Mob Mentality - At One Time a Good Thing - Mark 3-4

 Mark 3:7-11 (ESV)

A Great CROWD Follows Jesus

Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great CROWD heard all that he was doing, they came to him. And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the CROWD, lest they crush him, for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.”

Mark 3:20 (ESV)

20 Then he went home, and the CROWD gathered again, so that they could not even eat.

Mark 3:32 (ESV)

32 And a CROWD was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.”

Mark 4:1 (ESV)

The Parable of the Sower

1 Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large CROWD gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole CROWD was beside the sea on the land.

Jesus could draw a CROWD.  Imagine how that truth would be exploited today ... by the religious world.  Or, by the “rock star” preachers.   What would the marking world do with Jesus ability to draw massive groups of people?  You have to wonder what the street vendors in Jesus day did with this phenomenon.  What would the nightly news be like if it was our day when Jesus came and drew these type of CROWDS?  

Jesus drew CROWDS because He was the Son of God who healed people.   Today if people were being healed because of Jesus name, think of the CROWDS that would be gathering.    But, that is the problem, isn’t it?   In Mark’s gospel we read of these massive crowds because of Jesus physically healing them.   It would not be until Pentecost that we would read about these same type of CROWDS because people were being healed Spiritually (Acts 2-4).   Later would read about Paul in Ephesus where there was a large CROWD gathered, actually burning books about evil to believe the good of Christ (Acts 19).   Where are our CROWDS today because we are seeing people healed spiritually?  

But, it would also be CROWDS that crucified Jesus:

Mark 15:15 (ESV)

So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

It was the CROWD that almost had Paul killed in Ephesus:

Acts 19:33-35 (ESV)

33 Some of the crowd prompted Alexander, whom the Jews had put forward. And Alexander, motioning with his hand, wanted to make a defense to the crowd. 34 But when they recognized that he was a Jew, for about two hours they all cried out with one voice, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

35 And when the town clerk had quieted the crowd, he said, “Men of Ephesus, who is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis, and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky?

Today CROWD mentality will destroy a city.   But, in Jesus’ ministry He was able to gather the CROWDS to heal and to save.   That is the CROWD mentality we want today.