The Road to Calvary - Day 4: From a Fan to a Follower

We all have that one thing that we're super passionate about. It could be that favorite sports team we faithfully watch every week, or the popular podcast or TV show we binge.

We're all fans of something. Unfortunately, sometimes our relationship with Jesus can be reduced to superficial fandom, and faith becomes just another hobby. So today on Living on the Edge, we'll uncover a critical distinction. Knowing about Jesus is not the same as truly knowing Him.

I'm Dave Drury. Thanks again for being with us today as our Bible teacher, Chip Ingram, continues our series, The Road to Calvary, Walking with the Real Jesus. Chip has a lot to get to, so grab your Bible and notes and settle in for his talk, From a Fan to a Follower. Welcome back to our study of Mark. We're in Mark chapter 3, beginning at verse 7 to the end of the chapter. And just by way of time, Mark is speaking to a Roman audience of Gentiles in the midst of a very, very challenging world much like our own.

He's been really brief in terms of any background on Jesus. The disciples have been called. They realize now that he's God.

He's gone through some opposition. And now as the story unfolds, we're going to find that he's just so bombarded, he's so popular, that he just withdraws and gets away. And he's going to spend some time away, and he's going to pray, and he's going to appoint apostles out of all the people. He's watched them interact, and he's seen who's responding to the word and who's not. And then he's going to appoint them to be with him, and then he's going to walk them through this next section. And what we're going to see is there's three different times where under pressure, under pressure, he withdraws. And even before we start, you know what? Maybe that's the best lesson for some of you. Maybe you need to withdraw. Maybe you just need to say, I need to stop.

I need to get some time alone, get physically, spiritually, and emotionally refreshed. What we'll learn is sometimes when you even plan that in, it gets interrupted. But as we start, I want to just start with a little illustration.

It's something I had in my notes and I studied years and years ago. So his name is not important, but he is a very, very famous Christian who held multiple offices. I think at one point he was even sort of like chaplain at the Senate, was the pastor of one of the, just a wonderful, wonderful church. And he was being interviewed. And they asked him, what's the greatest miracle you've ever seen? And he said, well, you know, I've certainly in my time seen some dramatic ones, right?

I mean, I've seen in answer to prayer, people healed, or I've seen God break the law of physics in specific ways. He said, but the greatest miracle I've ever seen, and I've seen it over and over and over, it's a changed life. When you watch the transformation of a life causes a transformation of a marriage, of a parent, of a worker, or maybe a boss or a supervisor, and you get to see them over time. He said, it is the greatest miracle that I've ever seen, that people's lives really do change, that angry people can be loving, that addicted people can be free, that people with biases and prejudice against other groups could actually be transformed into not just being tolerant, but actually engaging.

And he goes, that's the biggest miracle. And what we're going to see as our study today is that Jesus is going to walk them through learning that's the biggest miracle and how to experience it. So we pick it up in verse 7, Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake and a large crowd from Galilee followed him. When they heard all that he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Adumiah, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon. Now, you get a map out and what you realize is this east, west, north, south, everyone wants a piece of Jesus right now and he's trying to get away. And the reason why they're coming, for he had healed many so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him. Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down before him and they cried out, you are the Son of God. But he gave them strict orders not to tell who he was. And so you have this moment of withdrawal and what you're going to find is Jesus has a very, very clear strategy and his strategy is to take people from the crowd and he wants to turn them into devoted followers who become, and I don't take this word in a bad way, but he's creating an army. And by army, what I mean is people who are willing to do spiritual battle, he's going to create an elite force of men and we learn later there'll be women will become a part of this group, but his formal group, he's going to choose 12 and he's going to appoint them.

And the word apostle means ascent one. In other words, there's an agenda. Up to now, they've been learning, they've been watching, they haven't done anything. I mean, they haven't healed anybody. They haven't gone out preaching. What they've done is watch him. And now they've become convinced that he is in fact the Messiah, the Son of God, fully man, fully God. He's the answer to all those prophecies.

