Today, I am reading and commenting on Mark 1-3.

I am not sure how many points I am going to make about today’s passage.  The first point I want to make is that Jesus went into the synagogues and taught in many villages throughout Galilee.  This suggests to me that He had some recognized training as a Rabbi.  It seems to me unlikely that they would have just allowed a random individual to show up on the Sabbath and begin to teach.  Then when He did teach, He “taught as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the Law.”  I know when I was young the sense I got from that was that He taught by making declarations about what God’s will was.  However, I learned a few years ago that, in the first century, most Jewish rabbis taught by quoting from the writings, and sometimes oral teachings, of authoritative rabbis who had preceded them.  So, I have come to understand that Jesus taught by appealing to the Scripture and explaining what it meant.  He did not rely on what some other authority said the passage meant.  He read the passage and said, “This is what it means.”  The thing about doing that is that, since He was not appealing to some authority for His interpretation, His interpretation had to be one which people could agree with when they compared it to what the passage actually said.  This contrasts with many religions which have arisen since Jesus where the “prophet” declares that God has given him, or her, a revelation which supersedes the previous Scripture.  There is one more thing I want to note about Jesus preaching with authority.  While Mark seems to indicate that Jesus taught from the Scripture which the Jews already had without introducing His own, He also links Jesus teaching with authority to the authority He demonstrated by driving out demons.  Jesus did not need to depend on the authority of others in interpreting Scripture because He demonstrated that His interpretation was consistent with God’s will by driving out demons and healing the sick.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Mark 1-3.

When the man with leprosy came to Jesus he said, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”  Mark writes that Jesus was indignant when the man said that to Him.  Later, when Jesus saw the man with the withered hand in the synagogue, Mark writes that He looked around angry.  In the first case, why was Jesus indignant?  I believe He was indignant because He knew that the man was unsure if Jesus was willing to heal him because he knew many people who would have been unwilling to heal him if they were able.  In the synagogue Jesus was angry because of those who were present who were more interested in finding cause to accuse Jesus than they were in helping relieve the suffering of their fellow man.  Finally, the passage ends with Jesus telling the crowd around Him that whoever does God’s will is His brother and sister and mother, whoever does God’s will is His family.  So, those who wish to be part of Jesus’ family seek ways in which to alleviate the sufferings of others.  If those who know me do not know that I would risk myself to help others, I have either failed to understand Jesus’ message, or have failed to communicate that message.  If others who know me think I might judge them for helping others, no matter the circumstances, I have either failed to understand Jesus’ message, or failed to communicate that message.  Those things hold true for you as well.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Mark 1-3.

In the Gospel According to Mark the points come at you rapid fire.  Mark presents things Jesus taught and then moves on to the next thing.  He does not flesh out any of Jesus’ teachings in depth.  I will start with Mark telling us what Jesus said His message was.  Jesus said, “Repent and believe the good news.”  This is not the only place in the Gospels where Jesus says that people should believe the good news.  I have often wondered how people would know what the good news was.  Then as I was reading this today I realized that Jesus had told us the good news just before that, because the full quote is, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.”  Previously, I had always read that as, “Repent because the kingdom of God is near and believe the good news.”  But now I realize that Jesus was saying, “Good news, the kingdom of God is near, repent of your sins and believe that it is here.”

The passage goes on to tell us some of the implications of the arrival of the kingdom of God.  When the paralytic man is let down in front of Jesus, He told him that his sins were forgiven.  Then, when the teachers of the law questioned His right to forgive sins, Jesus said that He wanted them to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins just before healing the man.  Today I connected this with Jesus giving His disciples (and all who should become His disciples because of their testimony) the power to perform the wonders which He had performed.  We, who are His followers, are to let people know that their sins are forgiven.  Some times we pass on the word that God has forgiven, sometimes we forgive them ourselves, and sometimes we do both.  This passage contains another implication about the arrival of God’s kingdom.  When Jesus says that whoever does God’s will is His brother and His sister and His mother He is saying that those who do God’s will are His family.  The same is true for us, in God’s Kingdom, all who do God’s will are family.  Think about this and remember those who do not have a biological family.  All who do God’s will are our family, and we are theirs.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Mark 1-3.

