Mark 8

Chapter 8. The First Apostles and the New Society of the Church of GodJesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve—designating them apostles—that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. (Mark 3:13-15)Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother. (Mark 3:35)These words introduce us to the first chapter in Church history. The Lord was founding a new society. It was already apparent, through the strife of tongues that had arisen concerning Him among the religious leaders, that His final rejection by His own people was a foregone conclusion, and that a new Israel must ultimately take the place of the old. And so, as there had been 12 tribes of Israel, there should be 12 apostles of the Lamb. We have here the account of their first calling. They were to be the princes of the kingdom of heaven, the first tier of stones in that eternal edifice built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself to be the chief Cornerstone. The time had not yet come for the formal institution of the Church in so many explicit terms; but as the new harvest grows out of the shell of the old seed, so Christianity was emerging from the husks of Judaism, and the Lord had already anticipated it and was preparing for it. It was necessary that His first apostolic messengers should be thoroughly educated and trained under His personal supervision, and so early in His ministry He calls them to Him and invests them with their new apostleship. This, we are told in a parallel Gospel, followed a night of prayer. He felt that a crisis had come, and that the step He was about to take was fraught with the most important and lasting consequences. And so as the Pattern Worker He laid the matter before His Father, and we cannot doubt that every step which followed was the result of divine direction and according to the will of God. So let us always, like one of old, “prepare all our ways before the Lord.” And the steps that are born of prayer, although they may afterwards be severely tested, will ultimately be established and confirmed to the glory of God and the blessing of the world. As Christian leaders and workers we will find, in the example of our Lord, a pattern for ourselves. No movement that rests upon a single individual can ever be permanent or widespread. There is always a strong temptation to young Elijahs to go out without regard to the brethren or the body of Christ. The New Testament teaches us at every step that the body is just as necessary as the head and that we must learn to be workers together as well as workers with God. A narrow and bigoted party would have us believe that the Christian ministry is without scriptural warrant and that every servant of Christ has equal authority and standing as a minister of the New Testament. This is not so. While it is true that we are all priests unto God and that there is no separate priesthood under the Gospels, yet it is just as true that God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. (1 Corinthians 12:28) It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and becoming mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-13) The Lord not only recognized the apostolic office, but early in the history of Christianity, He set apart also the body of deacons and later ordained elders in all the churches and left the most unmistakable directions for the proper government and discipline of the household of faith and the full recognition of the Christian ministry both in respect to authority and support. There appears to be no rigid law in the New Testament as to precise methods of church government and exact gradations of ministry and service. It is enough to recognize the principle of government and along with the rights of the congregation, which must ever be acknowledged, the authority of those whom God has made overseers of the Church which He has purchased with His own blood. Their Individual Characteristics It is an interesting study to follow the details of this picture and form our impressions of these first leaders of the Church universal. The name that stands in front in all the lists is Simon Peter. No one can ever forget the true and graphic photograph of this extraordinary man. Mark was no doubt inspired by Peter himself in writing his Gospel, and there is nothing more touching than the honest frankness with which Mark brings out the worst features in the character of his headstrong master and fellow-worker. It is Mark who tells us of Peter’s boast, “Even if all fall away, I will not” (Mark 14:29). It is Mark who gives the shameful picture in all its vivid details of the successive denials, three times over, and the oaths and curses with which he emphasized the last. It is Mark also who remembers the crowing of the cock and the bitter tears of Simon as he thought thereon and wept. It is Mark who adds that dramatic word that speaks unspeakable volumes as the Master, just risen from the dead, hastens to say to the frightened women, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you’” (Mark 16:7). The Lord’s chosen instruments are not always the strongest and best material humanly speaking. He chose Jacob to be the founder of Israel of old, not because he was so strong, but because he was so weak. And grace triumphed over human infirmity as in no other of the patriarchs. He chose Simon Peter likewise to be the first living stone in the temple of the New Jerusalem because he was so much like Jacob and so true an example of the transforming power of grace in a vessel that was like potter’s clay. How all this comes out in Peter’s first name, “Simon, son of Jonas,” and the surname which the Lord gave him, Peter, the rock; or rather, the piece cut out of the living Rock, which is Christ Himself. “And Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter)” (Mark 3:16). When the Lord gives us a new name He never fails to bring us up to it. He has a new name for all His servants who will let Him surname them. “You will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow” (Isaiah 62:2). The two next in the list always afterwards appear together with Simon—James, the son of Zebedee, and John, the brother of James. We find these three disciples always in a class of