Now they're human. So you know, some days they believe that more on a Wednesday than they do on Friday, like all of us. And so he's now going to appoint them because he's now going to start a training program and he wants to take them from the crowd or in our words, from a fan to a follower. And I didn't make that up. It's a great phrase. I have a friend who's a pastor in Kentucky, Kyle Ideman, and he wrote a book called Not a Fan.

And the whole book was really about this. It's how do we go from, oh, I agree with Jesus. I think Jesus is wonderful. When he helps me out, life is wonderful. But how do we go from, you know, like a fan, like I'm a baseball fan or I'm a fan of, you know, this musical artist or I follow so-and-so on Instagram, you know, I'm a fan. But how do we go from that to a follower, an intimate relationship of I'm going to embrace your values and where you go, I go, and what you want me to do, I'm going to do.

And I'm going to be prepared to become like you so much that when you leave, I will continue what you are doing. I mean, that's what Jesus is doing here. But here's the principle I want you to get.

Meeting the felt needs of people is the key to meeting their real needs. I mean, here he withdraws and people follow him and he just keeps loving them. He keeps healing them. He teaches them.

We'll learn a little bit later. When necessary, he will feed them supernaturally, thousands. And so, you know, you have neighbors. I have neighbors. You have friends. I have friends.

You have co-workers. And I just want to remind you that sometimes some of you that are most zealous, everything's about when can I talk about Jesus? When can I talk about Jesus?

And some of you in your early days maybe did that and people were a bit turned off. For others, you're so afraid that people are getting turned off, you never get around to talking about Jesus. But here's what Jesus modeled for us. He modeled for us that people have very genuine needs, physical needs, emotional needs, spiritual needs.

And so much of his early ministry was meeting people's needs where they were. You need healing? Healing.

You're oppressed by demonic powers? Deliverance. But that wasn't the end. Now, all these people, they're crowding and crowding and crowding because we're all human. You know, fix me, Jesus.

Fix me. But unfortunately, so much of the Christianity today is we never get past the, will you fix me? Jesus' goal in meeting felt needs was to help us see our real need, our spiritual need. And our deepest need is to have a deep, personal, intimate relationship with our Creator. And Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. And that means that we need to repent of our sin, turn to him in faith, and receive Jesus Christ as our Savior, and then get into his Word and find fellow people that are in his Word and following him and learn how to follow him. And in that, we will discover our purpose in life. And all the things, money, fame, that right person, all of those things that we thought would bring it but never do even when you get it, you'll discover that you'll receive. And so that's his strategy.

He just wants to take groups and then move them into personal, deeper relationships where they really understand who he is and his purpose for their life. I am made uniquely. You are made uniquely.

You came from a family background. You have certain gifts. I have certain gifts. You have hurts. You have needs. You have pains.

You have struggles. Jesus wants to take all of that and align it and bring about forgiveness and healing and then give you and me purpose and impact. And so we're going to learn in the next section a pointing of the twelve beginning in verse thirteen.

What's he do? Jesus went up into the hills and he called those he wanted and they came to him. He appointed twelve designating them as apostles, sent ones, that they might be, number one, with him and that he might, two, send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. These are the twelve he appointed. Simon to whom he gave the name Peter, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John, Andrew Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him.

And so he goes up. We learn from the other Gospels. He prayed all night.

See, sometimes we forget. Jesus really understands you and he understands me because he was fully human and in his humanness, depending on the Holy Spirit, he's modeling for us how life with the Father works and being fully human. It wasn't just like I know all things. He set aside some of his attributes in a way to be as dependent humanly as we are so he knows I need to choose from all these people. Father, who are the right ones? Father show me. Jesus says that he grew in intellect and in wisdom and so he prays all night and he chooses these twelve and then notice to be with him.

