Understanding the Gospel: Mark 9:30-32

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A Sunday School teacher was teaching a group of children about the Christian’s armor in Eph 6:13-17. She spoke of the breastplate of righteousness and the shield of faith, the belt of truth and the helmet of salvation. Then she said, “Paul also says we should carry a weapon, which he says is the Word of God. Do you remember what he called the Word of God?” There was no answer so she probed the class further, “It’s something very sharp, something that cuts.” Of course the correct answer is the Sword of the Spirit, but one of her more clever students spoke up with confidence and said, “I know. I know. It’s the axe of the Apostles!”

The boy has heard reference in church before to the “Acts (A-C-T-S) of the Apostles.” If our only exposure to the apostles comes from that portion of the New Testament, then we may well indeed think of them as sharp tools in the hands of God. At Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon them, they were transformed and empowered, and thereafter used mightily of God for His purposes in establishing the church of Jesus Christ. In fact, it may be more accurate to speak of the book of Acts as the Acts of the Holy Spirit, for it is He who works mightily through the Apostles in the days of the early church. However, the picture we get of the Apostles prior to Pentecost is much different. In fact, if we only had the picture we have seen thus far in the Gospel According to Mark, we would have to confess the axe is dull. They have been depicted thus far in less than glorious ways, primarily showing themselves to be spiritually dense, perpetually confused, seldom understanding, and often speaking in error.

But we must confess that we are often like them. We are often dull axes as well. We have difficulty understanding spiritual truth until the Holy Spirit inclines our hearts to understanding.

Like them, each person comes to the place where we are presented with the claims of the Gospel message of Jesus. And though the message is quite simple, we are so spiritually dense, so spiritually dead, that the message escapes our understanding and fear prevents us from confessing our ignorance and suspending our preconceived notions that we may rightly understand and receive God’s saving truth. When Jesus tells them of the things which will shortly come to pass, we are told that the disciples “did not understand” and “were afraid to ask.”

The setting is a journey through Galilee. Having left the area of the Mount of Transfiguration, which is most likely Mt. Hermon, Jesus and the disciples are now traveling through Galilee for the last time on the final journey to Jerusalem. Galilee has been the locus of Jesus’ life and ministry for the last three years. It is the native region of most of His followers. It is the place where He has taught much and performed many wondrous miracles. But this time, as He passes through the region, He knows that it will be for the last time.

Now, the text tells us in verse 30 that He did not want anyone to know about it. What did He not want anyone to know? He didn’t want them to know He was passing through the region. We have often spoken of this motif of secrecy in Mark’s Gospel. Frequently following a miracle or a teaching episode, there is a command for silence. In each of these episodes we have commented that the prevailing understanding of the Messiah and His mission is so distorted, that Jesus does not want people to be carried away in mistaken messianic fervor. Many believed that Messiah was coming to overthrow the oppression that Rome had instituted. Jesus did not want His coming to be the catalyst for a nationalistic revolution. Neither did He want to evoke the ire of His opponents over mistaken notions of what He was here to do. Not that Jesus shirked away from opposition, but when He was opposed, He wanted it to be on the basis of His message and His true mission – not on mistaken presumptions. So here, Jesus does not want the word to spread that He is passing through the region. The text tells us that the reason for this silence was because (v31) “He was teaching his disciples.” He needed this uninterrupted time with the twelve to convey to them once more in no uncertain terms what His mission to Jerusalem will entail. He has come to save humanity from sin, and that means that He must go to Jerusalem and complete the mission. He does not want anyone, for Him or against Him, to delay, distract, or derail that mission.

So as they traveled, He taught them. And from this text today, we want to examine what He taught the disciples and their reaction to this teaching. We will discuss the claims of the Gospel and the comprehension of the Gospel with a view toward understanding the Gospel better in our own lives, receiving this Gospel message and the salvation it offers us, and how we might better communicate this Gospel to others.

I. The Claims of the Gospel

Of the content of this itinerant lesson being taught, only one sentence is preserved in Mark. In v31, we read that Jesus was teaching them, “The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and when He has been killed, He will rise three days later.” This sentence is pregnant with meaning, as it reveals something of His title, His tribulation and His triumph. These are the central issue of the Gospel – Who Jesus is and what Jesus did. Without properly understanding these matters, we will never understand the good news of the Gospel.

