Mark 12, verses 35-34. This is God’s Holy Word. While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, He asked, Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the Son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies, until I put your enemies under your feet. David himself calls him Lord, how then can he be his son?
A large crowd listened to him with delight. As he taught, Jesus said, watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.
Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put, and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything, all she had to live on.
Thus far, God’s holy, inspired, and infallible Word, and it will please the Lord to take His Word, and by the power of His Spirit, transform it into service for Himself. Thanks be to God. Heavenly Father, now bless us as we come to the study of your word. May we have attentive minds and receptive hearts, and then may we do something with what we hear and know.
Lord, we want to add a few things to our prayer this morning. We pray for our new activities director, Andy, and pray to bless her and help her in all her responsibilities. We remember Javier, who’s moved on, and we know he and his family have needs, and we pray for them to take care of them also, Lord. We pray today also for David, who lives here at Brookdale, and we pray, Father, that you will heal his heart and help him to feel better and to get beyond this crisis that’s happened to him. We pray for our dear friend Tina, who’s still in the memory unit, and we pray for her, Lord, that you would bless her day, even though she can’t be with us this morning.
And we also ask you again for Kathleen as she prepares to go to her overseas service for the summer. Thank you, Lord, for the ways that you blessed the school in this past year. And we do lay all these things before you now, Lord, in Jesus’ name, amen. Three short passages close out the 12th chapter of Mark.
They are related in that they admonish the teachers of the law, or those who lacked humility, in approaching the Lord in His holy temple. Jesus is saying that whatever one’s station in society, he or she rises to greatness when he or she comes to believe in Jesus and lays up treasure and recognition in heaven and not on earth. Well, whether they were teachers or wealthy citizens, those who thought highly of themselves were usually mistaken. In fact, it turns out that the poorest and most uneducated among the people often exercised the things that the rest had forgotten or misunderstood. Theirs was a true piety and a devotion to God, even though they didn’t have much recognition. Well, I have three points this morning. You say, oh, wow, he usually has six or 10. I have three for you this morning because there are three of these Little pericopes, they call them, or little incidents that happen.
First, we’re going to talk about the riddle of the realms. This is all alliteration, by the way. The riddle of the realms, the robes of the rabbis, and the riches of the reluctant. Maybe that’ll help you to remember these points a little bit. Well, the riddle of the realms.
Now, when I was a boy, This is really a long time ago. When I was a boy, there was a television show that nobody missed. It’s called the $64,000 question. I’ve forgotten what night of the week it was, but everybody was tuned in for it. There was something that had to be answered. And in this case, there’s no $64,000 here, but it could lead to something more valuable than that.
The riddle of the realms, the riddle that has to do with the Messiah and where His rule truly lay. The riddle is how we recognize Christ, how we recognize the Messiah, Jesus, since we are told He is both David’s son and David’s Lord. And some of those folks who heard Jesus tell this riddle kind of scratched their heads and said, what in the world is he talking about?
King David was only able to deal with this matter, even though it to us seems rather simple. But he was only able to deal with it with the help of the Holy Spirit. That’s what verse 36 tells us here. David himself calls him Lord. That’s 37. But it says the Holy Spirit was speaking by David. The Holy Spirit speaking by David. So how did David deal with it because that’s where the concept is found back in the Psalms, Psalm 110. And David was able to deal with it by the Holy Spirit and I believe the Lord Jesus wanted everybody to deal with it by the Holy Spirit as well.
As long as there were people who fought against Jesus and didn’t want Him to have any place in their lives and who were jealous of the crowds that He drew and jealous of His ability to teach and so forth, they very much needed help in understanding Him. And I think the prayer of Christ was that they too would listen.
You remember last time we looked at one of the scribes, Jesus said, you know, you’ve asked a very good question. You’re not far from the kingdom. And I’m sure that would have been His hope for all those who were dealing with Him and He with them. Now the answer to the riddle, as I said, is not that hard.
The answer is the incarnation of God. How can the Messiah, and we know Him as Jesus, how can He be both David’s Son and David’s Lord? The God of Him, if you will. Well, it’s because of the incarnation. God came among us. Emmanuel, God with us, was here.
