Episode 85: Gospel of Mark part 27–The Ministry of the Twelve and Shaking off that Dust.

This teaching marks the climax of the first part of the Gospel of Mark (there are three sections to this Gospel) as the twelve disciples have been trained, equipped, and are now being sent out in twos throughout the Galilee. We’re going to look into why they went out by two’s (nothing to do with Noah’s Ark!), why they had such specific instructions as what to and what not to bring. And we really need to talk about why people shouldn’t be “knocking the dust from their feet” lightly. And we need to talk about the disciples anointing the sick with oil and what that was and was not about.

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The blog I mentioned about the two witnesses can be accessed here

Transcript below:

⁷ And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. ⁸ He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts—⁹ but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. ¹⁰ And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. ¹¹ And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” ¹² So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. ¹³ And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.

What’s THE most abused verse of all time? “Judge not lest ye therefore be judged.” And why is it that we all quote it from the KJV? What’s up with that? Maybe because it sounds a thousand times more sanctimonious. Hey, maybe that’s a good reason not to quote from the KJV! Which, in case you were wondering, does not stand for “King Jesus Version” and no, Yeshua didn’t preach from it. And no, God didn’t originally author the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek just because English hadn’t been invented yet so that He could hide prophetic tidbits like “the last trump” being about Donald Trump being the antichrist (or any other American president for that matter) or the Mark of the Beast being masks because there is one letter difference between mark and mask. And you laugh, but I have seen people say that without considering the ramifications of what they are suggesting.

Also, this account is also repeated in Matt 10, Luke 9, and Luke 10 (if we include the sending out of the seventy-two). Matthew 10 includes the second-most abused verse in the Bible “Freely you have received now freely give,” but we will cover that in terms of patron-client relations when we go back and cover the Gospel of Matthew.

But today we are going to talk about the two by two ministry of the Twelve, and why they were sent out in twos (it’s super cool), and how we have misused the expression “shaking the dust from your feet.” How many have, frankly, turned it into a cheap shot temper tantrum at the end of an unwon debate or whenever they are miffed. But I think that, when you find out what it meant in context and how it was to be used, you won’t use it so frivolously or for your own purposes anymore.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist, and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com

All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com.

Now, we’re going to back up one verse and summarize last week’s teaching because this is another Markan sandwich. Except this is a huge one spanning almost the entire chapter because in 6:30, they come back and report their successes.

⁶ And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went about among the villages teaching.

Okay, what is this referring to? If you missed last week or just forgot, because, you have a life or something outside of listening to me, then you need to know that Yeshua was just rejected in Nazareth and they were severely questioning the source of His authority and teachings and power. And maybe even questioning his mom’s virtue, which is not cool. He taught in their synagogue and healed just a few people and then He left on His third mentioned preaching tour of the villages (the others mentioned in 1:14 and 1:39). But this sandwich is an odd one because last week we have Him rejected, this week we have Him sending out the disciples in response to His own rejection, and next week we see the results/consequences of their going out in groups to preach, and after that, they come back to report to Him what happened.

⁷ And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 

I am going to add here that this section marks the climax of the first part of Mark’s Gospel. Missionaries have been trained, equipped, and given authority.

“Two witnesses” is a recurring theme in Scripture. Let’s go through them real quick here:

On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. (Deut 17:6)

“A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.” (Deut 19:15)

But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. (Matt 18:16)

Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.  (I Tim 5:19)

And then we famously have the two witnesses from Revelation 11, which I wrote a blog about back in July, which I will link here. Now, in wanting to make the Gospels “more Jewish” when it is impossible to make them more Jewish (they are entirely Jewish as is), people sometimes try to scramble to match every verse up with the Torah. But not everything links back to the Torah and this is a good example of that. This is a cultural thing, not a Torah thing. The disciples are not going out as legal witnesses of crimes but as messengers to their witness of the arrival of the Kingdom of God. In this, they line up with two other witnesses in Scripture, those in Revelation 11. Revelation 11 is often misunderstood because it is not read as ancient apocalyptic literature, which was written to people who needed to be reminded that (a) despite the troubles going on all around them, that they needed to remember that God wins even when we suffer losses and things will be made right, and (b) people who are caught up on the “favorable” side of the worldly system of wealth, consumerism and oppression need to be warned that there will be a reckoning. It was never meant to be read as a prophetic roadmap of the future. They wouldn’t have read it that way. To them, it was a reminder and a warning that, in the end, God wins so that they can continue to endure trial or resist temptation, whichever one was appropriate to their situation.  But the other problem with how we read Revelation 11 is that we don’t link it up to the sending out of the Twelve and then the Seventy in groups of two. And there is a cultural reason for it that they all would have been familiar with—everyone in the ancient world knew that no King or great man only sent out one witness with a message. God never did, He always sent multiple people—maybe not together but there was always more than one giving a message. Moses had Aaron with him, right? Even Yeshua was preceded by John the Baptist.