A. His Title (The Son of Man)

It will be helpful for us to here review some information we discussed several weeks ago as we examined Mark 8:27-33. That passage contained Jesus first mention of His coming suffering in Jerusalem, and there, as here, He referred to Himself as “The Son of Man.” You may recall that we said then that this title is used by Jesus to refer to Himself some 80 times in the Gospels. In Mark, He uses the title 14 times. No one else ever refers to Him as the Son of Man. It is used only by Him, and only in reference to Himself. For those familiar with the Old Testament’s Messianic prophecies, this title has a very specific meaning attached to it. In the seventh chapter of Daniel, beginning at verse 13, we read:

“I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.”

If Jesus were to speak of Himself with titles like “Christ” or “Messiah,” the people would supply their preconceived opinions about who He was and what He came to do. But by using this phrase “Son of Man,” Jesus is able to point to a specific antecedent from Daniel 7 that defines who He is. Fundamental to understanding the Gospel message of Christ is understanding who He is. He is the One prophesied in Scripture with divine characteristics who has come forth from the Father, the Ancient of Days, with authority and dominion, and glory, to establish a Kingdom that will consist of people from every tribe and nation and tongue who serve Him. And His Kingdom will be established forever.

In a sense, the whole of Mark’s Gospel builds up to answer the question of who Jesus is. If we knew nothing of Jesus, and this portion of the New Testament was all we had, we would see Him as one who comes on the scene being identified in the opening verse as the Son of God. The first verse serves as an introduction and a thesis. Jesus is the Son of God. By this, we do not mean to say that He is somehow less than God, but that He is of the same nature and substance as God. He is God in the flesh, incarnate as a man to fulfill the mission of the Messiah in saving humanity from sin. And then, as if he was unfolding an argument to substantiate this thesis, Mark begins to give us selected vignettes from the life of Christ. We see Him as One who is greater than John the Baptist (1:7); One who will baptize with the Holy Spirit (1:8); One who is anointed by the Holy Spirit and declared to be the Son of God by God the Father Himself (1:10-11); One who overcame temptation at the hands of Satan (1:13); One who preaches the Gospel of God, announcing the arrival of God’s kingdom and calling mankind to repentance (1:14-15); One who bids men to follow Him prompting them to leave all behind and come in faith and obedience after Him (1:16-20); One who teaches with divine authority (1:21-22); One who is recognized by demons as the Holy one of God (1:24) and the Son of the Most High God (5:7); One who has authority over demons (1:23-27); One who has the power to heal (1:30-31) and the authority to forgive sin (2:1-12); One who reaches out to sinners (2:15-17) and Gentiles (7:26-30); One who is Lord of the Sabbath (2:28); One who has come to establish a new family (3:31-35); One who has the power to control nature (4:37-41; 6:48); One who has the power to raise the dead (5:35-43); One who has the power to multiply resources (6:38-44; 8:5-9); One with authoritative insight into the Word of God (7:1-23); the Christ (8:29); the Son of Man (8:31); the One who is transfigured with divine glory (9:1-8); the One who has prophesied of His own death and resurrection (8:31; 9:9). Who is such a One as this? He is God in the flesh. And all of this is wrapped up in His use of the title “Son of Man.”

B. His Tribulation (9:31)

While those familiar with Daniel’s image of the Son of Man may assume this means that Jesus will march triumphantly into Jerusalem and overthrow the authorities and establish the Kingdom of God there by force, Jesus foretells of a far different set of circumstances awaiting Him in Jerusalem. He says, “The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him.”

Jesus speaks in a passive voice here – “the Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men.” This is no kamikaze suicide mission. Jesus is in the hands of others working to bring His life to an end. This delivering over takes place in two spheres of reality. On the one hand, there is what will take place in the human or earthly sphere. Jesus will be delivered, betrayed by one of His own disciples – Judas Iscariot – into the hands of the Sanhedrin, and then delivered by the Sanhedrin into the hands of Pilate, and delivered by Pilate into the hands of the soldiers, and delivered by the soldiers into the hands of death. The wording is reminiscent of what Jesus spoke concerning John the Baptist in parallel with Elijah in 9:13 – “They did to him whatever they wished.” With these words we see how Jesus was shuffled through the kangaroo courts of Jerusalem at the hands of men – Jews and Gentiles alike. The hands of men carried torches and weapons to come and find Him. The hands of men seized Him. The hands of men took up whips and tortured Him. The hands of men struck Him. The hands of men took up hammers and nailed Him to the cross.