More is caught than taught. If you really want to grow, find someone that walks closely with Jesus and figure out how to hang out with him. When I was in my college years, I trusted Christ right after high school. Went away, had never opened the Bible before. I kind of rejected church. I wasn't an atheist or agnostic. I believed there was a God, but the God and exposure I had, I didn't want anything to do with him. And I got to see the Gospel lived out through some athletes and I trusted Christ. And then after I trusted Christ, I met this bricklayer and this bricklayer taught me how to spend time with Jesus and to walk with Jesus, but he didn't want to put me in some program. I remember early on he goes, Chip, would you like to come and have dinner with me and my wife and our family?

And when you're in college and you're eating cafeteria food, the answer is always yes. And so I'd go eat dinner and then it'd be a weekend and maybe it was off season from basketball practice. And he said, hey, do you want to, you know, earn a little extra money?

And I said, yeah, I don't have any spending money at all. And he said, well, I'm going to work on a foundation and I'm going to lay some bricks and if you mix the mud and do that, I'll pay you so much an hour. And I watched him work. And then we'd drive in the car together and then say, hey, Chip, you know, every Tuesday morning he would come down and we would meet and I'd kind of learn. I didn't know Old Testament from New Testament.

I never read the Bible. I didn't understand it, but he was just patient. And then pretty soon, you know, there's a conference.

Do you want to go to it? And we would drive together with some other students and what he understood was proximity is the key to impact. And so he said, Chip, I don't know, you know, if you like the dorms or this or that, but he had a garage apartment. And so eventually, you know, as we were doing ministry together, there was a garage apartment behind his house and I lived there and then pretty soon I started doing what Dave was doing with me. And so I had two guys live with me, but we would hang out all the time and Dave would say, do you want to go play basketball?

And I said, yes, just because he was a good guy, because he couldn't shoot, he couldn't dribble, couldn't do anything. But I would almost smile and I'd realize Dave wanted to hang out with me. I watched Dave date his wife. I watched Dave raise his children. I watched Dave get frustrated with his children. I was in the car and had talks with Dave about marriage and struggles and pains.

I watched Dave lose a brother and how he responded to death. See, what Jesus wanted with these disciples, he wanted them to be with him. He wanted them to understand who he really was, how he really felt, what he did, how he spoke, his body language, eye contact.

Jesus wasn't looking for zoom relationships. He didn't just want, here's the program guys. Here's the list. I'm going to leave.

You do the list. He wasn't looking for people that were religious. He was looking for a group of men that could understand how deeply he loved them, that he had a plan for them, that it would require tremendous cost and sacrifice, but it would be worth it.

There'd be great reward. And he wanted them to know that he understood them and where they were coming from. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and we'll get back to our series, The Road to Calvary in just a minute. But first, if you haven't already, let me invite you to sign up for our free digital devotional that follows what we're studying in the Gospel of Mark. It's designed to give you daily insights and soul-nourishing encouragement as we approach the Easter weekend. So keep listening after Chip's teaching for complete details.

But for now, let's get back to today's message. And he also wanted them to understand that you're going to have to learn to love people that are very different than you. If you look at this list, okay, you've got some good Jewish boys who have been good boys, right? Man, they know the law.

They've grown up. You have some personality issues. You don't name people sons of thunder because they're easy to get along with. Then you've got a revolutionary here, an al-Qaeda operative. That's what a zealot was.

It was a person who was trying to overthrow the government, and zealots were trained to assassinate people that they were trying to get out of the way. So you've got kind of good boys that were Jewish. By the way, you've got a crook.

You've got a tax collector. You've got two guys with really anger management issues. And he's got them together, and he's formed a team. And he's formed a team that what they have in common is him. And what they will have in common is a mission. They are following him. They don't always understand it.

The price gets higher and higher, and he'll withdraw at different times and do some teaching. The principle here is you can impress people from a distance, but can only impact them up close. If you want to impact your kids, you need to spend time with them. You need to eat together.

If they're small, you need to tuck them in and tell them stories. If you want to disciple people and help people once they come to know Jesus, your schedule has to be changed so that they hang out with you. I remember one of my professors, Prof Hendricks, would say, never go anywhere alone.

