Monthly Archives: August 2020

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – THE PENNY WOULD DROP AT PENTECOST

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THE PENNY WOULD DROP AT PENTECOST

41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:41-45

The disciples were so typically human. They were indignant with James and John for asking for the highest position in the kingdom, probably not because they thought the brothers had a cheek or because they understood that they (the brothers) did not qualify for those positions, but because they were annoyed that James and John got in first. There was childishness about their response that gave away their spiritual immaturity in spite of the years of closely following their Rabbi.

Like a patient and loving parent, Jesus got them together and began to explain how things work in the kingdom. He drew their attention to the way leaders in the world system function. They lead from position and by coercion. In the worldly order of things, those at the top tell those under them what to do and punish them if they don’t do it. Power is the ability to control people for their own purposes.

Jesus assured His disciples that, in God’s scheme of things, the effective way to lead is exactly the opposite. Power implies the ability to control one’s own choices and leadership means going ahead to show the way to produce the inner motivation to follow. Greatness involves being willing to get one’s hands dirty for the sake of others, doing the most menial thing to make the lives of others better.

This must really have jarred the minds of the disciples because it did not gel with their understanding of the kingdom. Even after Jesus’ death and resurrection, when He was spending His last few moments with them on earth, they were still asking Him about restoring the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1: 6). They could not understand why He was about to leave them but He had not yet done anything about completing what they thought He had come to do.

How did Jesus feel when He returned to the Father with the disciples’ words still ringing in His ears, knowing that His very last words to them were an attempt to get them to understand what He wanted them to do? All He asked of them was that they lived “Jesus” where they went.

It would take the earth-shaking experience of Pentecost to rip their old ideas from their minds and set them on the path to understanding and applying the kingdom of God to their own lives and the lives of others. In this was Jesus’ ultimate confidence!

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – TRUE GREATNESS IS SERVING

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TRUE GREATNESS IS SERVING

41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:41-45

How tenderly and patiently the Master dealt with His foolish disciples! It must have been disheartening for Him to go over the same ground again and again but He never gave up on them. He couldn’t because He had invested so much in these twelve men and, they would soon be left to take over His mission. Each one of them was hand-picked, even Judas, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and He had to trust the Father for the final outcome.

Jesus used this opportunity to teach them one of the most fundamental and crucial lessons of the kingdom – servant-hood flowing from humility. His own life was the visual aid for them. Day by day, encounter by encounter, incident by incident, they watched the way of the kingdom unfold in the life of their Master. He was the embodiment of humble servant-hood.

The disciples needed to correct their understanding of true greatness. They were constantly vying for position. They all wanted to be at the top of the pecking order in Jesus’ government. For that they were quite happy to climb on each other’s heads. This was evidence that the “yetzer harah”, the attitude of self first, was still their inner motivation. Something radical and life-transforming had yet to take place inside of them. Ezekiel called it “taking out the stony heart and replacing it with a heart of flesh”. How would that happen? The Apostle Paul referred to it as “being made alive”.

This would be part of the great work of the Holy Spirit who would, firstly, raise Christ from the dead three days after His crucifixion. Then, one by one, He would raise people from their spiritual death in their trespasses and sins, to new life through faith in Him. Jesus trusted that the seed of the Word He was sowing in them now would spring to life as the Holy Spirit quickened that word in their hearts through their human experiences.

The way of suffering was the pathway of learning. It was for Jesus and it would be for each one of them. Sonship involved discipline; training in submission, and their response of obedience would teach them humility.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – THE PRICE OF POSITION

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THE PRICE OF POSITION

5 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
36 “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
37 They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
38 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
39 “We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, 40 but to sit at my right or left is n Mark 10:35-40

James and John were shrewd. Instead of being part of a squabble for the position of prime minister, they stood together and went straight to Jesus. Since arguing got them nowhere, they decided to secure their position by going right to the top. Reading their request leaves one with a feeling of outrage. They were bold and blatant and without any shame over their arrogance. They were not yet ECHAD!

Jesus seemed unfazed by their request but He was certainly aware of their naivety regarding their sense of top position. They thought it came by appointment. Jesus knew that it came through sacrifice, submission and suffering. He called it a “baptism”, and “drinking a cup”. These are concepts deeply rooted in the Old Testament. “Drinking the cup” was associated with God’s wrath over national and personal disobedience and sin. Baptism was a ritual washing to initiate a person into something.