But there is another sphere in which this deliverance occurred. Above and beyond the human or earthly sphere is the divine sphere of activity. In the Greek New Testament, we often come across statements such as this where there is a passive verb, such as here with “delivered,” but no indication of who is taking the action. In many if not most of these passages, the unseen actor at work is God Himself. These passages are referred to as “divine passives,” wherein God is working behind the scenes bringing His purposes to pass. And in this way, God is at work in the events that will come to pass with Jesus in Jerusalem. Over and above all that humanity will do to Jesus, He remains in the hands of His Father, who has ultimately delivered Him into the hands of men. Nothing will happen to Him in Jerusalem that is not known to God and in the power of God. His suffering and His death are no surprise to the Father. He has sent the Son on this mission knowing full well that this will be what happens. Every sacrifice of the Old Testament system was a foreshadowing of the ultimate sacrifice that Christ would come in the fullness of time to offer. God in His infinite wisdom had established from the foundation of the world that He would redeem mankind to Himself at the precisely perfect moment in time through the ultimate sacrifice of Himself in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, having been delivered into the hands of men by the predetermined will of God.

In his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2, Peter captures well what is going on in these two spheres of reality. He says in Acts 2:22-23, “Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—this One, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.” The men whose hands nailed Jesus to the cross were willfully but unknowingly participating in the eternal plan of God to redeem humanity from sin.

And so here Jesus speaks of His tribulation that will come upon Him in Jerusalem. The Son of Man, spoken of so gloriously in the prophecies of His coming, must suffer much and die, that sin might receive its full penalty in the person of an innocent substitute who lays down His life for the guilty. If Christ did not die on the cross, there would be no salvation for us, no good news to hear, no Gospel to understand and receive, for we would still abide in our sins, and be eternally separated from God. But Christ willingly underwent this tribulation, being put to death by the hands of men, but ultimately carrying out the plans of God, because of God’s infinite love for mankind. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down His life for His friends.” Christ has come to do just this – to lay down His life in the plan of God and at the hands of godless men, in order that you and I can be reconciled to God. We who are from birth at enmity with God because of our sins are made to be His friends, yea even His very sons and daughters because of this. But His tribulation is not the final word. For we find another word about …

C. His Triumph

“And when He has been killed, He will rise three days later.” Several generations ago, a very popular yet controversial depiction of the life of Christ hit the stage and screen in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. In the final scene, Jesus is depicted dying a slow painful death on the cross. And then the show is over. A couple of centuries prior to Jesus Christ Superstar, Thomas Jefferson issued what is commonly called now, “The Jefferson Bible,” a collection of stories and teachings gleaned from the New Testament Gospels. Thomas Jefferson did not personally believe in the deity of Jesus, in the Trinity, or in the possibility of miracles, and so absent from his “Bible” were any and all stories that involved the supernatural. Jefferson’s Bible ends with these words: “Now, in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.” However, both the Jefferson Bible and Jesus Christ Superstar fail to give us the whole story, for the story does not end on the cross, and it does not end in a tomb. These events bring to close a chapter of the story of Jesus, but the story goes on triumphantly.

Jesus died a cruel and inhumane death on the cross. Jesus’ body was wrapped in cloths and placed in a rock hewn tomb which was subsequently sealed by a massive stone. But we have in our possession the eyewitness accounts of those who went to the tomb following the Sabbath and found it to be empty, and were thereafter confronted in person by the risen Jesus Christ. Jesus rose from the dead, just as He said He would, and thereby conquered the penalty of sin forever. Because Jesus walked alive out of the tomb, death is a defeated foe, and the door to eternal life stands open before us. Jesus could walk with resolute determination toward Jerusalem, knowing the cross was awaiting Him, because He knew full well that death would only be temporary, and that He would rise victoriously from the dead on the third day. He told them in advance that He would do so.