But important messages required more than one messenger to ensure the integrity of the message. One messenger could deliver a false message and who was to know? I mean, today people will pass on nonsense on memes or forward lies without even verifying the contents. And that’s with access to the information. They don’t check and have no excuse when they pass on something that isn’t true. But these guys in these small towns, you could give a fake message and the results could be disastrous. You might send one ambassador to another nation with a message of peace and if the messenger was crooked, you might end up with war instead! So the disciples were sent out in twos because they bore the message of the King about His Kingdom. And we see this same thing in Revelation 11 because God’s messengers in the Kingdom are represented as official ambassadors and messengers. Those witnesses in Revelation are us, people who are sometimes beaten and killed and rejoiced over in our misery—but the message at the end of that mini-parable in Revelation is that there is a resurrection of the righteous and we will be vindicated. I lay out the whole speil in my blog, if you are interested in reading that but I have rabbit-trailed enough today.

So, we miss this cultural indicator of them going out as royal messengers in service to the King of Kings with the good news about His Kingdom, a message too important to be left to someone like Judas acting alone—because we know how that guy operates when left alone. That’s actually my favorite part of this whole teaching, right there. Royal messengers. I wonder if the three groups of brothers were sent together or separated. No way to know. I would have separated them—especially James and John—or else some town was going to get charbroiled.

And they were given authority over unclean spirits. That’s an important part of this royal messenger picture. The way one would treat a royal messenger is how you would treat the one who sent him. To insult the messenger is to insult the King. To refuse to give hospitality is to spurn the King. To refuse to acknowledge the authority of the King is to be a rebel—and so with that in mind they were given this authority over unclean spirits and the unclean spirits had to obey them. Notice that they were not given authority over people. A lot of folks with delusions of grandeur conveniently miss that part. They were never given authority to rule over people the way that the Gentiles were guilty of (not to mention quite a few Jews as well). They were going out as Yeshua to conquer God’s demonic enemies as part of delivering the Good News.

⁸ He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts—

Let’s stop here. “Take nothing.” Really, with the list it meant, “Go immediately with the walking stick in your hand. Don’t delay. Don’t plan out what you are going to go. Just go. Warn them. Give them Hope. Drive out demons as proof and as mercy.”

Now, a staff in those days wasn’t just for walking and warding off wild animals, it was also worn across the back as a brace, which when I learned that, struck me as a very good idea. No bread is obvious and puts them at the mercy of the people they are going to. No bag is a bit harder to explain and is the source of a bit of debate—the KJV translated it as wallet which is definitely not correct. Travelers would be more likely to have their money sewn or hidden in their clothing. But a bag is probably meaning a beggar’s bag. They were not to beg for funds along the way. They represented God and as such, they were never to be reduced to begging at the city gates as shamed people. “No money in their belts”—that means they are not to take and spend their own money for the trip. The people to whom they preached would be held responsible for supporting them—or not, as we will see.

³ This is my defense to those who would examine me. ⁴ Do we not have the right to eat and drink? ⁵ Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? ⁶ Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? ⁷ Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk? ⁸ Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? ⁹ For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? ¹⁰ Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. ¹¹ If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? ¹² If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? (I Cor 9)

This was, shamefully, and is an ongoing problem. Folks who can support often do so the least–or not at all.

⁹ but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics.

Well, thank goodness for that—imagine having to go barefoot like Isaiah, who was also naked as well. This is not the best climate for going barefoot, thorns and thistles, and rocks. So they aren’t being sent out like Isaiah for three years with the bad news that Assyria was going to destroy and exile the allies of the King of Judah. They were being sent out with goods news. Therefore they get to keep their shoes and clothes but they just can’t take an extra tunic just in case. That’s right, no special clothes for the synagogue or for staying in rich people’s houses.

