Chapter # 9 Paragraph # 2 Study # 2
February 14, 2023
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
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Thesis: No Death, no resurrection, no Kingdom: Jesus' restriction upon The Three was rooted in the significant distortions regarding a Kingdom established without the absolute necessity of real harmony with God.
Introduction: In our study last week we looked into Mark's use of the "descent from the mountain" as an element in all of his "descent" texts as they related to man's "abominable" participation in opposition to God. God-hating men have one thing in common: they want to be able to usurp His position as The Rightful Authority Over His Creation. This is the gross rottenness in the core of man's being that leaks its putrid fluids out of all of the cracks in a sin-shattered man's being. The stench is so bad that under the Law, few sacrifices could be made without the incense that provided a sweet smell to arise and permeate the air in the tabernacle/temple of God. Thus, the "descent" texts are connected to: the servants of Beelzebul saying Jesus is the servant of Beelzebul; the Ultimate Rebel setting up the Abomination of Desolation in the Temple of God; and the religious leadership of Israel gathering around the cross to mock and celebrate their "victory" over Jesus, the Beloved Son of the Father.
In our study this evening we are going to look into Jesus' "restriction" upon The Three regarding their most probable action once they get down to the rest of The Twelve: telling what they were allowed to experience. Why did Jesus tell them to tell no one what they had experienced until He was raised from the dead?
- I. Jesus Insisted Upon Silence Regarding The Experience Of The Three.
- A. This "insistence" is caught up in two little-used verbs in the New Testament.
- 1. Mark is the majority user of the first verb (diastello) as he used it in four of the seven texts in which it is found in the New Testament (5:43; 7:36; 8:15; and 9:9).
- a. The word means "to insist", but in two cases in Mark, the people ignored/disobeyed Him.
- b. The reasons for the "insistence" is different in each case.
- 2. The other verb Mark used to indicate what Jesus was so insistent about is only used in eight texts of the New Testament and it means "to tell a great number of the details involved"".
- 3. The bottom line is that Jesus did not want The Three to reveal what had happened on the mountain until after The Son of The Man was raised from the dead.
- B. The reason for this insistence is made clear by the way the disciples reacted.
- 1. They "grabbed hold of" the limitation's "end": Jesus' resurrection.
- a. They did not understand what He was talking about regarding His resurrection.
- b. This reality has profound implications for the level of their "faith".
- 2. They by-passed their confusion by asking Jesus about the doctrine of Elijah's coming before the establishment of the Kingdom's arrival with power.
- 3. These two parts of their puzzle indicate how little they understood about what The Kingdom's coming required.
- a. That they did not understand Jesus' comment on His resurrection means that they did not yet understand the overall message of The Law, nor what was driving the necessity of His coming death.
- 1) The elements of The Law that they did not understand were most basically two.
- a) They did not understand that The Law was given to magnify the actual distance between God and man that "sin" had created.
- i. This lack of understanding was rooted in the distortion of The Law into a method of gaining God's approval.
- ii. And this lack of understanding diminished the main issue of "massive distance" and turned the issue of "sin" into a minor problem.
- b) They did not understand the testimony of The Law revealed through the sacrificial system.
- i. That system seemed to present the possibility of restoration between God and man on the basis of animal sacrifices that, sometimes, reduced the requirement to a couple of birds: this made the "distance" insignificant.
- ii. That system seemed to present the possibility of restoration between God and man on the basis of man's abilities; "behaving" most of the time and "bringing a sacrifice" on the occasions when "behaving" fell through the cracks.
- iii. But the real testimony of The Law was that "sins" could not be forgiven except through the death of an adequate sacrifice.
- 2) The "coming death" of The Son of The Man was a revelation of why the Kingdom could not come with power: without adequate satisfaction of Justice there could be no Kingdom.
- b. That The Three did not understand that The Son of The Man had to die means that their actual grasp of the Gospel as we know it was extremely shallow.
- 1) These men had accepted the message of John the Baptizer unto "forgiveness".
- 2) But they did not have a clue as to what "forgiveness" would cost God.
- c. That The Three did not understand the necessity of Elijah's prior coming also meant that they did not understand what was involved in "forgiveness".
- 1) Elijah's prior coming was to "prepare" the people for the coming of the Lord.
- 2) This preparation was establishing the necessity of humility and faith in man before he even knew what the content of the "faith" was going to be.
