Praise be to the peace from God the Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for our meditation today is recorded for us in the Gospel of Saint Mark chapter 6 verses 6 through 13. So take out your Bibles or follow along on the screen and we’ll start reading from Mark chapter 6 verse 6. He was amazed at their lack of faith. Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. Calling the twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits. These were his instructions. Take nothing for the journey except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals, but not an extra shirt. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place, and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them. They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. This is the gospel of our Lord. Join me in a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, please send your Holy Spirit to be with us, to guide us and teach us according to your word here today. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Redeemer. Amen.
My dear Christian friends, sometimes when you read the teachings of Jesus, You might find that you don’t always agree. I probably shouldn’t admit this in front of this large crowd of people, especially live streaming recorded on YouTube forever. But sometimes when I read the things that Jesus said, I just want to say, Jesus? Really? 2, 000 years ago, Jesus came from heaven and earth. It wasn’t the religious extremists that ended up killing him. It wasn’t the atheists that put him to death. It was not the worshipper of false gods that took their pitchforks and torches and called for his death. You know who it was? It was church people. The Sanhedrin, Pharisees, Sadducees, elders, scribes, all the religious people. are responsible for putting Jesus to death. So it makes me wonder, what is it that people like that, people like me, or you, would kill God? Really? So I was looking through the Gospels, the biographies of Jesus, looking for an answer to that question, and I think I came up with one. If I could boil all the arguments, all the discussions, all of the drama down to just one word, I think that one word would be, Authority. The authority of Jesus. People would disagree with Jesus. They argued with him all the time. But he always refused to agree to disagree. He refused to say, well, that’s your truth and this is mine.
He insisted that every kind of conversation and every argument, he insisted on getting the last word the final vote of being the one sitting on the throne of authority and he would say to people, no, no. I’m right, and you’re wrong. Doesn’t happen too much today, I guess, does it? The idea of that outside authority up there, telling us how to think and how to live our lives for our good, it’s been going downhill for years now, hasn’t it? From presidents and pastors and politicians and parents, authority and truth has gone from up there, up there where we could listen to it, to where? Right inside here. I’m gonna do what I want. I’ll do it if it feels good. Just saw a recent TV interview where this celebrity was saying, I just, I just wanna be the best version of myself. I didn’t even know what that meant, do you? The authority has changed hands, so to speak. If I do more than just pick out some nice, beautiful comfort passages from the gospel, I find that Jesus actually taught some very tough and sometimes very difficult things. Think of this one, Sermon on the Mount. Love your enemies.
Love your enemies. Forgive them. Forgive those who persecute you. Really? How about this one? Deny yourself. Take up your cross. And follow me. Deny yourself. Well, what do when something like that happens? You come across those difficult words. What do you think? How are you going to deal with Jesus if you struggle with some of the things that he says? Well, let’s go to our text today from the Gospel of Mark, and I bet it’s going to help us. Because in the verses before our text today, Jesus was there in Nazareth, his hometown, teaching in the synagogue one day, doing quite well. And it says, though, that some people were amazed. They loved it. They thought this was the greatest news they’d ever heard.
The Messiah has come. And yet it goes on to say some people took offense at him. Offended at Jesus and his words. You can’t hardly believe that either, can you? But then our text says, it starts out by saying that Jesus, he was amazed. At their lack of faith, he was surprised. And that’s when he left. He left Nazareth and he went around to some of the villages nearby and started talking the same message about his love and forgiveness and God’s love for those people. And then he finally got a plan. Got organized, got his twelve disciples together and say, you gotta help me out here. I’m gonna send you out two by two and you go out and witness to the people in all these little different areas as much as you can. And it says in our text, That Jesus gave them the authority.
Can you imagine the look on their face? Really? Tell us that again, Jesus. Did you really mean that? Go out two by two. Don’t take anything with you. But off they went. They did it. They took off. And they drove out demons. And they anointed the sick. And healed people. And they came back all excited, probably saying let’s go out and do that again. That was pretty exciting. Authority. Jesus gave them this authority. And the message that they were to carry out there was, that people should repent. Repent. What do you think of that? We need to repent? I do. We’re confronted with God’s law, and he points the finger at every one of us. And if we’re listening at all, we know we need to repent. We have sinned. We have our sinful flesh, our sinful nature, it’s called in the scriptures. It seems like the world doesn’t want to listen to that message very well today, do they? You need to repent. Kind of reminds me of the story of G. K. Chesterton. You might have heard of him. You might have even heard this story. He was a Christian author and philosopher who lived in England about a hundred years ago. And it was a time when they felt like the world was exploding then too. There were wars, there were advances in technology and science and weapons of mass destruction.
