Trinity Baptist Church

The Book of Mark

Why You Should Be Ashamed

Mark 8:38-9:1

 

I’ve never understood why preachers try to cover such large texts of Scripture at a time.  It’s not necessarily bad or wrong to see a general purpose or structure, but as far as really getting to know and understand Scripture, I think it needs to be done a verse at a time.

 

That’s especially true with verse like we’re going to look at tonight.

 

Mark 8:38-9:1

 

In particular, I want to stop for a while and consider the last verse of chapter 8 because it just sort of jumps out of the text.  In many ways, it stands alone even though it has a context and it kind of jumps off the page and arrests our attention. 

 

The operative word that I want you to notice is the word “ashamed”.  Now contrary to our political correct and warped mentality, shame is a very useful reality. The truth is, no one really comes to salvation who hasn’t become ashamed of himself. That’s essentially what lies behind repentance. It is the feeling that guilt produces.  It is the evidence of remorse over one’s sin.

 

Now everybody understands the word shame, at least from human perspective.  But in spiritual terms, it might help to be a little more specific. 

 

 

There are two categories in which the sinner needs to recognize shame. First there is what I would call

 

 

Primarily that comes upon us due to some moral failure.  And it used to be much easier to generate feelings of shame.  But in today’s culture, it has become much more difficult because nothing embarrasses us anymore. 

 

Satan has done everything he can to eliminate the feelings of shame.  If you want to be homosexual, it’s just an alternate lifestyle.  If you want to kill a baby inside its mother, we’ll call it freedom of choice and use taxpayer’s dollars to fund it.  If you want to have sex with children, we’ll put together organization like the National Man/Boy Love Association to defend your right to do so.

 

And what is left, outside of a few horrendous crimes, it a society that has nothing left about which to feel shame.  And besides the obvious problems associated with that, worst of all, it cuts a person off from the hope of salvation because they have no shame, therefore there is no need for repentance.  

 

Then there’s another kind of shame sinners must deal with and that is

 

 

Religious shame is what someone who is trying to produce their own salvation through self-righteousness should feel and that kind of shame is even harder to produce because of its very nature. 

But the truth is anybody who thinks they are good enough to go to heaven on their own merits should be ashamed of themselves, not because e of their immorality but because of their false righteousness. 

 

Why should we be ashamed of being good?  Think about it like this: any sinner who feels that he can earn his way into heaven has assumed that he could please an infinitely holy God though human effort, therefore He has made himself equal with Jesus Christ. 

 

And yet that is where anyone outside of traditional, conservative Christian thought places themselves, including Judaism, Islam, Hindu, Buddha and on down the list.  Every other religion in the world is based on being good and doing good.  Every approach to God in the world is either faith-based or works based.  And the only faith-based approach hat will work is faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross. 

 

So we have these two causes of shame, one is immoral and sinful; the other is religious and moral.  So which one is Jesus addressing in our text? 

 

Well to help us answer that we need to identify the “adulterous and sinful generation” Jesus references.  It is Israel at the time of our Lord and it wasn’t because they were outwardly physically immoral, but because they were religiously immoral.

 

What does it mean to be spiritually adulterous?  It means they have been unfaithful in their relationship to their God.  The Old Testament pictures God as their husband and Israel as His wife. 

Anytime Israel would leave Him for some idol, it was describes as being sexually impure, playing the harlot and adulterous.  In fact, the entire book of Hosea was written to illustrate that very truth.  So this language Jesus uses would be very familiar to the Jews. 

 

Jeremiah brought the same message.  In Jeremiah 6, he is denouncing Israel for spiritual adultery and telling them of their impending judgment through the armies of Babylon.  He is especially critical of the prophets and priests and the messed up religion of the day. 

 

Without going into all the details, listen to verse 15

 

It’s a serious thing to be caught up in a false religious system and feel no shame.  In fact, the bottom line is if you don’t feel the proper shame that you ought to feel over your condition, what awaits you is judgment.  And that’s exactly what happened with Israel.  Judgment came because of spiritual harlotry.

 

When Jesus addresses “this adulterous and sinful generation”, he is talking about Israel. Israel acting in his day the same way they had acted in the past.