their own. They are with Him in the house of Jairus; they are with Him on the mount, and they are with Him in the Garden. James was not permitted to have a very long public ministry after the day of Pentecost, but he had the distinguished honor of being the first apostolic martyr, while Peter was released from prison by the angel of the Lord. We read that Herod “had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword” (Acts 12:2). Stephen and James stand together in front of those who come out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. John, however, has a prominence and permanence among the disciples not less than even that of Simon Peter. We know much less of his natural peculiarities of temperament. Perhaps the surname the Master gave these brothers, Boanerges, the sons of thunder, may hint at some strong individuality in both of them along the lines of rugged and natural impulsiveness. There may have been a time in their lives when they were not unlike the noisy, swearing crowd of sailors and fishermen with whom we are all familiar. If this were so, there surely was as great a transformation in John as in Simon. He is known to the heart of the Church in a more sacred and mystic memory than belongs to any other except perhaps Mary of Bethany. The two facts that he was known as the disciple whom Jesus loved and that he was chosen to give to the Church the gospel of the Son of God and the revelation of the plan of the ages, give him a unique place in the New Jerusalem that no other can ever share. They also give assurance of qualities either natural or divine which were preeminent and unique. Just as the character of the Son of Man is too sublimely beautiful to have been invented by any human brain, so the picture of John the Divine, as he has often been called, carries with it its own attestation of heavenly origin. And yet his brother James must have had qualities even more forceful, for when on first introduction to these brothers, we do not read of James, the brother of John, but John, the brother of James. It is evident that they were the children of a family of some social standing, for when the Master called them, they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants. They had some property and more than one servant. Their mother was evidently a woman of strong character and womanly ambition, for it was she who came to Jesus toward the close of His ministry and asked for her two boys that they might sit with Him, one on His right hand and the other on His left hand in His kingdom. She wanted the whole thing. The young men themselves could not have been disinterested in this little scheme, for we read that the disciples were much displeased with James and John as well as their mother for this little piece of presumption. Indeed, Mark tells the story in such a way as make James and John themselves the principals in this ambitious request (Mark 10:35-41). But all this belongs to the first chapter of their life. The day came when they were both ready to drink the Master’s cup and to be baptized with His baptism. The one is the proto-martyr in Jerusalem; the other is the prisoner on the Isle of Patmos. The next set begins with Andrew. He is also a marked character in the apostolic circle. Scotland claims the honor of calling him her son. His name is derived from the Greek word aner, a man, and seems to suggest the humaneness of his nature. It was he that brought his own brother Simon to Jesus and had been the first to discover the Messiah, while still a disciple of John. It was he also who discovered the little lad in Galilee who supplied the buns and fishes that were used as the materials for the glorious miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. The boy must have naturally taken to this bighearted man. It is a great thing in Christian work to have a human heart. Grace does not rob us of our individuality. It uses it as a point of contact with other hearts. Philip, too, is a very distinct figure in the gospel story. He appears to have had, like Andrew, a large-hearted sympathy with men. It was to him the Greeks came, of whom we read in John 12:20-22, with the touching request, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” And it was to Andrew that Philip naturally turned in arranging for an interview with these men from afar. Again it was Philip that stated, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us” (John 14:8). His heart was longing for God, but he had wholly misunderstood the Master notwithstanding his intimacy with Him, and the Lord was obliged to say with a touch of reproof, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time?” (John 14:9). Bartholomew is not a stranger to us. It was he who sat under the fig tree in Galilee and received from the Master those matchless words of commendation, “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false” (John 1:47). Matthew has also been introduced to us already by Mark himself for he is none other than Levi the publican, whose calling brought such opprobrium to Christ in the fellowship which He had with publicans and sinners. Thomas is one of the unique figures in the story of Jesus. There is something pathetic in our first introduction to him as the Master was about to go back into Judea and risk His life among His enemies, and Thomas cried out in a burst of enthusiasm, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16). True-hearted like Simon Peter and ready impulsively to risk any peril for the Master he loved, yet that very love led him after the resurrection to doubt and question the joyful tidings that the Lord was risen. To Thomas it was too good to be true; but even he at last was not only convinced but became a most powerful argument for the conviction of others as he sank at the Master’s feet and cried, “My Lord, and my God!” (John 20:28). James, the son of Alphaeus, reached the pinnacle of his greatness and influence after the resurrection. A man of strong conservative nature and great uprightness of character, he was naturally chosen to be the first leader and pastor of the church in Jerusalem. He was the president of the first apostolic council and gave voice to its final decree. Paul calls him one of the pillars whom he