July 16, 2023 | Mark 11:27-12:44 | Pastor Chris Baker
Open your bibles to Mark 12. We’re covering Mark 11:27 all the way through the end of chapter 12 today, but we’ll start our reading in Mark 12.
We’ll see five debates between Jesus and assorted leaders of the nation of Israel, one parable, and one word of practical application. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is a lot. But, I trust God will make His Word clear and our time in it fruitful.
There’s a challenge today I want you to walk out of this room considering when we're all done. It's the aim of the sermon in one sentence.
Set your life on the only Cornerstone that will stand in God’s Kingdom.
We’re all building our lives on something. The chief priests, scribes, elders, Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees we’ll encounter in Mark 11-12 all built their lives on failing cornerstones. Jesus points that out to them in our text. We’ll find ourselves groaning a little bit as we identify with the sinfulness we see on display in these men.
Jesus makes clear what it looks like to build on a cornerstone that will endure and then illustrates for us yet again what that heart looks like when put into practice.
We’re going to start off by reading Mark 12:1-12.
Read Mark 12:1-12
On August 25th, Lord—willing, many of us in this room will gather with hundreds of others from our community to watch the Centralia Panthers football team open their season against the Mexico Bulldogs.
Friday night football is one of the things I love about living in a small town. Those 5-6 nights feel like the biggest nights of the year to some people. Indeed, they’ll be the biggest gatherings that happen in Centralia all year.
But they’re not going to hold a candle, at least in terms of numbers, to Allen, TX. The Allen High School Eagles will storm onto the field just north of Dallas to the cheers of 18,000 fans.
At least, that’s how many folks their stadium will hold. Eagle Stadium was completed in 2012 at the cost of $60 million. It’s the largest stadium belonging to a single school in all of Texas and less than two years after it opened . . .it closed.
On February 27, 2014 the stadium was condemned.
(https://www.espn.com/dallas/story/_/id/10528972/cracks-force-closure-60m-stadium-allen-texas)
A report at the time stated "engineers have found design deficiencies . . . and that some support structures were not designed in a way that would hold the weight anticipated on . . .the stadium.”
(https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2069616-60-million-dollar-texas-high-school-football-stadium-deemed-unsafe-will-close)
To put it in the terms of the passage we just read, Eagle Stadium was built on a cornerstone the builders should have rejected. It could have been worse. At least the problem was fixed. It took over a year and another $10 million, but the stadium reopened and remains in use today.
The risk of building our lives on a faulty cornerstone, however, are even more dangerous.
Our full text for today is a series of confrontations between Jesus and the braintrust of Israel’s faith. The religious leaders have been out to get Jesus for most of Mark's gospel.
You can start tracing this tension in chapter 2 and it continues in chapters 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, and 14. Jesus was teaching things and performing miracles that went over and against the perceived authority of these men and they hated Him for it.
They decided they were going to kill Him all the way back in Mark 3:6 and they’ll be successful pretty soon.
But they weren’t satisfied with that. They were trying to turn the crowd against Him. So they ask a series of theological questions to try to trip Him up.
Let me be clear, though. It’s not that they asked questions that was problematic. God’s people should be a curious and questioning people. The Bible can bear the weight of your questions. Never be afraid or ashamed to ask, that is, if you’re asking so that you can know and love God more. That’s the difference. These men asked in an attempt to make Jesus look bad and themselves look good. They were selfish and they were evil.
This conflict intensifies on Wednesday of Holy Week. Remember, Mark 11-15 happens over the course of a week. It’s the Passion Week. The final week of Jesus’s earthly life. Mark 16 is Resurrection Sunday. Mark 11:27 happens on Wednesday and this conflict will continue in one sense until Jesus is crucified on Friday. But the questioning stops here.
Mark 12:34 ends with ‘no one dared to question him any longer.’ His answers are too good. The truth is too much for them to bear . So they turn from plotting to stump Jesus to plotting nothing but His death.