OR, and this is a big “or”—wearing two tunics might have been idiomatic for changing the message or delivering an entirely false message. In Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews, Book 17, Chapter five, verse 7, we get this account of a messenger who had a second, secret, message sewn into his extra tunic:

“But while the king was in doubt about it, one of Herod’s friends seeing a seam upon the inner coat of the slave, and a doubling of the cloth, (for he had two coats on,) he guessed that the letter might be within that doubling; which accordingly proved to be true. So, they took out the letter, and its contents were these…” I will spare you the very convoluted palace intrigues of the Herodian family, and multiple messages, some true and some false. Needless to add, but I will anyway, a messenger wearing two tunics was not always seen as an honest messenger.

¹⁰ And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. 

We can all understand the temptation here. Not everyone who practices hospitality is going to be wealthy like Abraham or Lot. Maybe the first person you meet is poor but generous and they invite you to stay. You get there, the food isn’t great and the accommodations are humble, but then you start preaching and the wealthiest guy in town wants you to come over to his place and promises you some roasted goat and cheese and bread made with fine flour and dates—instead of the poor man’s lentils. But you do not shame that generous man by following your stomach elsewhere.

¹¹ And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” 

And so we get to this verse that causes a lot of folks out there to behave in a very silly manner. Let’s attack the front of it before tackling the end. Yeshua was heralded by John the Baptist as being the “mightier one” who would baptize in fire. The miracles demanded a decision by those who saw them. Is this man from God, doing the works of God and preaching the message of God, or do His message and works derive from the demonic? That was the question that demanded an answer when they were confronted with the dismantling of Satan’s kingdom before their very eyes as his demons were being booted to the curb left and right. Now, Yeshua’s disciples are sent out with the same message and the same power and authority. Not in Mark but in Luke, the seventy-two come back raving about their success in evicting demons from the people they encountered. The decisions demanded whenever Yeshua did this will not be demanded when they do this. They have the message accompanied by the dynamis, miracles, and now people have one of two choices—receive them or reject them. So far, the only rejection has been from the Pharisees, the Scribes, and from the citizens of Nazareth. Oh, and the people whose pigs were killed. The normal people were loving Him, His message, and His works on their behalf.

Now, when we covered the Parable of the Sower, we saw a reference to Isaiah 6:9 where Yahweh is saying that the people are being stricken with blindness because the leadership of Judah has become an enemy to Yahweh. In the Beelzebul controversy, we see that they have blasphemed the Spirit by slandering the source of His authority. Increasingly, we are going to see the theme of insider vs outsider become the theme of insider vs enemy vs undecided. The more Yeshua reveals His identity through His works, the guiltier those who reject Him become and now that guilt also attaches itself to those who reject His ambassadors. BUT, and this is a big but, as we have talked about—“outsider” is not a permanent status. Outsiders can become insiders through faith so we must be patient and non-condemning.

Go to town, teach and preach, heal, toss out demons—and if, after all that, they still reject you then shake off the dust from your feet. In Tosefta Baba Kama 1.5, it states, “The dust of Syria pollutes as that of alien countries.” When someone left eretz Israel and entered into foreign territory, it was believed that even the dust of that place would defile them. When they came back to the Land, they would shake that defiling dust from their feet. So, Yeshua was saying that a town that would not receive them after all that, the message plus the miracles, was to be treated as heathen territory.  Of course, not understanding this or having proper perspective on this leads to some very shameful behavior. Someone told me yesterday that they were once at a Bible study where this gal was just determined that everyone believe that there were aliens on other planets, and this was really important to her that everyone accept it, and when they wouldn’t, she stomped off and made a huge show of actually scraping the bottoms of her shoes on the doorstep as she went out “as a witness against them.” Because—aliens. Not quite up to the standard of, “I walked here with no food or money and then preached the Gospel and healed your sick and delivered people from demonic oppression and then you told me to hit the road.”

Gosh, we are such drama queens. I remember once, being called in on a post from a friend of mine, another former pornography user, and they were discussing whether or not Game of Thrones was soft porn. I was called in as an expert on pornography and pornography addiction, which I am for all the wrong reasons (twenty-one years free from it, praise God!), and asked to weigh in and I said that absolutely it’s at the very least soft porn. Well, someone I had ministered to for years got furious with me over it, argued with me online, and then sent me a private message calling me the biggest hypocrite of all time (I really didn’t think I was that high in the rankings, but okay) and telling me that God was “no longer with me” before blocking any more messages. And it is sort of the same thing, this blocking of people over something so insignificant. I was frankly shocked to learn that God was such a huge Game of Thrones fan that He would remove His Spirit from me just because I called it porn when asked my opinion. And I know I have had people actually do the internet “shaking the dust off my feet” to me so many times but I can’t think of any examples right now. It’s silly. I have never seen it used where it wasn’t just posturing and throwing a tantrum. Some folks do it in their minds, as a sort of breaking away from a situation, but the announcements are invariably just silly.