met in his first visit to Jerusalem. Later we become personally acquainted with him in his strong epistle which retains many of the ethical qualities of the old prophetic writers, as Moses and Jeremiah, and yet imbued all through with the spirit of lofty faith and intense godliness. The other names are less prominent and familiar, except the last one, Judas Iscariot, who is mentioned last in all the catalogues of the various evangelists. Why did the Lord choose Judas Iscariot as one of His apostles? Could He have been mistaken and deceived in this man? Certainly not. We are told more than once that the Lord knew from the beginning who should betray Him. Early in His Galilean ministry Christ had said, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” (John 6:70). How can we explain the Master’s allowing such a man to be in the very bosom of primitive Christianity? Was it on the same principle that God allowed Satan to meet with the sons of God, in the story of Job, to prove that His own work can stand the inspection even of Satan? Was it that a man might come into the very heart of Christianity and know the Lord from the beginning to end with utmost intimacy, and then at last bear witness to Him and say with his dying gasp of despair, “I have betrayed innocent blood” (Matthew 27:4)? Was it that the infinite patience, long-suffering and tenderness of Jesus might be brought out against this foil, this background, this awful shadow of hypocrisy and Satanic guile? Was it that later ages might understand that even the Church of God would sometimes have in its bosom the false as well as the true and that we should not be frightened or distressed to find sometimes the intermingling of evil with the holy and the good? If the Lord could stand Judas, in His personal family circle, He can stand all who are like him to the end of the chapter. Judas was the only real Jew among all the twelve, that is, the only one who came from Judea. By some strange happening he held the bag and was the treasurer of the household. Perhaps the Lord allowed him to be there and to have this position to make His servants careful of His own oft-repeated warnings, especially to the gospel ministry, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed” (Luke 12:15). Perhaps the Lord meant these hints for the benefit of Judas. Happy for him if he had heeded them more, and well for every Christian worker and minister of Christ if he makes good use of the warning and cherishes a wholesome fear of filthy lucre. The Training of the Apostles These He ordained, we are told, “that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach” (Mark 3:14). There has been much foolish talking about the unscripturalness of the educated ministry, and the story of the apostles is often quoted as a precedent; but never were men more thoroughly trained than the first ministers of the New Testament. For three and a half years without any vacations, which would be equal to at least five years of an ordinary college course, these men were constantly in the presence and under the instruction of the greatest of all teachers, and then from His breath they received His own imparted Spirit as well as the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which afterwards followed on the day of Pentecost. The first of all preparations for Christian work is to be “with Him.” Personal intimacy with the Lord Jesus will enable us to imbibe His Spirit, and it will be true, “For it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:20). There is the utmost need for the careful preparation of the Christian worker. “The things you have heard me say,” says Paul, “entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:2). The Lord wants no untempered mortar in the building of His temple. He carefully selected His first apostles from a great number of other followers, and we should be most discriminating in committing the mysteries of the kingdom to crude and unqualified vessels, especially in these days of false teaching and manifold error. Let us not be afraid to exercise the spirit of discernment and to insist that those who bear the vessels of the Lord shall be clean, qualified, Spirit-filled and efficient. Their Ministry They were to preach. That is the first business of the ministry of Christ, to proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were also to exercise the ministry of healing, and the church has been wholly wrong in remanding this to professional physicians and forgetting her sacred trust for the bodies as well as the souls of men. And they were to cast out demons. The Lord sends us forth with the distinct understanding that we are dealing not merely with the minds and hearts of men. Back of their unbelief and weakness are the powers of hell. All our words will be a mockery and all our work a disappointment unless we claim the authority which Christ has given to us to treat the devil as a conquered foe, to tread on serpents and scorpions, to drive Satan from the minds and hearts of men, not merely by logic and eloquence, but by the faith of God and the fire of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of the Ministry A little later in the sixth chapter of Mark we have an account of their first campaign and of the commissions and charges He gave them as they went forth. They were to go in the spirit of faith and simplicity and self-denial, and they were especially to remember that they bore the authority of the King of kings. “He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16). “It will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town” (Luke 10:12). While the apostolic office ceased with the first apostles, yet the Christian ministry is permanent and its authority is as lofty and divine as that of the twelve. It is our privilege to speak to men, not in our own strength or with a claim of our personal influence, eloquence or learning, but to hide ourselves behind our Master and ever realize that we are acting and speaking with His supreme authority. This would give to the speaker a weight which no personal qualities can supply, and to the hearer a sense of responsibility which God Himself will witness to. The greatest force which we can bring to bear upon the minds and consciences