn’t this the carpenter? In other words, he’s nothing special. He’s just a common laborer. & Isn’t this Mary’s son? Now, in Jesus’ day no one EVER referred to a man as his mother’s son unless it was meant as an insult (see Judges 11:1-2). They were accusing Jesus of having an unknown father and being the bastard son of a supposedly immoral woman.
Well, how does Jesus respond to these insults?
Mark 6:4-6a Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith. (NIV)
Only twice in all of the Gospels does it say “Jesus was amazed.” In Luke 7:9, it says He was amazed at a Roman Centurion’s great faith. Here, Jesus is amazed at his own relatives and friends’ lack of faith. & It prevented Him from doing a whole lot of miracles. Now, that’s not because their lack of faith limited His power, no. It’s because only a few had the faith to come to him for help. All of the rest had no respect for Him. They insulted and dishonored Him.
And that’s an important lesson for Jesus’ disciples to learn about ministry. When we take a stand for Christ and seek to serve Him, WE WILL BE INSULTED. We will be dishonored and disgraced, and sometimes by those who are closest to us. It happened to Jesus, and it will happen to us.
Just a couple of years ago (2007), the Institute for Jewish and Community Research surveyed 1,200 professors from a cross-section of colleges, seeking “their attitudes toward various religions.” The research was originally aimed at gauging anti-Semitism, but something else was discovered. The professors stated they had positive feelings toward Jews and Catholics, but 53 percent said they possessed unfavorable feelings toward students who were evangelical Christians.
In his article, Why Christians Feel Unwelcome on Campus, David French offers his own conclusion on the matter: “For evangelicals, it came through loud and clear. The academic establishment has long dismissed stories about bias against Christians as mere anecdotes. But now we have concrete evidence of sheer bigotry. Our colleges clearly have a religion problem, and faithful students and professors are paying the price.” (David French, “Why Christians Feel Unwelcome on Campus,” The Week, 5-18-07, p. 12; www.PreachingToday.com)
Just last week, our son, Tim, experienced that hostility as one of his college professors accused a Christian student of having a closed mind. He called to ask how to respond to the teacher in such an environment.
Pray for our Christian college students. Their faith is being attacked and ridiculed every day.
But that’s nothing new. They insulted Jesus Himself, and they have been insulting his followers ever since.
Courtney Ellis, of Princeton, New Jersey, talks about her days when she attended graduate school studying English. “There were many occasions,” she said, “when my fellow students openly ridiculed the name of Christ. To my great detriment,” she said, “I stayed silent. I was quite vocal about my belief in Christ at church and with my friends, but I was terrified of what might happen to my reputation if the people at my school found out I believed in Jesus… Most of them were just ignorant about who Jesus is. Several of them had never even met a Christian before and assumed that all Christians were the uneducated, judgmental stereotypes we sometimes see in the media. Yet, I was still afraid.
“As the program went on,” Courtney confesses, “I began to feel guiltier for these silences. If I couldn’t be obedient to Christ in such a central thing, how would I be able to serve him in other ways? God was faithful in my rocky road to obedience – opportunities to speak up for Christ continued to come my way.”
One day a fellow student asked her flat out – right before class, when many other people were around – if she was a Christian. Courtney was at a crossroads… She had a clear decision to make.
Courtney says, “I took a deep breath, and, with God’s help, I said a soft, shaky, ‘Yes.’” The student looked at Courtney for a second, skeptically.
“Interesting,” she said. “I always thought that Christians were like circus freaks…but you’re actually kind of smart!”
“It was a small step,” Courtney says, “but even the smallest step made in obedience is progress. God tells us not to fear for our reputations, because the truth will always win out.” (Courtney Ellis, Princeton, New Jersey; www.PreachingToday.com)
My friends, don’t let a fear for your reputation stop you from serving Christ, because in the end everything else will pass away. Only what’s done for Christ will have any lasting value. But know this, if we take a stand for Christ and seek to serve Him, we will be insulted.