But I am a firm believer that unless you do all that stuff that Yeshua told them to do, you don’t get to knock the dust off your feet. And I don’t know of anyone who has ever had that happen. It’s about perspective and humility, and what are the actual stated requirements and circumstances where we do and do not do this. People want to do this because folks won’t believe them or take their word for something or, my personal favorite, can’t win an argument. These are not reasons for insinuating that the other person is an outsider, a heathen, or a defiling presence. We can’t draw a very narrow boundary around ourselves and believe that everything or anyone too far outside our comfort zone is defiled. Around ourselves is absolutely NOT where we should draw our boundaries but around Him and then we’d better dang sure make certain that we are inside that boundary before we go worry about anyone else. Can you just imagine, just for a minute, what would happen if Yeshua was anything like us and how we are so quick to just write other people off and decide that they are defiled or heathens or whatever? I mean, dang, we have a heck of a lot of nerve, right?

¹² So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. 

Boom! He told them to just go and they just went and proclaimed that people should repent—just like John the Baptist’s message. Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near. Bring us your sick and we will prove that the awaited time is here! And when they get back, in Mark 6:30, we see no indication that they were not taken care of. Again, it is the self-appointed and official leadership and their representatives who are rejecting this and not the general public.

¹³ And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.

Again, and I love this about Mark—he always makes it clear that there is a difference between physical problems and demonic problems. There is healing over here and then there is demonic deliverance. In the ancient world, there was a lot of misplaced belief in all sicknesses being demonic and you still get that in cultures that practice animism, which has nothing to do with animals but is the belief in the existence of individual spirits that inhabit natural objects and phenomena. In other words, a whole lotta demons going on. Demons that must be appeased. Demons you don’t want to offend. Demons that are responsible for everything bad that happens and who cling to certain families and cause deformities and sickness and poverty. Yeshua never puts those things together. I have seen Pentecostal preachers, and even within the Hebrew Roots Movement, try to cast out a spirit of poverty but I never saw Yeshua do that. No, He says the poor are for us to care for, not to exorcise. Our goal in life is not to be rich but to alleviate the suffering of others. Sometimes that means deliverance and I have ministered that on numerous occasions but far more often I support people financially when they are in distress.

Now, here’s another sort of abused bit of Scripture. Despite what memes might claim, the apostles were not going around with essential oils treating people for illnesses. There is no way on earth they would have such things available to them. What they had was olive oil. And we have to recognize that oils are never seen being used for healing in the Hebrew Scriptures. What this is, in context, is about identification because they were healing people miraculously on the spot, not over an extended period of time. People in the ancient world were anointed as part of their identification. Kings were anointed, and so were priests. Maschiach means anointed one, as does Christos. When people in the Gospels and epistles are anointed with oil and prayed over, many scholars believe and I also believe, that they were partaking in a prophetic statement and act. This was an identification with the anointed one, the Messiah, through whom the healing was happening. Notice that Yeshua doesn’t anoint people with oil, only His disciples and later followers do. But there is more to this prophetic act. Any Levite or Priest with a defect could not be anointed to serve in the Tabernacle/Temple. And so, this anointing could also be pointing to the restoration of a kingdom of priests where all would be made whole and brought into service.  This has been a big theme in Mark, people not only being healed but restored in such a way that they can be fully functioning members of the community again. In a time without the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) or Medicaid or Social Security, we can’t even begin to imagine the isolation and feelings of worthlessness. They were often considered to be cursed by God.