of men is to make them feel that they are dealing with God and not with us, and that we are leaving our hearers face to face with Him “to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). “I have a message from God for you” (Judges 3:20), should be the profound conviction of every preacher of the gospel, and it will leave a corresponding impression upon the heart of the hearer. When we thus go forth, our Master is ever behind us, and it is not we who speak, but the Spirit of our Father that speaks in us. The New Relationships The forming of the new society naturally created new relationships. So as a sequel to the calling of the 12 apostles and the founding of the New Testament Church, which that involved, we have a somewhat striking incident relating to the immediate family of the Lord Jesus Christ. Immediately after the calling of the apostles a great company gathered together around the Lord in the house which He had entered. So great was the crowd and so intense the interest, we are told, “he and his disciples were not even able to eat” (Mark 3:20). It was then that His friends, as they are here called, meaning no doubt His relatives and family, became greatly disturbed about it and actually tried to put Him under arrest and restraint, “for they said, ‘He is out of his mind’” (Mark 3:21). This perhaps was partly caused by the bitter attacks upon Him of the officials who had come down from Jerusalem and who made an awful charge of blasphemy, saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons” (Mark 3:22). Christ’s immediate relatives, being no doubt pious Jews, would naturally have a good deal of confidence in the statement of these high religious authorities, and probably concluded that He had gone insane, and ought to be taken in charge by His friends. A little later in the chapter the incident is repeated. At the close of His reply to these bitter attacks we read, “Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.’” (Mark 3:31-32). It would appear that even Mary at last began to wonder if her boy had gone wrong, and if all these strange things simply meant some fearful fanaticism or disease. But the incident brought out, as all these things ever did, one of the noblest utterances from the lips of the Lord. He did not respond by going to them, but with calm dignity replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” (Mark 3:33). And then suiting the action to the word, He looked around upon His hearers, with some striking gesture, and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:34-35). While we can in the light of 19 centuries understand the deep spiritual meaning of this announcement, it must have fallen upon their ears with startling strangeness. It seemed like an utter uprooting of old relationships and the establishing of a new family and fellowship. Henceforth the home circle has its center not even around the sweetest hearthstones of earth, but in the heart of God and the home above. Henceforth the holiest ties and the only everlasting bonds are in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. The fatherhood of God and the sonship of believers are New Testament relations. The brotherhood of man, so foolishly wanted by the lips of the socialist and sociologist, is not an earth-born tie, but wholly based on our relationship with Christ. We are children of God through regeneration; we are brethren through Jesus, our Elder Brother. The tenderest earthly ties must end with the tomb if they are not transformed and transfigured through spiritual resurrection into heavenly relationships. This does not do away with the sanctity of the home, but it gives it a higher sanction and a deeper root, and no loving father, husband, wife or friend should ever rest satisfied until the earthly love has been transformed to the heavenly and the bond become through Christ an everlasting one. The Lord Jesus had already prepared His mother in some degree for this by His own words to her at Cana on the occasion of His first miracle, “Dear woman, why do you involve me?” (John 2:4). That was to her the signal that the mere human relationship had been superseded by the higher one. So the natural must pass into the spiritual, the earthly into the heavenly. We find the apostle saying in regard even to His natural knowledge of the Savior, whom probably he had seen at some time in His earthly ministry, “Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17). How close and endearing are the terms and attachments of this new relationship! “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). The Lord Jesus has for us a personal friendship as real as any human love and infinitely more helpful and satisfying. There is still room on His breast for you and me beside the “other disciple, the one Jesus loved” (John 20:2). The affections and friendships of earth are but feeble types of that divine and infinite fellowship which finds its center in Him. Just as He was the true Vine and all others were but figures, so is He the true Brother, Husband, Friend, who all human friendships were simply meant to reflect. Men and women follow after earthly loves in the wild and vain dream that there their hearts will find rest, but oh! how often the most intimate of human relationships has mocked a brokenhearted world. How touching is Paul’s reference to marriage in his epistle to the Ephesians, where after speaking for a little of the true love which should exist between husband and wife and the sacredness of the marriage tie as a mysterious type of the heavenly union of the bridegroom and the bride, he adds, “This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). The true mystery is the heavenly marriage; the earthly is but a little shadow of it, a fragment of broken glass reflecting the glory of the sun, but oh! how much less than the sun. Beloved friend, have you come into this mystery? Do you know this friend that “sticks closer than a brother”? (Proverbs 18:24). Has He not said, “I will betroth you to me forever,… and you will acknowledge the Lord” (Hosea 2:19, Hosea 2:20)? And have you learned to say, “This is my beloved and this is my friend, the chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely” (a combining of SS 5:10, SS 5:16)?