You know, if you're going to go to the grocery store or you've got a day away you need to do something, take one of your kids or ask a friend that you're discipling to go with you and spend time with people. There's something about connecting just physically with people where we catch things. Chris and I have just made it a habit of opening up our home. We've had people live with us at different times. I've always liked to have Bible studies in my house or in someone's house.

There's something about walking into a house, and it's a picture here. There's a vibe, right? And, you know, our vibe is imperfect, but people need to learn that too. But there's something about getting close to people where it's not like, oh, Bible study, read verses, answer discussion questions. Great, we've got that done.

Eat snack, leave, no life change. It's got to be Bible study, deep questions. How's it really going? What did you do with what we talked about last week? Where's the struggles?

How do we do this together? That's what Jesus is doing with his disciples. Now, next section, they're going to learn that it can be very unpopular to be a follower of Jesus.

The cost. Accusations are going to be, this is the worst accusation in all the scripture of Jesus. Basically, the popularity is crazy. The religious leaders are jealous. Everyone now, I mean, you do the miracles that he's doing. People, hey, hey, hey, hey, have you heard of the prophet? Is he a prophet? I don't know if he's a prophet. Religious leaders, they don't think he's a prophet. Well, how can he not be a prophet? You know, my uncle Bob got healed, and did you hear about Jerry?

You know, that weird guy, you know, demon possessed. He's free now, and I mean, the crowds are mushrooming. I mean, there's a movement.

There's a huge movement happening, and now he's selected some guys, and he's going to take them into sort of the deep part of the pool where the opposition happens. Okay, we're going to pick it up here at verse 20. Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, he's out of his mind. You know, sometimes we read the Bible really fast.

How would you like that one? Okay, Jesus has brothers, and at this point, his family. He's nuts. He's insane. He thinks he's the Messiah. He thinks he's God.

I mean, his schedule is crazy. The demand of people he's not even eating, you know what, we need to help him out, right? We're going to do an intervention, right? We're going to do a counseling intervention, and we're going to get Jesus so we can get him away from these people and these crazy crowds. And then it's not just opposition of his family. Think how that would feel.

Some of you have been rejected by your family for your faith. Think of how Jesus personally would feel, his emotions. And then not only does he get it like where it hurts the most, his family. Verse 22, and the teachers of law who came down from Jerusalem said, he is possessed by Beelzebub. That was another name for Satan. By the prince of demons, he's driving out demons.

So Jesus called them and spoke to them in this parable. How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand. His end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man.

Then he can rob his house. I tell you the truth, or if you have an older version, verily, verily. It's Jesus when he repeats words twice, verily, verily, or truly, truly.

It's like we would say underline, underline, get this, get this, get this. I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. He is guilty of an eternal sin. And he said this because they were saying he has an evil spirit. Now, there's been a lot of debate about what's the unforgivable sin and a lot of theologians talking in a lot of different ways.

It's really not all that complicated. Jesus is bringing the truth of God, and the religious leaders are saying it's by the power of Satan. He gives this parable to understand that that's completely illogical. And then he tells them this warning about believing the unpardonable sin is unbelief. When he says, when you are saying that the devil is making me do this, you are rejecting me completely.

You refuse to believe in me. The Spirit of God, we'll learn later from John comes to convict of sin and righteousness and judgment. He speaks to us. He lets us know, you know what?

That relationship isn't right. That pride in your life, what you're doing, boy, that is so ugly. We get convicted of our sin. We get convicted about righteousness, how we're living or not living. And then we get convicted of judgment, and judgment is Jesus is returning. Every single person is going to give an account.

Everyone's going to die. And so Jesus is saying that if you reject the Spirit's work in your life, you can't believe. You can't believe because you choose not to. And that's the unpardonable sin. And then we get this picture. Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrive and they're standing outside and they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around and they told him, your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you. And then Jesus says this, who are my mother and my brothers, he asked. Then he looked at those who were sitting in a circle around him and said, here is my mother and my brothers. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. Jesus is redefining what family means. He's chosen these 12. They now have entered this arena where their master, their rabbi, the one they're following is being accused of, number one, being insane.