We have seen here, in abbreviated form, the claims of the gospel. There is more to the gospel than this, but this singular sentence of Jesus in Mark 9:31 contains the foundational elements of the good news of salvation in Christ: Who He Is, and What He Did. But if you will allow me briefly to speak about v32, we need to say something about …

II. The Comprehension of the Gospel (v32)

“They did not understand this statement, and they were afraid to ask.” If one sentence in this passage effectively summarizes the Gospel’s claims, then this one sentence effectively summarizes how the Gospel is comprehended, or better yet, how it isn’t comprehended by those who hear it. Two words capture the statement of v32: ignorance and fear. These two factors severely hinder people from comprehending the gospel personally and from sharing the gospel effectively.

“They did not understand.” We must confess, the words of Jesus are not that difficult to understand. He will be killed and He will rise again. That’s pretty straight forward. But it isn’t what they were expecting. In their ignorance, they cannot understand why this must be the way things will go. Can Jesus not just march into Jerusalem and set up the Kingdom of God on earth without this death and resurrection? In one sense, yes He can. But it would be a Kingdom of One, for no human being on earth would be able to enter that kingdom. Our sins would prevent us from entering. So in another sense, the answer is no, He cannot establish His Kingdom apart from His suffering and death, because the penalty of sin must be satisfied before we can become partakers in the Kingdom.

We fail to understand the Gospel when we fail to see the severity of our sins. We fail to comprehend that our sins violate the holy standard of God and cut us off from His presence. And in our society that says anything goes, and everything is tolerated except intolerance, sin is very naughty word. We try to euphemize it, psychologize it, medicate it, and treat it therapeutically and clinically. But there is no hope for us in these things. The only hope we have is to recognize sin as God sees it and receive the wondrous and gracious gift of Christ as the full satisfaction of our sin’s penalty. He did not come merely to make sad people happy, or poor people rich, or sick people well, or ignorant people smart. He came to make sinful people righteous. And unless we see ourselves as sinners in need of being made righteous before God, we will not comprehend the Gospel.

We fail to understand the Gospel when we fail to appreciate the simplicity of it. After all, for such a complex question – How can a sinful man be made right with a holy God? – we would expect a very complex answer. There must some rituals or some program or method we must undergo. Every false religion in the world prescribes duties and works that seek to make man good enough for God’s acceptance. But Christianity differs. Rather than saying, “You must do this for God,” Christianity says, “God has done this for you: Jesus died for your sins and rose again. If you believe that and receive Him, you will be saved.” That sounds overly simplistic, but it is the Gospel. Paul said in 2 Cor 11:3, “I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” One of Satan’s chief strategies is to convince us that Christ is not enough to save us. But this is the Gospel, and this is what we must comprehend. He is sufficient! He has done all that is necessary to bring us back to God. It is up to us to believe this and to receive Him. But alas, this brings us to the second part of verse 32: fear.

“They were afraid to ask Him.” Having traveled with Jesus for the better part of three years now, and after all they have been through, it strikes us as odd that these disciples would fear asking Jesus. Perhaps they fear that He is growing exasperated with their failure to understand. Perhaps they fear being cast away from Him. Perhaps they fear the gospel’s implications for their own lives. After all, earlier He has told them that there will be suffering and sacrifice on their part as followers of Christ also. But here for this moment, fear prevents them from bearing their soul to Jesus, from confessing their true condition before Him, and ultimately from receiving the fullness of what He has come to do for them. In time, they will come around, but for now, they are bound up with ignorance and fear, and seem content to remain that way.

Some who are within the sound of my voice today perhaps can relate to this. You find yourself afraid to come to Jesus with your questions, your uncertainties, your fears and your struggles. We would remind you that He is the one who declared in John 6:37, “The one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” And so lay aside those fears and the confusion, or better yet, bring them to Jesus as you come to Him. He will not cast you out, but will open your heart and mind to understand, and impart to you the wondrous gift of salvation and eternal life.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is good news. It is the news that God loves us and has done all that is necessary for us to be reconciled to Him through the person and work of Jesus Christ. He died for our sins and is risen from the dead, a fact that we celebrate not only at this time of year as Easter approaches, but every day as we live in the joy of His salvation. We must understand these truths about Him and what He has done for us, and having understood them, we must personally receive this truth into our lives, as we turn from our sins and receive Christ as Lord and Savior. Having done this, we must live in obedience to Christ’s Great Commission to make this Gospel known to all men, inviting them into this eternal life as well.