Monthly Archives: May 2020

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – HE TAUGHT WITH AUTHORITY

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HE TAUGHT WITH AUTHORITY

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. 22 The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Mark 1:21-22

This was the new disciples’ first “fishing” lesson. What did they learn? Jesus was a Jew. He was quite happy to live this God-drenched life within the boundary fence of His Jewishness. He did not do anything to buck the system or to be revolutionary in His attitude to the parameters of the Law. He did what every other devout Jew did – He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath. He used the ordinariness of His situation to present the extra-ordinariness of the Father.

The record in Mark’s Gospel says that the people were astounded at His authority. He spoke to them as though He knew what He was talking about. And why shouldn’t He? He had just spent forty days alone with God in the most austere and dangerous of environments, hemmed in by physical and spiritual enemies, and yet He had experienced God’s presence and love so strongly that it had overwhelmed every scary moment.

He knew who He was; He was soaked in the power of the Holy Spirit and He carried with Him the environment of heaven. So steeped was He in the heavenly dimension in which He lived that He filtered every earthly experience through His awareness of God. He viewed life through God’s eyes and nothing human or natural fazed Him; not sickness, not adversity, not opposition, not misunderstanding, not even demons or death caused Him to wobble in His security in God. He was in charge and everything not of God had to give way in God’s presence.

How does this affect us? If we are not so sure of God’s presence and loving purpose in the face of everything that is a challenge to His perfection and His purpose, we will be affected by the environment of earth, not of heaven. God wants to challenge our faith by putting everything in our path that will try to deflect our awareness of Him to an awareness of the roadblock. Faith becomes purer and stronger every time His presence overcomes earthly encroachments.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – CATCHING MEN

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CATCHING MEN

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him.
19 When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. 20 Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. Mark 1:16-20

How were the disciples to catch men? What was the method and what was the “bait”? As you walk with Jesus and watch and listen to Him, it makes sense that the “bait” was the love and mercy of God which He declared, demonstrated and dispensed freely by touching the lives of ordinary people, forgiving their sin, healing their broken bodies and freeing them from demonic oppression (Act 10:38). Who would not be “lured” by a God like that? For too long the people had been cowered into obedience or driven away by fear of the God who made so many demands that it was impossible to satisfy Him.

Even if the disciples didn’t understand, they followed Him anyway and set out on a journey to relearn the love of the God who had originally called them to be His people millennia before, but whose true character was gradually obscured by a religious system superimposed by men.

Why did the Pharisees hate Jesus so much? Why did they want to kill Him? Could it be that the same fear that controls all other religions locked them into a ritualistic religious system of self-effort so that they could not launch out onto the love of God in case they were right and Jesus was wrong? Did their pride in their self-effort and their perception of “righteousness” make them hold tenaciously to their belief that they were right? Did they hate Jesus because He was too “nice” to the people they despised, and they could not accept God’s generosity to “sinners”?

How do we respond to God’s generosity? Is there a stubborn underlying thought that this is all a mirage: that there is a catch somewhere; that we will wake up and find that it was all a beautiful dream? Why do we struggle at times with the issue of healing? Why do we have nagging doubts when we pray as though the “bait” were a plastic lure and not the real thing? Is this part of the growth and maturing of true faith? How confident are we that what we are offering people is the truth and that God will back it up?

THE GOSPEL OF MARK- “COME, FOLLOW ME”

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“COME, FOLLOW ME”

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him.
19 When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. 20 Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. Mark 1:16-20

This is so awesome. Jesus was a rabbi with authority, but unlike any other rabbi with authority in Israel, past or present, His authority was not conferred by men but affirmed by the Father and the Spirit. As a rabbi, He would recruit disciples, learners who would become imitators so that His yoke would be passed on to as many people as possible.

Jesus did not recruit His disciples from the school of theorists but from the school of life – from people who lived in the world of everyday events, experiences, emotions and environments. Into this scene He plunged, with His message, “God is here!” Did that scare people? Only until He began to show them the disposition of the God whose presence He had come to announce.

Unlike the yoke of the other rabbis who had authority, Jesus announced that the God He represented forgave sin and, to show it, He healed sickness and disease, straightened deformed bodies and even overturned premature death. In the presence of God, devils fled in terror and fear was replaced with shalom.