More than that WE WILL BE REJECTED. We will be turned away. We will be unwelcome by some. As Jesus prepares his disciples to go into the various communities of Galilee, that’s what he tells them to expect.
Mark 6:6b-7 Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil a spirits. (NIV)
He gave them the right and the power to cast out demons like He had just done in the previous chapter. They were to be His representatives, being sent forth with His power, to do His work in the communities where He sent them.
Mark 6:8-9 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. (NIV)
An extra tunic would be an additional inner garment, which they could use as a covering at night. In other words, they were not to bring any extra provisions for the journey. Instead, they were to depend on God to provide food and shelter through the hospitality of Jewish households.
Mark 6:10 Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. (NIV)
In each community, they were to stay in only one home, using that home as a base of operations. This is very ingenious, because through the people in that home, they would have natural contacts with others in the community, and their witness would be multiplied. But if no one in the community welcomed them, then they were to move on.
Mark 6:11 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.” (NIV)
Now, pious Jews did this when they left Gentile territory to show that they were dissociating themselves from it. Well, in these Jewish towns, it would tell the Jewish residents that they were acting like pagan Gentiles in rejecting Jesus’ disciples.
Whoa, you mean might I might not be accepted in every town. You mean there might be whole towns that reject me. “Yes,” Jesus would say. “If you are going to serve me as my representatives, you will be rejected. There will be people who will not welcome you into their homes.” But that’s the price of service. That’s the price of doing something significant with your life.
Mark 6:12-13 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. (NIV)
Despite the rejection, God used them in powerful ways, but they had to pay a price.
Eugene Peterson put it well when he said, “Eighteen hundred years or so of Hebrew history, capped by a full exposition in Jesus Christ, tell us that God’s revelation of himself is rejected far more often than it is accepted, is dismissed by far more people than embrace it, and has been either attacked or ignored by every major culture or civilization in which it has given its witness: magnificent Egypt, fierce Assyria, beautiful Babylon, artistic Greece, political Rome, Enlightenment France, Nazi Germany, Renaissance Italy, Marxist Russia, Maoist China, and pursuit-of-happiness America. The community of God’s people has survived in all of these cultures and civilizations but always as a minority, always marginal to the mainstream, never statistically significant. (Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Eerdmans, 2005, p. 288; www.PreachingToday.com)
My friends, if you want to be popular, don’t follow Christ. But if you want to do something significant with your life, then serve Him with all your heart, and represent Him well wherever He sends you.
You may not be accepted in this world, but in the next, where it counts, there will be many who will “welcome you into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9). They will be the people you have led to the Lord, either directly or indirectly, and they will be eternally grateful to you for your witness and service for Christ.
When Texas pastor, Jim Denison, was in college, he served as a summer missionary in East Malaysia. While there he attended a small church. At one of the church’s worship services, a teenage girl came forward to announce her decision to follow Christ and be baptized.
During the service, Denison noticed some worn-out luggage leaning against the wall of the church building. He asked the pastor about it. The pastor pointed to the girl who had just been baptized and told Denison, “Her father said that if she was baptized as a Christian she could never go home again. So she brought her luggage.” (Raymond McHenry, Stories for the Soul, Hendrickson, 2001, p.48; www.PreachingToday.com)
She understood the price of serving Christ. Do we? Maybe if we did, we wouldn’t quit so soon when the hard times come, or when people get critical and we face the sting of rejection.
Anything worth doing is going to have opposition, especially when it comes to serving Christ. If we take a stand for Christ and seek to serve Him, we will be insulted. we will be rejected.
And SOME OF US MAY DIE. Some who serve Christ will lose their lives. Some will be martyred for their commitment to Christ. John the Baptist was. He boldly proclaimed the truth and in the end lost his head for it.
