Staggering Faith

Mark 8:22-38 · 2024-10-27 · Jason Wolin · Gospel of Mark | Cross and Crown

Mark 8:22-38 · Faith. Staggering Faith — sermon from Cypress Bible Church on BibleSlides.

Staggering Faith Slideshow for this message PDF Message Download Introduction Well speaking of making disciples, we are going to learn today from the greatest disciple maker of all times. And it’s actually quite an appropriate heading for this passage because in some ways, what we read in the passage today, is kind of like the transition from undergraduate degree on discipleship to the graduate degree. So we’ll use this metaphor for our outline today. Let’s think about what Jesus has taught in this classroom. **Jesus has been traveling throughout the land for the last 2.5 years, publicly presenting Himself as the long-awaited Messiah of Israel and validating those claims by performing indisputable miracle after indisputable miracle. As result there was increasing fascination with this miracle worker. But the reaction was very different among the religious elite. At first there was curiosity, then suspicion, then jealousy, then hatred, then murderous rage. What Jesus was offering and what the Pharisees were offering were two very different things. And so Jesus draws a line in the sand. Whose it going to be? Me or the Pharisees? This culminates in two episodes. In Matthew 12 Jesus casts out the demon from the demon possessed man and rather than except the obvious implication of that miracle and subsequent claims, they accused Him of being empowered by Satan. And the surprise from the text was that the people agreed AND THEN as we saw in John 6, the crowds ABANDONED Him when He demanded complete allegiance. The public phase of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee collapsed as a result. And so you get this change in the strategy of Jesus. Jesus knows that the Jewish leaders are plotting His death; he knows the cross is imminent. So Jesus needs to get away and find a place AWAY FROM THE CROWDS to prepare his disciples for his death. So the text begins today with Jesus trying to get away. Mark 8:22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him.” Mark 8:23-24 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Mark 8:25-26 Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.” What do we make of this two stage healing? The interpretations you get in the commentaries are wild. You have all sorts of different ideas about what this means. The text itself provides no real commentary. And so this is one of the few places where we have to say, “I’m not sure why Jesus did this healing in two stag…

Cypress Bible Church · Full sermon loading below.