Community Group Discussion Guide: A Divided Kingdom
Read Text: Mark 3:20-30 (NASV) And He came home, and the crowd gathered again, to such an extent that they could not even eat a meal. 21 When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.” 22 The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.” 23 And He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 “If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished! 27 “But no one can enter the strong man’s house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house. 28 “Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”-- 30 because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.” Icebreakers:
Big Idea: Jesus has declared war on an established kingdom. He is healing the sick, bringing new authority and teachings, forgiving sins, breaking the oral tradition, "working" on the sabbath, overcoming temptation, and opposing the Jewish/religious leaders of his time. However, it is not the kingdom of Israel or the Jewish religion that is under attack but the Kingdom of Darkness. Jesus says in Matthew 5:17 that "He has not come to abolish the law and prophets but to fulfill them," but He says no such thing about the realm of Satan. In fact, He is in open opposition and has begun to attack this kingdom. It started in the desert when Jesus resisted the devil's temptations and continues as we see Jesus exert his power and authority over the demon possessed. In this passage we see Jesus’ power and authority come into question by two different groups in two different ways. It reminds me of a C.S. Lewis quote from Mere Christianity, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” This is exactly what we see play out in the passage and Jesus leaves the Pharisees with a very stern warning about the road they are headed down. Text Exploration: (Verses 20,21) And He came home, and the crowd gathered again, to such an extent that they could not even eat a meal. When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.”
(Verse 22) The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.”
(Verses 23-27) And He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. “If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished! “But no one can enter the strong man’s house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.
(Verses 28-30) “Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”
Conclusion: In accusing Jesus of doing works of power by the power of Satan, the scribes were indeed siding with Satan in the work of deception. It is a very dangerous act for a group of people who claim to be God’s ambassadors to enlist in the work of the Enemy. Jesus warned His critics about the danger of engaging in such subterfuge.
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