And that’s the answer to the riddle in the most basic form. And of course, when the Son of God did come into the world, He brought with Him wisdom, and He brought with Him also power. And that’s how we know that He is more than just an ordinary man who came by an ordinary birth of some kind. He was a virgin born, King of kings and Lord of lords. He was indeed God among us in order that He might show us the way to be saved and not to perish.
Now, God that the Hebrews refer to as Yahweh, the Lord, And by the way, in this passage where it says, the Lord said to my Lord, it’s Yahweh said to my Adonai. So it’s not the same word, even though it’s spelled the same way. But Yahweh, the true God in all His triune greatness, has placed Messiah on the throne. You say, I don’t recall that Jesus ever sat upon a throne.
Well, His throne is in heaven. He came into this world in order that He might be coronated. That He might be recognized by the people as their true King and Savior. So, the Lord God Almighty placed His only begotten Son on the throne. Not only the throne of Israel, but the throne of all the world. And that’s where you get this idea of the riddle of the realms. All realms, all kingdoms, belong to Him.
And we may not see it quite as clearly as the Lord, or even some of these early disciples did, but nevertheless, that’s what God wants us to see in this riddle. That God came into the world, and He could be David’s son, because that’s how He came into the world, as a descendant of David, but David’s Lord, because He was God, come to save us. So He placed Him on the throne of Israel, but of a whole wide world. The son of David is Emmanuel, God with us. And his task is to humble all God’s enemies and his task is to save a great host of people. Hardly able to be numbered for there’s so many of them who come to Him.
And one of the things that we want to do, of course, is make sure that He’s our King. That we’re not rebellious. There’s one parable that Jesus told where some of the people said of a man who was their King, we don’t want Him to be our King. And we’ll not listen to Him and obey Him and follow Him. And the result in that parable was that they ended up in a bad way. That the wrath of the king and the story came down upon them. But we want to be careful that the wrath of God doesn’t fall upon us.
Because when His Messiah is presented to us, and tells us that the way of salvation has come through His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, we don’t want to say, no, we’ll have nothing to do with this one, but to say, Lord, thank You for salvation.
Thank You for the forgiveness of sins. Thank You for a home in heaven. Thank You, Lord, for eternal life. So that’s the riddle of the realms. And the answer again is the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. He came into the world, the Bible says, to save sinners. He came into the world to be our King and to lead us in the way that we ought to go.
Now as Jesus told in this first phase of things here about the riddle of the realms and the coming of the Savior, The great throng became fascinated, the Bible says. It’s the last verse there of the first part in verse 37. A large crowd listened to him with delight. The great throng became fascinated with Jesus’ challenges, especially to these high and uppity leaders that kind of made the people feel very little and very unimportant.
But again, what this king came to do was to say, you are important. that God cares about you, God wants you not to perish, but to have everlasting life. And so then we transition over to the second of these stories, these incidents that takes place, and that’s the robes of the rabbis. Now, he speaks of the scribes here, but mostly the scribes also were rabbis, and rabbi simply means my teacher. The rabbi was a teacher, and the robes of the rabbis were symbols of how important that they thought they were. Let me read you a couple verses that Jesus, well, one Jesus gave out, and the other from the book of Proverbs. I’ll read Proverbs first here.
It said, goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. And of course, Solomon, who wrote the Proverbs under the direction of the Holy Spirit, of course, needed to hear that himself. He needed not to be puffed up. He needed to be humbled also. But pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall, and there was plenty of pride among the scribes and the religious leaders of the people. And then Luke chapter 12 verse 15, Jesus said, Beware of greed, for man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.
And we read about here, here are the people that have long flowing robes. They want the houses of widows if they can get a hold of them. They want some recognition, an honored seat, a special place. And this whole idea, not just of pride, but of seeking it as the main thing in life is one of the things that Jesus is directing his attention to here.
Now, I’m only giving this illustration not because I know the man involved or have any way to tell you that he was a good man or a bad man. I’ll just tell you what a friend of mine said. We went to a church one time to hear this man preach. And as far as I can remember, he preached a pretty good sermon. But as we left, my friend said, I don’t like that man. And I said, why? Red socks. Red socks.