Each of these confrontations is an opportunity for these men to repent and follow Jesus. But in their pride, they miss it.
Church, let us be warned by mistakes of those who go before us. These were the most respected, the most well-liked, the smartest people in all of Israel. If anyone should have recognized the Messiah, it would have been these men.
But instead of worshiping the Savior, they murder the savior. That’s what the parable we read is all about.
The Gospel in Parable (12:1-12)
In the midst of confrontation, Jesus graciously points out exactly what his accusers are doing.
Jesus is grabbing onto an idea in Isaiah 5. You don’t have to turn there, but you can go and look it up this afternoon. Isaiah 5 is the vineyard song and it’s about Israel rejecting God’s authority.
In Isaiah, the vineyard only produced bad grapes. It showed that Israel's heart had turned away from God.
In Jesus's parable, the owner of the vineyard rented it to some farmers and went on a long journey. When it was time to harvest the grapes, the owner sent a servant to collect some of the grapes. That was normal. The servant came to get the grapes that the farmers owed him. But something unexpected happened.
In verse 3, it says, "They took him and beat him." This is really bad behavior. The farmers should have been grateful because they were going to get paid for their work. They were going to keep most of the grapes. But instead, they showed ingratitude, rebellion, and wickedness.
Then in verse 4, the owner sent another servant, but the farmers hit him on the head and treated him badly. In verse 5, they killed another servant. This kept happening with many other servants. It was strange behavior from both the farmers and the owner. People must have thought, "Enough is enough! Why doesn't the owner send an army and get revenge? This is too much!"
But here's where the story gets really surprising. In verse 6, the owner had one more person to send, and it was his beloved son. People were shocked. The son was the most important person in the family. But the owner still sent him, thinking the farmers would respect him. But instead, the farmers said, "Let's kill him and take the vineyard for ourselves!”
Jesus used extreme circumstances in His parables to make a point. This one gets incredibly intense.
The crowd probably expected the owner to send a big force to punish the farmers and bring justice. But instead, he sent his son. And without hesitation, the farmers killed him. They didn't even give him a proper burial, they threw him out of the vineyard for the birds to eat. There was nobody left to send, all the options were gone.
Then comes the question in verse 9: "What will the owner of the vineyard do?" It's a thought-provoking question. If he followed the laws from the Old Testament, all the farmers would receive death.
But, when we consider the speaker—we realize the true shock of this parable, don’t we.
Jesus said to one of these same religious leaders over in John’s gospel:
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
The Father sent the Son to die so that we don’t have to. That’s the gospel. Like the farmers in the parable, we deserve death.
The Bible teaches that all humanity is born with a sinful nature inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve. That sin nature is confirmed in our sinful actions and leads to separation from God. We’re spiritually dead in our sins, according to Paul in Ephesians.
Romans 3:23 tells us all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And the wages for that sin, we find in Romans 6, are death.
Just like the farmers in the parable, if we get justice we get death.
But, Jesus didn't come to bring death. Romans 6 goes on to tell us the gift of God is eternal life found in this very same Jesus.
If we repent of our sins and place our faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, we don’t get eternal suffering, we get eternal life. We’re no longer an enemy to God, we’re a child of God.
And that’s the distinction that hangs heavy over our passage today. Have we accepted the cornerstone that is Jesus Christ and built our life on Him or do we reject Him and build on something else?
They religious leaders built their lives around their own sense of righteousness, their own sense that they were good enough.
Yet we find over-and-over again in Mark that they missed it.
The next thing Jesus says to them is, “Haven’t you read this Scripture?” He is criticizing them for not knowing the Bible, even though they claim to be teachers of Israel.
He point back to Psalm 118 about a stone that the builders rejected but became the most important stone. Jesus is saying that they should have recognized him as that important stone, but they didn't understand the Scriptures. He refers to himself as the cornerstone.
Acts 4, 1 Peter 2, Romans 9, and Ephesians 2 all refer to Jesus as the cornerstone.