When I was younger, I understood the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism to indicate that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus after His baptism and everybody heard the voice speak.  Some years ago I realized that the wording here in Mark, and also in Matthew and Luke, suggests that only Jesus saw the Spirit and heard the voice.  The Gospel of John account suggests that John the Baptist heard the voice from heaven.  The wording here in Mark could indicate that only Jesus or John the Baptist, or perhaps both, heard the words.  My understanding of the accounts leads me to believe that Jesus and John saw the dove descend and heard the voice from heaven, but that the others present only saw the dove (and perhaps heard something which they dismissed as “noise”).  The voice served as a confirmation to Jesus of the things He had been coming to understand about Himself and provided Him the strength to go through His wilderness testing.

Another thing which we take for granted is that, on the Sabbath, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach.  I do not know this to be true, but I am pretty sure that they did not allow just anybody to come into the synagogue and teach on the Sabbath.  So, in some way, Jesus had established Himself as someone with the necessary credentials to be allowed to teach., at least at a synagogue in Capernaum.  Which leads me to discuss some things we know about Jesus, and about John the Baptist.  We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that there were many similarities between what Jesus taught and the teachings of the Essenes (a third group of devote Jews alongside the Pharisees and Sadducees).  We also see from the Gospel accounts of John the Baptist that he was closer in approach to the Essenes than was Jesus.  So, it seems likely that both Jesus and John the Baptist were “credentialed” by their connection to the Essenes.  Which brings me to a second aspect of Jesus teaching in the synagogue: the people felt, and said, that He taught with authority.  In order to understand what was meant when they said that, we need to understand how most Rabbi’s of that time taught.  They would say things like, “as Rabbi Hillel wrote,…”  Jesus on the other hands appears to teach by saying, “as the prophet Isaiah wrote,…”   Most other Jewish teachers of the time referenced the interpretation of the prophets given by prominent Rabbis.  Jesus, on the other hand, spoke as if He, and His audience, could read the prophets for themselves and understand what they meant.  Jesus taught that we do not need someone else to tell us what God wants of us.  We can read the Scripture for ourselves and understand what God wants of us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Mark 1-3

I like the way the Gospel of Mark quick hits on the stories it tells. It is a quick and concise account of Jesus’ life.  Today I want to start by looking at the faith of the man with leprosy in this passage.   In a way it resembles what Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego told Nebuchadnezzar before they were thrown into the fiery furnace.  The leper told Jesus that he knew that Jesus could heal him, if Jesus was willing to do so.  We should approach God with our requests with the same attitude:  God is capable of doing whatever we ask of Him, the only question is whether or not He is willing.

The other point I want to touch on is Jesus’ response to the Pharisees challenging Him about His disciples plucking grain while they walked.  He makes a point about the Sabbath which applies to all of God’s commands.  God gave us rules about keeping the Sabbath for our benefit.  He did not create us for us to keep the Sabbath rules.  The same is true of the other things which God commands.  God did not create us in order to have someone to who He could give commands.  He gave us His commands so that we would know how to live life to its fullest.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.  

Today, I am reading and commenting on Mark 1-3

One of the things I like about the Gospel of Mark is that it is concise and quickly covers each incident before moving on to the next.  Of course, this means it makes a lot of points in a relatively short passage.  My understanding is that in the first century, those Jewish young men who wished further training as the disciple of a rabbi requested that he take them on.  Then the rabbi selected a few students from among those who applied.  However, the account here suggests that Jesus used a different approach, at least for some of His disciples.  We have two accounts here of Him selecting and calling disciples who had not applied for the position.  He called Peter, Andrew, James, and John to leave their jobs as fisherman to become His disciples.  Later, He called Levi away from being a tax collector to follow Him.  Finally, He called out a number of people to follow Him as He went up on a mountain away from the crowds.  Out of that group He selected twelve to be His Apostles.

So, there are a couple of things here.  Jesus selects His disciples before they select Him.  More importantly, in reaction to the fuss which was created over His choice of Levi the tax collector as one of His disciples, Jesus tells us that He does not call those who think they are righteous.  Rather He calls those who know they are sinners.  This explains why Jesus called His disciples instead of selecting them from among those who requested to be His disciples.  Until He called them< Jesus’ disciples would never have thought that they could be the disciples of a Holy teacher.  Of course, only those who know they are sinners understand the importance of forgiveness.