Well, these Pharisees, or as they were called here, the scribes, the men who studied the writings and did some writing themselves, they thought very highly of themselves and thought they deserved a lot of attention and a lot of reward. And Jesus cautioned the people not to emulate or pursue the lifestyle of the scribes. Again, what was that lifestyle? Get as much as you can, make yourself as important as you can be, have everybody kind of bow before you and give thanks that you’re in their world and so forth. Jesus said, that’s not the way you want to go.
Now, much of this took place at the temple, okay, the temple in Jerusalem. Now, Jesus was from Nazareth and then from Capernaum up in the north in Galilee, but there were synagogues in those places, not temples, just one temple in Jerusalem. But whenever Jesus did go to Jerusalem, he went almost immediately to the temple and he held his teaching sessions there. He had a very close association with the temple. In fact, so close that at one time he said, destroy this temple in three days, I’ll raise it up. And we’re told there he was talking about himself and not the building.
But you see the close relationship that they had. It was a fascinating place. And it was a place where people had their flowing robes and their positions and their ill-gotten gains. And usually it wasn’t hard to figure out why they felt so self-important.
Many scribes, of course, were hypocrites. Now, I told you last week we found a man who was, Jesus said, close to the kingdom. He was on the right track. But many of them, of course, had taken the wrong track. They were hypocrites. They were lacking spirituality.
And that’s why Jesus says as He begins this passage, He says, You know, if you’ve ever passed anybody’s house with a fence and a sign on the fence that says, beware of dog. Beware, beware. Beware, because theirs, he says, is the greater condemnation. Or as they put it here in our passage, these men will be punished most severely.
We’ve all been saddened, I think, recently to see that down at the beach, I’ve forgotten whether it was Newport or one of them, that a family with a little child got into the raging water, those big waves down there, and the child was lost, and they found the body of the child a bit later. But the point here is that the, results of being careless, the results of thinking that you can swim and you’ll get by the waves and all this. It’s a wrong conclusion. That little child got washed away.
Thankfully, they were able to save two out of the three that were in those ripped currents and waves there and so forth. I just point that out, that you better beware. Beware that you don’t fall into the condemnation in this case of these hypocritical scribes, these people who thought they were so great. Nothing wrong with studying hard and being expert and using all the gifts and insight that you have, but then when you puff yourself up and say, oh, I’m so important, people ought to really pat me on the back or give me prizes or whatever.
He says that’s not the way to go. Don’t try. On the other hand, to be as poor as you can be, the Bible doesn’t say that you should exalt poverty and work to be poor. Don’t try rags. Don’t even try, as we have in our day, ever since I can remember back to the 60s, don’t try to be a hippie.
Just be normal, okay? Just be normal. The scribes and so forth, in their hypocrisy and so forth, they missed the point of righteousness. Righteousness is what is important with God. And the way to be righteous is not to try harder, but the way to righteousness is to believe the gospel and have the power of God in your life. Don’t be ostentatious, let us say.
I think that idea of the flowing robes gives you that idea. The robes of the rabbis were often the flowing robes, the look at me sort of robes, the idea that I’m so great that you should keep your eyes on me. And the Bible really says keep your eyes on the Lord, keep your eyes on Jesus. If you want greatness, that’s where it lies.
Pursue righteousness in the gospel without any ostentation. On the other hand, again, don’t say, oh, if I’m poor, then the Lord will take me to heaven for sure. It’s not whether you’re poor or rich, it’s whether you love the Lord Jesus Christ and you believe in Him as your Savior. And the robes of the rabbis remind us that the Lord wants us not to stand out so much in society other than that we love the Lord, but don’t stand out by either being too poor or too rich or something along those lines.
Well, that’s the second of these stories. We’ve had the riddle of the realms and the robes of the rabbis, and we transition then to the riches of the reluctant. From Jesus’ previous remarks, one would conclude that the scribes themselves were among the rich folks. You don’t hear him telling any tales of how poor the scribes were, the religious leaders.
They made a lot of money. rightly or wrongly, but they made a lot of money. But the riches of the reluctant has to do with how much of what you have really belongs to the Lord. And the answer is all of it. All of it. It’s all yours, Lord, as we would say. The Lord does provide. And if we give to Him, if we seek to honor Him and bless Him with what we have, the Lord will not let us starve.