The cornerstone is the most important piece of a building. Once it’s set, it became the basis for determining every measurement. Everything was aligned to it. Everything rested upon it.
Church, that has to be Jesus for us. If you yank the cornerstone from a building, the whole thing comes crumbling down. Church, what would happen if you too Jesus out of your life?
If you order your life in such a way that you could take our Jesus and be left with anything, you’re in grave danger.
Jesus announces Himself as the foundation of a life that is right with God and later in this same chapter, we see the foundational teaching of our faith. The greatest commandment. Look at Mark 12:28.
A Heart Built on the True Cornerstone (12:28-34)
The last question, the last test, the religious leaders have for Jesus is about their greatest debate. The unanswerable question for the smartest among them. Which command is the most important? They weren't just talking 10 Commandments. They were talking every single command God gives in the Old Testament.
Jesus responds with Scripture. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:4, a verse everyone who heard him would have had memorized.
Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Then, He explains how a life built on the cornerstone is oriented.
Love God with all our being—heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Love our neighbors as ourselves. And for neighbor in this passage, it’s best to consider whoever is in front of you at any given time as your neighbor.
Loving God wholeheartedly involves seeking a deep and personal relationship with Him, spending time in prayer, studying His Word, and aligning our actions with His Truth. It means putting God first in our lives and surrendering our will to His.
Loving our neighbors requires us to treat others with kindness, respect, and selflessness. It means considering the needs of others, being compassionate, and helping those who are in need. It also involves forgiving others, showing patience, and striving to build authentic and loving relationships.
These two commands are a photo negative to the lifestyle of these religious leaders who were questioning Jesus.
For those of you younger than me, a photo negative only makes sense if you think about film—the thing pictures existed on before phones. The film itself contained a reversed image. The areas that were originally dark in the scene appear light, while the light areas appear dark. This inversion happens because the film records light and colors in the opposite way from what our eyes perceive. Chemicals and magic that I don’t understand caused that film to become a picture—but the negative was always backwards.
That’s the religious leaders of Jesus’s day. They looked the part, but something was off. They had the outward appearance of righteousness without the accompanying heart change. We see that in the debates they have with Jesus all over these two chapters.
They tried to substitute other things for the gospel. They interrogate Jesus four times.
Gospel Substitutes (11:27-33; 12:13-17; 18-27; 35-37)
Normally, we’d read all of those passages in their entirety and deal with their background and implications. But for the sake of time and the big picture nature of our survey of Mark we're going to camp on the motivation for the questions.
Because here’s the important thing for us to catch in the religious leaders. The seeds of all their sins are very alive in our hearts today. They wanted authority. They wanted control. They believed their way was better than God’s way. They wanted God to serve them, instead of devoting themselves to serving God. Church, those desires look us in the mirror every morning.
In Mark 11:28, they ask about authority. They wanted Jesus to recognize their authority instead of bowing to His. Their manmade authority was their gospel substitute and Jesus tore it down. They built on the wrong cornerstone.
In Mark 12:13, this time it was a Pharisee and a Herodian. This is a bizarre alliance, by the way. The Pharisees were devoted to Jewish Law and the Israelite nation. The Herodians were devoted to Rome. Their interests couldn’t have been more different, except when it came to seeing Jesus as a threat. And they wanted to illustrate that Jesus’s teaching wasn’t compatible with the real world. Look, Jesus, we have this obligation to Rome. Who’s really in charge? God or Caesar? You can’t say Caesar isn’t in charge, that’s against the Roman Law. You can’t say God isn’t in charge. That’s against Jewish Law.
So whatever Jesus is going to say can’t really be relevant for the world today. The world today is way too complicated for the teachings of Jesus. That’s not a new way of thinking, church. It existed while Jesus was still walking the earth.
And He shot it down. Give Caesar what is Caesar’s. Give God what belongs to God. We’ll circle back to that shortly. The Pharisees and the Herodians built on the wrong cornerstone.
