Mark 12:38-44 - Jesus Teaches In the Temple

This is how I introduced the 52nd sermon in this series on Mark, the last sermon in chapter 12:

“Remember last week how no one else dared to ask another question, so Jesus went ahead and asked one of his own? Remember what that question was? If Jesus is the Son of David, as the scribes say, then why is it that David, through the Holy Spirit, calls him Lord? If the Messiah is David’s Son then how can he also be David’s Lord at the same time?

And Mark did not record an answer for us, as if he wanted us thinking about the deeper implications of the question. As well we should. Modernism has fooled us into thinking that the Bible is a simplistic book. It is anything but. Men have dedicated their lives to understanding it, and more has been written about it than probably anything else in human history.

Because of the perspicuity of Scripture . . . You might be saying, what is that? What is the perspicuity of Scripture? In short, it means the clarity of Scripture. In the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith: "...those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them,”

You might say that this teaching, this idea of the clarity of Scripture has taken off, that it is has so been embraced in American evangelicalism that everyone who has attended Sunday School as a kid or has been in church any time at all thinks he has a pretty good grasp of just about all the Bible has to say. As a result, the reality of something else, the profundity of Scripture, has been lost. While we affirm the former we must not miss the latter. It is too easy to think that because we have learned a few things that we somehow know it all or know enough. We don’t.

The people in that crowd that day in the temple to whom Jesus was speaking knew a lot. They knew much more of the Old Testament Scriptures than we do. They had been steeped in it their entire lives. They had learned to read from it in early childhood. They had memorized large portions of it. They had recited it and prayed it and sang it and listened to it read aloud and explained over and over and over again. Yet they had failed to grasp some of the most important aspects of it. If Messiah was the son of David then how could he also be David’s Lord? The crowd didn’t know, and the scribes somehow had not considered it. Yet there it was. There was something deeper to consider and Jesus was challenging them to consider it.

You and I should consider this and be humbled. We have a long way to go ourselves. There is much that we need to consider. And when we approach the Bible we should approach it with a humble and teachable spirit. Lord, instruct me. Teach me. What is it I may have missed? No matter how much I study this book, no matter how much I dig, it always yields up more treasure. And the treasure is always worth the effort. Lord, help us today to grow deeper into your word.

That question, though, that Jesus asked, was not the only thing he had to say, nor was it the end of his public teaching. But this morning, when we get to the end of chapter twelve, we will have heard the last of Jesus’ public teaching as recorded by Mark. So let’s take a look at it.”

To listen to this sermon just click the link below. You know the drill—a new window will open up in your browser and you will have the option of streaming the audio or downloading it for future listening. God bless you. 

Click here: Mark 12:38-44 - Jesus Teaches In the Temple


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