I am going to share a bit of silliness with you about the use of oil in superstition in Judaism in the Hellenistic times. Now, I mentioned and even quoted from the Testament of Solomon when we talked about the Beelzebul controversy, that’s when we heard about Belial/Beliar. But this document is plain nuts, okay, and it really is a good example of why pseudepigraphic literature is NOT scripture even when it claims to be written by a Bible character, in this case, Solomon. Different times and different cultures have different ways of writing and you won’t see any firsthand accounts in Judaism in the Bible. Everything is written first person in the Testament of Solomon—not in third person. Everything in the Hebrew Scriptures, until the Persian era (things like Nebuchadnezzar’s personal account in Daniel and the Book of Nehemiah) is pretty much told from the perspective of a narrator with a few exceptions in the prophets. Otherwise, the action is never narrated as being from that first-person perspective. Moses never says, “I did such and such.” He wrote about himself as a detached witness. The epistles are all first-person but they are private letters. Some of the Psalms as well, but the historical accounts are not written that way. That is actually something that the Jews picked up during Persian and Hellenistic times. But it still never translated over into the accounts of the Gospels. We also see it in Revelation, but then Revelation was written in this same sort of apocalyptic style and Revelation was written more like an epistle.

All that is just to say that when you see something “historical” written in first person, it isn’t likely to be anything other than creative fiction, like the Testament of Solomon. And when it was originally written in Koine Greek, that just cinches it.

But this document, boy howdy. I mean, the stuff they came up with after the exile. This book is a fictional account about Solomon being given the ability to control all demons with this ring. And it is shock full of rituals and superstition. Now, I perform deliverance so I know demons are real but this stuff is very much a product of those times, when they were in contact with other cultures and some downright magical beliefs not rooted in the authority of God but in belief in using rituals to control demons. Some of the stuff is just hilarious about how Solomon was controlling different demons.  In the Testament of Solomon 18:34, the thirtieth of thirty-six heavenly bodies speaks and says, “I am called Rhyx Physikoreth. I bring on long-term illnesses. If anyone puts salt into (olive) oil and and massages his sickly (body with it) saying, “Cherubim, seraphim, help (me), I retreat immediately.” So here we have oilive oil being used in what amounts to a magic ritual, you have the actions and you have the precise words that need to be said. Also, you are calling on angels and not on the authority of God. This is very inspired by paganism. Of course, they didn’t see it that way and if you remember the teaching about what physicians were pulling on women with menstrual issues, you are already not entirely surprised. But these thirty-six demons are responsible for inflicting people with everything from diarrhea and hemorrhoids to angina, kidney failure, bladder infections, gas, you name it. And there is a specific ritual involved with controlling each. I can tell you that’s pure nonsense. We never see Yeshua’s disciples getting fancy or writing a demons name on a piece of wood from a ship to get rid of them. Tell them to leave and they go.

But the disciples, they anointed people with oil, threw out demons, and healed the people. Nothing fancy. Demons are real, but not all beliefs about demons are real, okay?

Case in point. And some of you guys might get mad but I don’t care. I never care. There is this African doctor who is much in the news right now—well, that’s not true, she was in the news for about one week and now she is gone from sight. But because she was promoting a popular potential cure for COVID, people were really promoting her. And if kids are listening you might want to change the channel. The thing is that she believes some crazy stuff that is not supported by the Bible or by my experience with deliverance ministry. She has this idea that women who are barren or have uterine cysts, have them because of sex with demons. That’s right, it’s because of the sperm of demons. And the thing is that good friends of mine are listening to her—friends who even have debilitating and even terminal illnesses and I know how badly they have suffered because of people who assume that they are afflicted by demons. I have ministered to them because this stuff is nonsense. And very damaging and hurtful. It’s also rooted in ignorance. The Bible clearly differentiates between physical disabilities and sicknesses and demons. They are not the same. Sometimes demons can act in ways that mimic illness, but they are not behind every medical problem. So, people are latching on to this and all of a sudden, all the work I have done for years and years, telling people that the reproductive organs and the brain are organs that can be sick and damaged just like any other, and are not automatically tied to demons or curses, well here I am seeing people saying that this makes sense because they like her views on this other thing. But I have to tell you that there are no pains like the pain of being barren and no stigma like the stigma associated with mental illness. Ascribing to this sort of belief just because you like a person’s view on one issue may not matter to you if you have a house full of kids, but to someone like me, who was born with a twisted uterus, damage to the vertebrae that houses the nerves connecting to my reproductive system, and ovaries that make no more than a few days of progesterone a month and, for that matter, has suffered over the years with strokes and mini-strokes—well, this isn’t a harmless belief. And the judgment and condemnation that comes to someone like me is no laughing matter. And yes, there are people who will take that sort of teaching and assume I have had sex with demons—which stroke or no, I think I would remember. So, be wise. If you don’t want your illness attributed to demons and have to rail against it when it happens, extend that courtesy to others.

Next week we will be looking at the death of John the Baptist and the very sordid circumstances surrounding his execution.