Throughout the Gospel of Mark, Mark has been confronting us with the identity of Jesus. He wants us to ask with the participants in the story, “Who is this man?” Today we find this question being asked explicitly and being given several different answers. But Mark gives his own answer – loud and clear and stunning. He does this by telling us the story of two shepherds, Herod Antipas and Jesus – one who is eating his sheep and taking advantage of them for his own benefit, the other who is feeding his sheeping and tending to their needs. This tale of two shepherds highlights for us important principles of civil government which help us to view our current political history rightly and avoid the folly of idolatry.

What does Jesus’ call of the Apostles and his sending them forth without money bags or wallets have to teach us today?

The last number of stories in the Gospel of Mark have centered around the contrast between fear and faith and the transition from fear to faith. We have witnessed the disciples in the boat – frightened to death by the storm outside the boat then frightened even more by the One in the boat. Jesus asks them after stilling the storm, “Why are you so fearful? How is it you have no faith?” Likewise, in the story of the Gadarene Demoniac we have the mass of people frightened by Jesus while the demoniac is set free from fear and given faith. In the stories of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the flow of blood this same contrast between fear and faith is highlighted and we witness both of them moving from fear to faith. “Don’t be afraid, only believe.”

The story today stands in contrast to these stories. Today we witness Jesus returning to his home town of Nazareth and the reception that he had among them. The reception was not quite what we would expect – indeed, it wasn’t even what Jesus expected. But their response unfolds for us much about the nature of unbelief and the way in which we as sinners often form hasty judgments as a result of our misperceptions.

Last week we saw that the disciples faced a tough lesson. While going across the sea to Gentile country God schooled them, He caused the sea to rage and billow and then calmed it through the Word of Christ. He did this so that the disciples might pay close attention to what was happening; so that they would move from fear – fear of the sea, fear of other nations, fear of demon possessed folks, fear of demons, fear of tombs, fear of swine – so that they would move from fear to faith.

So foundational was this lesson that in the next story, in the healing of the Gadarene demoniac, the disciples never show up, never intrude. They’re sitting in the background, watching, listening, learning, soaking it in. They’re trying to figure out – “Who then is this that even the wind and the waves obey him?”

In our text today, we come to two stories that revolve around the same lesson – the contrast between fear and faith and the transition from fear to faith. “Who is this man? What has he come to accomplish? What are these events highlighting? What are they teaching us?” Here again Jesus is unfolding his glory, “Do you get it yet?” He asks. “Do you see? Do you believe?”

One of the things we have to understand as we approach the Bible is that it often uses phenomenological language – language that reflects the way the world appears to be to the naked eye. It is not a scientific text, it is a life text, describing the world as your average person looking about him might describe it. We continue to do this ourselves in many respects. We continue, for instance, as does the Bible, to speak of sunrises and sunsets even though we believe, according to current scientific theory, that the sun neither rises nor sets but that rather the earth is moving to give the appearance of this.

So it is with the Scripture’s description of the universe. If we lived, as did our fathers the Jews, on the edge of a sea that stretched on out to an ocean, we might describe the universe as a triple-decker universe. At the bottom of this triple-decker universe is the sea, the ocean – spreading throughout the world and surrounding all the portions of land, large or small, so that the land appears to be islands in the midst of a great sea. In the middle of this triple-decker universe is the land where we dwell. And at the top of this triple-decker universe is the sky or heaven. This is in fact the way that Scripture often speaks of the universe.

Because the Word of God describes the world in this triple-decker fashion, different sections of the world become metaphors for or pictures of other realities. Consider, for instance, the way in which Scripture uses the sky-heavens as a reminder of the Highest Heaven, where God dwells. Likewise, the Sea – which is sometimes called the “deep” or the “abyss” – “points beyond itself to The Abyss, the place where the devil and the wicked will spend eternity.”

But the use of this triple-decker universe to describe the people of God and the wicked, the nations who set themselves against God and His people, is the use I want to draw your attention to briefly this morning. Throughout the psalms and the prophets, the Gentile nations are often portrayed as the raging seas, beating against the land of God and the people of God, while God Himself watches from the heavens.

Note well, then, that one of the vivid associations that the readers of the Old Testament had with the Seas was the ungodly nations of the world, the Gentiles. The Gentiles are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest. They have no order, they lack the law of God, they are bereft of His Wisdom and His grace; they are constantly dashing themselves against the shore, raging against the righteous.

It is the knowledge of this association of the tumultuous seas with the Gentiles that enables us to understand what is happening in the Gospel of Mark today. We have to remember who Jesus is and what God is doing through Him. Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Servant of God, who according to Isaiah was to be the light of God not only to the Jews but to the Gentiles as well – it is too small a thing that you should be my Servant to restore the fortunes of Jacob; I will give You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles – to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house. God was sending Jesus to be that which Israel and the Temple system was supposed to be – a light to the world, a house of prayer for all nations – but had failed to be. In our text today, Jesus sets out into Gentile territory to begin this conquest. And as he does so, God gives the disciples a vivid image so that they can understand the true power of His Anointed. This one shall indeed bring the nations under Him.

Earlier in the Gospel of Mark we witnessed a series of controversies that Jesus had with the scribes and Pharisees. One arose as a result of Jesus’ failure to instruct his disciples to fast for the return of Israel from Exile and the restoration of God’s presence to the land. When asked about this, Jesus is quite blunt with the Pharisees. “Why would I fast for God to act,” He essentially asks, “when God is in the middle of acting?” I am the Bridegroom come to the wedding, the Bridegroom predicted long ago by the prophet Isaiah, come to rescue my bride from her exile. So why would my disciples fast while the bridegroom is with them? This is the time for celebration not contrition.

While announcing He has come as the Bridegroom of Isaiah, as the One appointed by God to rescue His people from exile and bring them back into fellowship with God and with the land, He introduces a subtle twist that no doubt put the disciples in somewhat of a quandary – asking themselves – “Huh? What does that mean?” Jesus remarked – “The time will come when the bridegroom is taken away, and then my disciples will fast in those days.”

The bridegroom taken away? Such a comment would have thrown Jesus’ hearers into a tizzy. What does that mean? What does he mean taken away? When the bridegroom comes, he just comes! The Kingdom comes, the enemies of God are routed, Jerusalem is exalted. It all happens lickety-split.

But Jesus clearly rejects this understanding of the Kingdom and implies that everything does not happen lickety-split. Well, how then does it happen? What is the nature of the Kingdom of God? How should we understand it? It is these questions that Jesus sets out to answer today in the two parables of the growing seed and the mustard seed.