Mark 3:22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.”

The scribes came to Jerusalem (a special counsel of them) to assess what it was Jesus was doing. They called him – possessed by Satan. Jesus’s response was not pleasant. He said in Mark 3:29 whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— ³⁰ for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

In Mark 3:20 he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. ²¹ And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.” Later the crowd told him that his mother and brothers came looking for him. And he said, in Mark 3:35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

I see 3 sets of people here:

• The scribes in danger of eternal sin.

• The family of Jesus embarrassed and looking to seize him to shut him up because they think he is out of his mind.

• The people who Jesus offered an invitation into the family of God.

So the question that must be answered them is where do we land?

Are we like the scribes who spent their days questioning and trying to put doubt into the minds of people who are looking to Jesus? Are we like Jesus’s family who was embarrassed by what he has come to do? Or are we looking to Jesus and taking him up on that invitation to family?

Immediately after these two moments with the scribes and Jesus’s mother and brothers he tells the parable of the sower. The seed sowed by the sower is the word of God.

• Seed fell on hard ground – Birds eat the seed – the word falls of hard hearts and deaf ears that cannot hear.

• Seed fell on rocky ground – the seed has shallow roots – the word is received and there is a moment of joy but hardship and trial come and the hearer falls away from faith.

• Seed fell on thorny ground – the seed begins to grow and the thorns of this life – the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things choke out the word from the heart.

• Seed that fell on good ground – the seed took root and yielded a harvest of fruit – yielding thirty fold and sixty fold and a hundredfold.

We can see then that the scribes had either hard hearts or rocky hearts. Jesus’s family worried about what he was doing and how that would reflect on the family had thorny hearts and those who came to hear him teach, the Holy Spirit was preparing their hearts, as good soil ready for the seed of the Word.

In this life we will walk through seasons of wilderness, dryness, and just down right weirdness. As we continue to follow Jesus, like the crowd in the scriptures, there will come a time when the Word is sown into our hearts and your heart will produce one of these outcomes. The work of the Holy Spirit is to make your heart ready to receive the Word. We can’t make ourselves ready, but He can!

Starla