I remember when my father came out here in the 1950s, in fact it was the year 1950, to study at Biola, we didn’t have much money. In fact, my father actually left a pretty good paying job. He worked for the post office. But he had a pretty good paying job, but he felt the Lord was calling him to ministry. He came out here, he wanted to study at Biola. He said, I need to get as far away from home as possible or I won’t keep up my studies.
But he came out here and there were times when things were pretty thin in our lives, although I was too young to know it. I always thought we were pretty well off. We weren’t all that rich, but every once in a while, we’d open the front door and there’d be a box of groceries on the front porch. Where did it come from? Well, it obviously came from somebody in the church and somebody cared about us and so forth, but it was the Lord’s gift to us.
The Lord will not let us starve, I’m sure. It’s a privilege. to participate in the Lord’s work, whether it’s by activity or by offerings. That’s a way to participate, and that’s really the way we should look at our offerings to the Lord. It’s not like, oh, Lord, I’m paying my fair share, or Lord, surely you’ll bless me if I give a lot. It’s that, Lord, I want you to have what I have and use it for your glory and your honor.
The Lord who needs nothing, of course, the Bible says He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He says everything in the world is mine. Well, that’s from Psalm 52, I think. Anyway, the Lord who needs nothing gladly receives the offerings of the poor along with the offerings of the rich. Now notice He doesn’t condemn the rich for giving here. He just applauds the fact that such a poor woman, a poor widow, as he describes, is able to offer what she has to the Lord and say, Lord, you take it and use it.
I’d rather you use it. You do a much better job than I can with it. God does note, of course, when offerings are generous, when they’re sacrificial, but especially when they’re reflective of love for Him. You keep that in mind. as you give to whatever you give to your various situations. But to be generous, how much more generous could she have been than to give all that she had? A sacrificial, of course, I think that’s self-evident.
She wasn’t going to buy any groceries that day, because she gave it all to the Lord, and she was full of love for Him. And she didn’t have a little button on her lapel, if she had lapels. But it didn’t say, I love God. She demonstrated it in her life.
Well, evidently, the rich, though they gave dutifully, and as according to what was required, they didn’t really give without reluctance. They would rather maybe have kept it for themselves. But the widow gave lovingly. And this counted for more. That’s what Jesus said. I didn’t say it. Jesus said, She gave more. The world belongs to the Lord in all it contains. And so our offerings to the Lord don’t really fill a need that He has. They’re simply expressions of our love and commitment to Him and our desire to be a part of His kingdom.
Back in the Old Testament, there was a king named Amaziah. And he felt he was a king in Judah, which was a southern kingdom. And he felt threatened. And so he contacted his brethren to the north. And he said, here, I’ll give you quite a bit of silver if you’ll send me some soldiers. And one of the prophets came to him and said, you shouldn’t have taken that route. You should have just depended on the Lord for your help in this situation. And the king’s response was, what about all the money I spent? And the answer of the prophet was, the Lord is able to give you much more than this.
And that’s just a good pattern of thought and way of life that the Lord is always able to give us more than we ever give to Him. He doesn’t need anything, but He’s a God of giving, God of blessing. Well, those are our three closing ideas and sections for this 12th chapter of Mark. The riddle of the realms, that is that Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth. He’s in our world. He has been here, has saved us by his death on the cross and rose again from the dead. Where he reigns, there is peace and life. There’s the robes of the rabbis, which are largely for show and don’t mean very much. And there’s the reluctance of the rich to give what they have. But the Lord says, don’t worry, I can give you much more than this.
Please keep those things in mind in your own spiritual life. Let’s pray together. Lord, we pray to always give you first place, and to give you all that we have, at least to say, Lord, it all belongs to you, and help us not to be reluctant, but to stand back and see you at work, and to remember that you said that whatever we give up, you’re able to replace it with much more than we could ask or think. Give us that kind of mind, and bless us now as we go forth to live lives that honor you, we ask in Jesus’ name, amen. So let us sing our closing hymn which is on the back of your bulletin today.
Now blessed be the Lord our God. Now blessed be the Lord our God, the God of Israel. For He alone doth wondrous works in glory that excel, And blessed be His glorious name. to all eternity. The whole earth let His glory fill. Amen, so let it be. Have a blessed day today. Again, no Bible study this Thursday, but we’ll be back the following Thursday. And no change in the Sunday services either. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.