There was trench warfare, and there were dictatorial dictators. And so, the London newspaper finally put out an article and they asked their readers, What’s wrong with the world? G. K. Chesterton, pretty good guy, he wrote back, the shortest answer you’d ever see, What’s wrong with the world? Dear sir, I am, signed G. K. Chesterton. The biggest problem in this world is right in here, isn’t it? It’s inside each one of us, in our hearts. So what should I do? How do I dodge that question? Can I get by without admitting sin? Well, let me picture it to you today like this. Let’s imagine that this stool is the seat of authority. And whoever sits here gets the last word. Well, I feel uncomfortable in this position. Oh, I know a few things. Come on, I could recite the Ten Commandments for you. I know other teachings in the Bible. But do I live my life perfectly? Do I need to repent and confess my sin? Yes, I do. I don’t treat people good all the time. I don’t forgive everybody. Much less my enemies. And when I sinned against them, I don’t always go confess and ask for their forgiveness after I’ve hurt them. See, this could be about anything. All the different teachings of Jesus. I don’t have authority to do what I want and what I feel just because it’s me. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.
This is Jesus seat. He is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. He has authority. I listen to Him. Let’s give this seat back to Jesus. Not just because it makes good sense, but because He’s God, and He loves us. That’s the biggest reason. I could confess my sins. I could go along with a lot of sayings of his, a lot of teachings of his. I could submit to his authority in many, many times, in many, many ways, as long as I know he loves me. And he does. Look at John 10. Here’s what he said in John chapter 10. No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down in my own accord. I have authority. To lay it down and authority to take it up again. Jesus said all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. So what did he do with it? What did he do with that authority? He just said he laid down his life. He died. He died on a cross for all of you. He died to pay for all of those sins, all those times when you were seeking only what you wanted to do in yourself. And do you know why? Because he loved you. He loved you so much. for all eternity, that he wanted you and I to be with him, to go to heaven through our faith in him and live there. God’s love and forgiveness is so deep and so high and so strong that it’s just about impossible to get down to the bottom of it. There’s this amazing grace. There’s this powerful, transforming love that you and I can say God doesn’t just put up with me. God loves me. The God of heaven and earth delights in you.
Hebrews talks about Jesus suffering, and then at the end it says, He’s not ashamed to call you brothers and sisters. Isn’t that amazing? That’s what Jesus did, and that’s why he did it. Look at what Paul said in Ephesians chapter 1. God raised him from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. Far above all authority of power and dominion. He used his authority to serve all people, to love all people, to forgive everybody’s sins, and then to save all of us who believe that message. Simply believe in Jesus. And His forgiveness of sins. And so are there things that I don’t always get? Are there things where I want to say, Jesus, really? No, not anymore. Not after all these years. I’m, I trust Him. I have faith in Him. I’m going to lean on Him. I just want to love Him back. A God who gave us everything. He gave up everything in Jesus so that we could have everything else. And so we as a church say, yes, we’ll follow you, Jesus. We love to worship here, don’t we? And the service is fabulous. They’re just fabulous worship services with music and all that kind of stuff, right? But we can’t stay here. I’m here all morning, but you don’t have to be here all morning. So, you gotta go.
You gotta go out there and share the message with people. So we’ll go one by one, two by two, as a group, as a church, any place to the, in, in the state or the community around the world, just go to the, our mission and ministry fair back there and see how many things we do and where we go with places with the gospel of Jesus so that people may know His love. That’s what we’re here for. When we step off of this seat, Jesus, we know that You are there. With joy everlasting, and there’s freedom for our souls forever, and then we have a mission. Jesus, you are the kingdom. You are the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Let’s pray. Jesus, we ask you to strengthen our faith today. That you would send the Holy Spirit into our hearts, that we could grasp how wide and high and long and deep is that love that you have for us. Your grace is amazing, and it saves sinners like us, and we’re so grateful, God. We want to take that message to soothe our hearts, and to share it with all people. In Jesus name we pray this. Amen.