Mark 6:14-18 King Herod heard about this, for Jesus’ name had become well known. Some were saying, “John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.” Others said, “He is Elijah.” And still others claimed, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago.” But when Herod heard this, he said, “John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!” For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, whom he had married. For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” (NIV)
You see, Herod had divorced his wife in order to marry Herodias, who had divorced Philip, her husband. & John the Baptist had the gall to tell Herod he was wrong, that he had disobeyed God’s law.
Mark 6:19-20 So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to, 20 because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled b; yet he liked to listen to him. (NIV)
Even though he didn’t like the truth, he respected John for his boldness in telling the truth. You see, even though people don’t always appreciate the truth, they have to respect it in the end.
Mark 6:21-29 Finally the opportune time came. On his birthday Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. When the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests. The king said to the girl, “Ask me for anything you want, and I’ll give it to you.” And he promised her with an oath, “Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What shall I ask for?” “The head of John the Baptist,” she answered. At once the girl hurried in to the king with the request: “I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother. On hearing of this, John’s disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. (NIV)
John the Baptist lost his life because of his stand for the truth, and many still lose their lives today for the same thing. The Christian History magazine reports that “more people have been martyred for Christ in the past 50 years than in the church’s first 300 years.” (“Persecution in the Early Church,” Christian History, no. 27; www.PreachingToday.com)
Now, that’s not so much happening in our country, but around the world people are losing their lives every week because of their commitment to Christ. Although, it DOES happen here in our own country occasionally.
On December 9, 2007, Matthew Murray shot and killed Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24, at a Youth With a Mission (YWAM) training center in the Denver suburb of Arvada. He later killed two at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs…
Despite the deaths, YWAM is resumed its missions training program the following month, and not one of the 120 who signed up dropped out of the program. Director of the Arvada YWAM, Peter Warren, spoke with Christianity Today about the shooting…
Matthew was in the building for half an hour talking with students, and then he asked to spend the night. Tiffany was called to the front because she handles hospitality. Normally, they would not have someone spend the night without knowing them or arranging it ahead of time. After that, Matthew said, “Then this is what I’ve got for you,” pulled out a gun and began shooting.
After firing a few shots, he had his foot in the door, and at some point his foot slipped and he fell back. The door slammed shut on him and automatically locked, so he could not get back in again. Right then, other staff and students were driving up and saw Matthew banging on the door, trying to get back in. When Matthew saw them, he ran away.
After [a] student performed CPR on Tiffany, she regained consciousness and asked [another trainee named] Holly, “Is it bad?”
Holly said, “Yes, it’s bad.”
Tiffany looked at Holly and her boyfriend, Dan, who was also shot, and said, “We do this for Jesus, right guys? We do this for Jesus.” (Sarah Pulliam, YWAM Director Describes Shooting, Forgiveness, www.Christianity Today.com, 12-19-07)
She is one who right here in the heart of America lost her life because of her service for Christ. Now, thankfully that doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Some do give their lives serving Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, who gave his life for Christ in a Nazi concentration camp, once said, “Christ kept himself from suffering till his hour had come, but when it did come he met it as a free man, seized it, and mastered it. We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christian History, no. 32; www.PreachingToday.com)
My friends, let’s choose to serve Christ no matter what happens, because as believers we are not victims; we are free in Christ to do what’s right in the face of any danger.
We will be insulted, we will be rejected, and some of us may die. But in the end, it’s the only way to live!
Donald Wildman put it this way: “At the very heart of the Christian gospel is a cross – the symbol of suffering and sacrifice, of hurt and pain and humiliation and rejection. I want no part of the Christian message which does not call me to involvement, requires of me no sacrifice, takes from me no comfort, requires of me less than the best I have to give. The duty of a Christian is to be faithful, not popular or successful.” (Donald Wildmon in NFD Journal; Christianity Today, Vol. 31, no.10; www.Preaching Today.com)
How about you? How about me? Will we choose to serve Christ or take the easy way out? God can use us in powerful ways, but we must be willing to pay the price.