 

The adulterous part is fairly easy to understand.  Just look back through their history and it could be easily seen. 

 

What about the idolatrous part?  Were there lots of idols in the land during the time of Christ? No.  IT certainly wasn’t the problem it had been back during the times of the prophets.

But they had created one great idol and that was their religion which had become a false representation of the true God. That is equally blasphemous. God identifies as blasphemy worship of any other God or worship of His name but in a perverted form. And that’s exactly what Israel was guilty of. This was an idolatrous generation.

 

They were very religious and they refused to be ashamed of themselves. They refused to be ashamed of their twisting of the Old Testament. They refused to be ashamed of their misrepresentation of the true and living God. They refused to be ashamed of their secret sin. They refused to uncover the wretchedness on the inside. They refused to be ashamed of their hypocrisy.

 

They were not ashamed of themselves. So, since they refused to be ashamed of themselves, they turned and were ashamed of Jesus. That’s what it says. “Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation.”

 

In contrast to that, Jesus says the only people who will ever be saved are the people who are ashamed, not of Christ, but of themselves. If you will not be ashamed of yourself, then you will be ashamed of Christ because you will reject His message.  Salvation comes to those who are ashamed.

 

That’s who He‘s talking to in verse 34.  It’s the person who turns their back on self effort and embraces the cross to follow Jesus.  That’s the person who feels guilty, who faces the inevitability of just judgment, eternal death and is willing to lose his life to save it and won’t make the bad bargain of gaining the whole world and losing his own soul.

Now you have a choice. You’re either ashamed of you or ashamed of Christ. You would think that would be a simple choice.  You and I have everything to be ashamed of, but there’s nothing in Christ to be ashamed of.

 

Of what would you be ashamed in Christ?  Perfect holiness, perfect righteousness, perfect virtue, perfect goodness, perfect knowledge, wisdom, compassion, love, mercy, tenderness, power, justice, generosity. What is there about Christ to be ashamed of? Is it any wonder that the Apostle Paul said, “I boast only in Jesus Christ, my Lord. I boast only in Jesus Christ, my Lord.” What is there to be ashamed of?

 

If you’re ashamed of Christ, you’ve got it exactly backwards. He deserves all honor, all glory, all worship, all praise and you deserve shame. There is nothing about Jesus to be ashamed of.

 

Remarkably, in Hebrews 2:11 it says, “He’s not ashamed to call us brothers.” And in Hebrews 11 it says, “God is not ashamed to be our God.” God is not ashamed to love and redeem us. Why would we be ashamed of the one who seeks to love and redeem us? That’s the stupidity of sin.

 

Unwilling to be ashamed of yourself when confronted with the claims of Christ and His gospel, your shame turns on Him and you reject Him. Isn’t that crazy? 

 

Sinners who reject the gospel are ashamed of Christ.  They’re embarrassed to accept Him, not because He lacks character or power, but because they don’t want to admit they are sinners and need to ashamed of themselves.

Salvation basically comes down to either being ashamed of myself or being ashamed of Christ.

 

Let’s look at the verse a little more closely, for a minute. First we see

 

 

, “Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation.” As I said, He deserved honor, He deserved glory, He deserved worship, He deserved self-denying, sacrificial obedience, He deserved faith, all of those things that were part and parcel of appropriate responses to the gospel, but He didn’t get it. When He went to His own synagogue in Luke 4, people heard Him preach. He announced that He had brought the gospel they had all waited for and they were filled, it says, with rage. In the third chapter of Mark, you remember back, the Pharisees and Herodians came together to try to plot to destroy Him. That’s because they were in an evil and adulterous generation. They were ashamed of Him and His words, the gospel.

 

Why? Love of self, love of sin, love of acceptance. They would not humiliate themselves and so they turned their animosity on Christ. How shameful was their behavior toward Christ? They cried, “Crucify Him, Crucify Him,” as we shall see in a few months and had the Romans nail Him to a cross. It’s the issue again, folks, you’re either ashamed of yourself or of Christ. Fear of man, love of self, love of sin dominates the fallen heart and the sinner loves his sin, loves himself in such a way as not to be ashamed. It’s not natural, it’s not normal. And so he turns on Christ.