For Jesus, baptism initiated Him into identity with the human race, including God’s judgment, and “drinking the cup” referred to His taking the wrath of God and the punishment for the sin of the whole world. According to Paul in Phil 2:6-11, Jesus would ultimately be accorded the place of highest honour because of His obedience to the Father from His place in heaven to death on a cross.

How could James and John be a part of that? How brash they were in boasting that they could drink of that cup and share in that baptism. What did they know, at that point, of the cost to Jesus? They refused to listen when He tried to tell them. Sadly, Jesus acknowledged that they would be part of that price in the future, not to secure God’s forgiveness but to spread the news to the ends of the earth. James would pay with his life before he even left Jerusalem. John would experience persecution and exile on a lonely island for the sake of the Master and His message.

Their request was evidence of their immature understanding but Jesus left it at that. He knew that life and experience under the tutorship of the Holy Spirit, would eventually lead them to understand the truth.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – DESTINATION JERUSALEM!

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DESTINATION JERUSALEM!

32 They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again, he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. 33 “We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, 34 who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” Mark 10:32-34

Once again, Jesus attempted to orientate His disciples to the idea that a cruel and violent death awaited Him in Jerusalem. He was still in Galilee but, although Mark does not mention it, the Passover was drawing near. It was time to head south for the most important annual festival of the year. The disciples had no problem with that. They joined Jesus in all His faithful observance of the Jewish festivals but what they could not grasp was that, this time, He was about to become the Passover Lamb.

No matter how many times He brought up the subject, it was as though they had selective hearing. Two things were fixed in their thinking; one, that Messiah was a king and that He would set up His kingdom in Israel; two, that He would drive out the Roman oppressors and re-establish the Davidic throne in Jerusalem. Dying did not fit into their scheme of things. It’s no wonder, then, that they imagined themselves to be cabinet ministers in this new Israeli government. The issue for them was, “Who would be Prime Minister?” In the very next paragraph, James and John try to secure the positions for themselves.

All of their reactions, their deafness to Jesus’ warnings about His coming death, their squabbles over positions, and their insensitivity to the spiritual nature of the kingdom, revealed that they were locked into a concept of the kingdom of God that ignored sin and the true nature of the two kingdoms at work in the world. They watched Jesus at work and admired His power over nature and over the demonic realm but they did not connect Him with a dimension of which they were to be a part, a kingdom which would transcend geographical boundaries and reconnect them with the Father who rules over all the kingdoms of men.

This kingdom is governed by a constitution based on the nature of God and expressed in obedience to only one law – the law of love. It is God-centred and self-forgetful and allows no place for any kind of imperfection. It is open to all who give Jesus the right to rule over their hearts.

It would take the memory of a limp and very-dead Jesus hanging on a Roman execution stake, the mind-blowing experience of a very-alive Jesus standing among them, eating fish and showing them His wounds, and the powerful intervention of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost to write the truth of all that the prophets had spoken on their hearts. Only the reality of God’s kingdom once again breaking into their world would finally to set them on the path to understanding its true power and glory and give them a place in it.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – GIVING UP IS GAIN

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GIVING UP IS GAIN

28 Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” Mark 10:28-31

Tucked away in this exchange with His disciples is another fragment of the love of God. Even though earth is not our permanent experience, God does not ignore, nor is He unfeeling about the sacrifices He calls us to make for His sake. If it is our determined purpose to be a disciple and to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, we will forgo earthly benefits. There is a different focus; our energies will be bent towards a different purpose. Selfless giving will replace selfish acquisitiveness. Time and energy will be spent on serving others rather than on self-absorption.

Jesus assured His disciples that these sacrifices do not go unnoticed. However, not only does the Father reward His children in this life, but He also builds that reward into an environment of kingdom living. The family we acquire and the material benefits we experience come in the context of God’s forever family which cannot be separated by distance or by death because they function in another dimension, the eternal kingdom of which we are already a part.

Jesus’ words were intended to shift the disciples’ focus from looking back to what they had given up to looking around at what they had gained already and looking forward to what they were yet to gain as fellow-heirs with Jesus. These were all things they had yet to learn, but their first step of response to Jesus put them on a journey with Him that was full of delightful surprises.

The Apostle Paul, under the Spirit’s inspiration, had insights into the promise of this journey. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Although the greatest reward comes at the end of the journey, Jesus assured His disciples that the journey itself would not be pure drudgery. They would enjoy the benefits of God’s provision and the satisfaction of family relationships within the kingdom. Best of all, they would experience the intimate love of the Father who would cushion their every trial with His presence and grace to prepare for an abundant entrance into His eternal kingdom.