The other rabbis placed burdens on people. Jesus lifted burdens, removed guilt, filled people’s hearts with joy and hope. He showed them that He fulfilled all the requirements of the Law which was given to them to show them God’s best way to live.  The law taught them how impossible self-effort really was, and mirrored in sacrifices and rituals what He had already accomplished before time began.

Those who heard His invitation gladly dropped what they were doing and grabbed their second chance to be the rabbi’s disciples. To them it was the highest honour anyone could bestow on them. It was an unexpected opportunity they could not miss. They were to follow so closely that they would be covered with the dust of their rabbi, symbolising His favour showered on them, one by one, as they walked behind Him and learned to imitate Him, living, like Him, in God’s “here and now.”

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – CHANGE YOUR AWARENESS

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CHANGE YOUR AWARENESS

At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, 13 and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” Mark 1:9-15

There is something of great significance in this story – three phases:

  1. Jesus spent the first thirty years of His life just being the Son; He lived in anonymity and obscurity in a Galilean village in northern Israel. He said and did nothing that was recorded except one incident recorded by Luke when He was twelve, giving us a clue to the bent of His life. At the end of those thirty years, on the eve of His public ministry, He received an audible verbal affirmation of His Father’s approval, and the visible descent of the third person of the Trinity upon Him. Both of these manifestations were assurances of God’s presence in a way a human being could understand.
  2. He was compelled into circumstances by the Holy Spirit that would test His humanity to the limit, both natural and supernatural. Trust in God is not established in ideal circumstances but in any circumstances. The awareness of God’s presence had to be cultivated in every possible human situation. There was no need for Jesus to withdraw to some ideal environment, or have everything in His life running smoothly to be aware of God. Feeling and awareness are not the same thing. Awareness has nothing to do with emotion. It has to do with conviction and response.
  3. Jesus’ announcement, “God is here,” was based on the absolute certainty of who God is, and on the experience and reassurance of God’s presence across the whole spectrum of human circumstances. He could pass on that good news to everyone around Him because He had experienced it for Himself. It was more than a doctrine. It was a conviction.

This awareness changes the whole flavour of our lives. We don’t have to change what we are doing. We need to be aware of in whose presence we are doing what we are doing; learning to do life in God. We need to cultivate that awareness as a process that will never come to an end. This one simple truth changes everything. “God is here!” Relax, rest, shalom. God is here!

MARK’S GOSPEL – GOD IS HERE!

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GOD IS HERE!

At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, 13 and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Jesus Calls His First Disciples Mark 1:12-1

How could Jesus be so sure of His message, “God is here?” He had seen it, felt it, heard it, tasted it, experienced it in the worst possible environment. He has been cushioned and cocooned in the Father’s presence for forty days; heat, cold, hunger, thirst, rocks, cliffs, scorpions, snakes, spiders, prowling wild beasts – any one of these could have taken Him out – and He had to trust, lean on, hold on to the Father until He was perfectly at peace in the midst of all this. He had to move from enduring to embracing and enjoying His wilderness experience because it meant total reliance on the Father.

This was Jesus’ first “Gethsemane” experience and it prepared Him to run the gauntlet of life out there in the jungle of humanity. He had to learn to recognise and rebuff every alien voice until only the Father’s voice was clearly recognisable. “Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered…” (Hebrews 5:8).

Jesus was not proclaiming a theory: He was declaring a personal, powerful, practical reality. “God is here!” He was offering to His people the renewal of the experience as a “here and now” God. For 400 years they thought He had left them. Jesus wasn’t saying, “God is back.” He was saying, “God is here.” He was rekindling the awareness in them that God was always there, with them; but they had lost that awareness.

How can I offer that same awareness to people out there? And more so, to God’s people who struggle in their own “wilderness” experiences? First – I have to know it for myself, not just an intellectual assent to what is written in the Word, but a knowing that comes from leaning and listening to the one who is closer than my breath, the one who envelops me, surrounds me, saturates me and undergirds me until I am more sure and more secure in Him that in my own environment. I need my own wilderness. 6