He's out of his mind. And number two, all of his power comes from Satan. Jesus talks about all that. And then finally the story shifts where this good Jewish mother, Mary, is concerned about her son, right? And in this culture, if your mom is outside, I don't care what you're doing, you stop, you honor your parents, especially your mother, and Jesus doesn't. Jesus is doing something for those disciples and for us to say, our primary loyalty is not blood loyalty. Our primary loyalty is to Jesus and to do the will of God.

This is so counter-cultural. And so what's interesting in all of this is that he gives us truth and then principles. The principle here is there is a cost. There's a physical cost, an emotional cost, and a spiritual cost. The physical cost of following Jesus is time demands. Your life is not your own. The emotional cost is relational demands.

There will be people even in your family that will never understand who you are, what you're doing as you follow Jesus, and it's painful. And finally, there's spiritual demands. There's opposition. There's evil coming at you.

It's interesting. This always happens when we do a major project, but last night in the middle of the night as we were preparing to film all of this, we have in our house occasionally, used to happen all the time when I was in Santa Cruz, there's a lot of satanic issues going on there, but in the middle of the night we had a satanic attack and my wife's screaming and I shake her and get her awake and I speak powerfully and clearly quoting God's Word and then everything was peaceful. Well, so Chip, do you really want to help people get engaged instead of have a nice little Easter? Do you really want them to know God's Word? Do you want them to discover who the real Jesus is, not the one that we kind of make up in our mind or the convenient one or the meek one or the nice one, but the real Jesus with all of his love and all of his compassion and all of the cost and all the direction and all the power and all the sacrifice and the answer is yes and when that happens, there's going to be a challenge. There's going to be opposition, but greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. He's overcome the enemy.

We're not only safe, we're victors. In our next time together, we're going to learn how for sure you can know the will of God because that's what he's going to explain in chapter four and I look forward to seeing you next time. This is Living on the Edge and you've been listening to Chip's message from a fan to a follower from our series, The Road to Calvary. I'm Dave Druey and if you've missed any part of his teaching from Mark, go back and catch up through the Chip Ingram app or at Living on the Edge dot org. Well, Chip's joined me in studio now and Chip, great message today from Mark chapter three, really challenging. And before we go, you had a few final thoughts you wanted to leave our listeners with.

Thanks Dave. You know, as I was walking through that passage personally, I'd done some research and it says 67% of Americans claim to be Christians, that only about 30% of them go to church and according to Barna, only about 10% have a biblical worldview. It's kind of like the book by my friend Kyle Edelman, not a fan. He talks about there's a lot of Christians that, actually that they're fans, but they're not really followers. I suppose we could give a lot of statistics and people might initially just feel guilty about them, but I know I was a fan for a long time and I didn't really know what it meant to follow Jesus. And I knew a lot about Jesus and I grew up in a world that was a church and a lot of people that lived in ways that weren't very much like Jesus. But you know something, when I got in God's word for myself, when I began to follow him the way we're learning in the book of Mark, he changed my life.

And at Living on the Edge, that's our heart and that's our desire for you. Let me ask you, are you a believer living out your Christian faith with other believers or is the term Christian maybe more of a label for you? If it's the latter and you find yourself disconnected from God or Christian community, could I encourage you, maybe walk with me through the book of Mark? And wouldn't this be a great weekend to maybe visit a Bible-believing church? I mean, Easter is coming and God has a word for you. Get into the Scriptures with me, download what we have so you can walk through the gospel of Mark and meet the Jesus that loves you so very much.

Thanks, Chip. And we're thrilled to share two free resources to help you deepen your relationship with Christ this Easter season. The first is our new digital devotional that complements our study in the book of Mark. Each morning, you'll receive valuable reflections from the passage we'll explore on the broadcast, along with some encouragement to face the day ahead. The other is Chip's Message Notes, which are an excellent guide through this new series. Learn more about these two free digital tools by visiting livingontheedge.org or the Chip Ingram app. Well, thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Druey, and I hope you'll join us again next time.