The Saducees thought they were smarter than Jesus. They didn’t think Jesus's teaching stood the test of deep thought. They worked out a hypothetical they didn't think Jesus could solve, but He told them the answer was right there in the Scripture they claimed to know so well.
He answers the scribes in verse 35. They wanted the Messiah to be like King David. A warrior who would repel Rome. They wanted the Messiah to be their hero rescuer.
And that’s still a popular idea, isn’t it church? How much of our modern worship music and the stuff you hear on Christian radio centers around victory and God being a chain breaker, overcomer, world shaker, giant slayer, and a million other things that rhyme.
God is all those things. But God is a lot more than those things. And those victories aren’t promised on this side of eternity. We need to remember that.
At the heart of the Scribes struggle was that they wanted Jesus to serve them, not the other way around. They wanted the Messiah to meet their needs and their need was to get Rome out of Israel.
They missed what Jesus said about greatest becoming servants.
Contextually, our hypocrisy differs from theirs. But the heart-attitude is the same, isn’t it?
We may cherry-pick certain commandments or teachings that align with our personal preferences while conveniently ignoring g others.
We may compromise our moral values when we think no one is watching.
We may project a self-righteous attitude, judging and condemning others for their shortcomings while failing to acknowledge our own sin.
We may present ourselves as devout and righteous in public but live contrary to their beliefs behind closed doors.
And the truth is, we can fool each other. The men Jesus rebuked would have looked like the holiest men in all Israel. But they were fake. They were whitewashed tombs according to Jesus. Nice and clean on the outside, but dead on the inside.
They tried to substitute a plethora of works instead of surrendering to the true gospel. They built on the wrong cornerstone.
We don’t just get the wrong way illustrated in this text, though. We see the true Gospel applied. Look at 12:38.
The Gospel Applied (12:38-44)
Of all the important people Jesus interacts with in our passage, it’s the lowly widow who really gets it. She gave all she had. She trusted God with everything, knowing He would provide.
Hypocrites have everything and give nothing. True followers of God are willing to trust everything they have to God knowing it's all His anyway.
She set her life on the only Cornerstone that will stand in God’s Kingdom. That’s the only way this makes sense! The Cornerstone tells us what is straight. It tells us what is right. And it tells us to give. So even though the world says, “Hey, you’re going to perish if you give that away!” She gave it anyway. Because the cornerstone tells her she’ll survive.
When it comes to giving all you have for God, it's not about just giving a portion or holding back certain areas of your life. No, it's about surrendering everything—your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength—to Him.
Think of Abraham. God asked him to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac. In that moment, Abraham had a choice—to hold on tightly to his son or to trust God's faithfulness and sovereignty. Abraham's heart was fully committed to God. He willingly offered up his most precious possession, demonstrating a level of surrender that few of us can fathom. This is the kind of wholehearted devotion God desires from us.
Giving all you have for God means allowing Him to reshape your desires, ambitions, and priorities. It means seeking His kingdom above all else and aligning your will with His perfect plan. It means pouring out your time, talents, and treasures for His glory, realizing that they are not truly yours but gifts entrusted to you for His purposes.
Giving all you have for God requires courage and sacrifice.
And it’s supernatural. It requires a work of the Holy Spirit in your heart to create the desire and maintain it. The application is not try harder. The application is you need God more!
Building on the cornerstone means stepping out of the comfortable and familiar, embracing the unknown, and pursuing His calling wholeheartedly.
It's a radical abandonment of self-centered living and a radical embrace of God-centered living. That’s what the Great Commandment yields.
Let’s face it. Some of us identify with Eagle Stadium. We’ve built a monument on a crumbling foundation. We’ve devoted ourselves to something that we know won’t bear fruit because the foundation isn't planted in God’s Word.
Do you feel the foundation crumbling today? Are you truly giving all you have for God? Are you holding anything back? Surrender yourself completely—every dream, every possession, every relationship—into the loving hands of our Heavenly Father. Let’s pray.