 

 

Verse 38

 

Those have to be some of the most tragic words on the pages of Scripture. The Son of Man will be ashamed of him.

 

Can you think of anything worse than to be rejected by Him? That is the inevitable result if you reject Him. The Son of Man will be ashamed of him, and then this, “When He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” This verse is very Old Testament. 

 

We’ve already talked about the adulterous and sinful generation and its connection to the Old Testament, but look at this phrase, “When He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

 

That comes from Daniel 7 and all good Jews knew that passage. It is one of the Messianic passages of the Hebrew faith.  It starts in verse 9 and it records the vision that Daniel records of the “Ancient of Days” being seated on His throne in a time of judgment.  He is surrounded by thousands upon thousands of angels.  And as the books of heaven are opened, the record of all the deeds and thoughts and actions of all the human beings who have ever lived are revealed. 

 

And Daniel says, “As I looked,, in the clouds of heaven I saw one like a Son of Man was presented to tthe Ancient of Days and to Him was given dominion, glory and a Kingdom that all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away and His Kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.”

 

It is an incredibly powerful vision of the coming judgment and establishment of the Kingdom of the Son of Man when He assumes the right to rule from the hand of the Ancient of Days, who is God the Father.

 

And when you come to the eighth chapter of Mark and you hear these words from the lips of our Lord. “The Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” you can be sure the scene from Daniel 7 is exactly what He’s referencing. 

 

And here He adds this extra dimension of what that judgment will include.  Not only will He come to take His Kingdom and establish His reign forever on the earth, He also will come and be ashamed of those who were ashamed of Him.

 

Now you can imagine how this announcement must have struck those listening that day.  This is a staggering promise. This is the first time in the gospel of Mark that the Second Coming is mentioned.

 

And don’t miss the scene.  The disciples have just made this great declaration back in verse 29 that Jesus is the Messiah.  They understand who He is.  They expect that now that they have affirmed this and He has acknowledged that it is true, the Kingdom is going to come immediately.

 

However, Jesus follows that confession with these words, verse 31, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, the scribes, be killed and after three days arise again.” They’ve gone from the highest high to the lowest low. Killed? Peter blurts out, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop that right there, that’s not going to happen.”

 

And Jesus says, “Get behind Me, Satan. You’re all caught up in the things of men and not the things of God. I’m going to die.” They have gone from the heights of declaring His messianic identity and His deity thinking this will lead to the inauguration of the Kingdom.

 

And now immediately says, “I’m going to die. And to make it worse, He says, and if you’re going to come after Me, you could die also. So take up your cross.” And most all the Apostles did and many other believers, some of them under the heated hatred of Saul.

 

This just takes the wind out of their sails. They are on an emotional roller coaster and Jesus wants to give them hope. 

 

So notice

 

Chapter 9:1

 

This really should be the last verse of 8 because the transition comes in verse 2, six days later.

 

Can you imagine what kind of questions that created?  Some of you are not going to die until you see the Kingdom of God after it has come with power.

 

What in the world does that mean? The Kingdom’s coming in the next few hours, the next few days, the next few weeks, the next few months, in our life time? That’s what they wanted, but that’s not what He’s saying.

 

Some of you, not all of you, but some of you are going to see Kingdom glory and Kingdom power.

What was He talking about?

 

Some people think He was talking about His resurrection. Some people think He was talking about the Day of Pentecost. Some people think He was talking about the establishment of the church and the coming of the Holy Spirit. He wasn’t talking about any of those things.

 

What He was talking about is exactly what happened in verse 2. Immediately, six days later, Jesus took with Him Peter, James and John, those are the some who would experience this. Not all, just some, here they are, Peter, James and John. Brought them up on a high mountain by themselves and He was transfigured before them.

 

He pulled back His human flesh and the glory of His eternal nature beamed out of Him in a presence that literally knocked them into a coma as He unveiled His glory. He gave them a preview of Kingdom glory, a preview of Kingdom power and the story of that transfiguration is one of the most compelling stories in the whole Bible and that’s for next time we meet.