1:1 The Greek
text in Mark often has a rhythm and rhyme to it created by similar sounding
words- because the early church aimed for new converts to memorize Mark’s
Gospel. Just one example from Mk. 1:1:
Ar-khay tou you-ang-ge -lee-ou Yay-sou Khrees-tou whee-ou the -ou.
The 'ou'
endings are somehow rhythmical. Especially do we see this rhythmical quality in
the phrase used for "Jesus Christ the Son of God" in Mk. 1:1: "Ieso-u Christo-u huio-u Theo-u".
Mark’s Gospel opens with Jesus going around preaching, appealing for
people to repent and believe the Gospel (and this is described as “the
beginning of the Gospel”). Mark concludes with us being asked to do the same, thereby
directly continuing the work of the Lord, because we are in Him.
1:2 “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee” is how Mk. 1:2 quotes Mal. 3:1; but “before thy face” is added, as if to create a reference to the Angel sent before Israel in the wilderness, to find a resting place (Ex. 23:20). The parallel is set up between John and the Angel, and therefore between Jesus and the people of Israel. The Lord Jesus is His people. He personally is the vine, the one body- symbols of the whole community. He isn’t the trunk, and we the branches. We are the branches, and He is the whole vine. We are Him to this world. Thus Eph. 3:20,21 and many other passages parallel Christ and the ecclesia. “The servant” of Isaiah’s prophecies is therefore both Israel and the Lord Jesus. The fact He was and is the representative of God’s people means that those in Him must act and witness as Him.
In response to Israel's attitude of "Where is the God of judgment?", and a genuine failure to realize their sinfulness ("wherein have we...?"), God prophesied He would send His messenger and then His Christ; His Son was by His coming alone the manifestation of "the God of judgment", the supreme judge of men by His very being (Mal. 2:17; 3:1). In His coming, God "visited His people" (Lk. 7:16); but the OT image of Yahweh visiting His people was one of visiting in judgment (Ez. 32:34; Jer. 23:2; Hos. 2:13; 9:9). By His very being amongst men He would convict them of their sinfulness. His light would show up the shadows of their sins. Mark begins his Gospel by quoting this Malachi passage, as if to say that the appearance of Jesus was the coming of judgment for men (Mk. 1:2). This judgment-coming of Jesus at His revelation to Israel 2000 years ago is then described as God coming near to men in judgment (Mal. 3:5). This is why a consideration of the Lord Jesus in bread and wine inevitably and naturally leads to self-examination; for He is, by His very being, our immediate and insistent judge.
1:3- see on Mt. 11:14.
That one purpose of our calling to the Gospel is to assist others is brought out by the way John the Baptist prepared a highway in the desert through baptizing repentant people (Mk. 1:3,4). This highway was to be a path to Christ as well as the one He would travel. And it's worth reflecting that Christ can only come once the way for Him is prepared- as if His coming depends upon a certain level of response to our preaching, especially to the Jews of the very last days.
1:4 John the Baptist's audience
responded to his preaching by being baptized "with the baptism of
repentance" (Mk. 1:4); and yet the Lord Jesus built on this by appealing
to people to repent because the Kingdom was at hand (Mk. 1:15; Mt. 3:2). Their
repentance was therefore only surface level. The Lord cursed the fig tree (cp.
Israel) because they had only leaves, an appearance of repentance and spiritual
fruit, but actually there was not even the first sign of real fruit on that
tree when it was really analyzed. Earlier, Israel had appeared to have fruit,
when actually, they didn't have any at all (Hos. 10:1). The man in the parable
built his spiritual house, but in fact he didn't get down to the real
nitty-gritty of obedience to the Lord's words; and so it miserably,
pathetically fell at judgment day. The seriousness of sin becomes de-emphasized
in our lives, until repentance comes to mean a vague twinge of guilt. This,
again, was the problem of Old Testament Israel. "They return, but not to
the Most High" (Hos. 7:16); they had the sensation of regret, of
turning back- but it wasn't real repentance. A few verses earlier God had
commented: “They do not return to the Lord their God” (7:10); but they
on a surface level did return to Him. Hosea continues his theme:
“Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto
himself” (Hos. 10:1). Did they or did they not bring forth fruit? They did- but
only in their own eyes. They felt they had repented, and brought forth
spiritual fruit. But not in God’s estimation. And we
too can have the sensation of spirituality and even spiritual growth, but only
in our own eyes. “Though they called them to the Most High, none at all would
exalt him” (Hos. 11:7) in the way which true repentance requires. "Judah
hath not turned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly"
(Jer. 3:10). They did turn back to Yahweh- but not in their heart. Israel
rejoiced in the light of John’s teaching- and he
taught real, on-your-knees repentance. They thought they’d repented. But the
Lord describes John as mourning, and them not mourning in sympathy and response
(Lk. 7:32). They rejoiced in the idea of repentance, but never really got down
to it.
1:6 John is presented as a
cameo of all the faithful (Heb. 11:37 = Mk. 1:6 and 1 Cor. 15:47 = Jn.
3:31).
1:13- see on 1 Cor. 15:45.
The ‘devil’ of the Lord’s own thoughts tempted Him to apply Ps. 91:11 in a
wrong context, and jump off the pinnacle of the temple. But if the Lord had
gone on, as surely He did, He would have found the words: “Thou shalt tread
upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under
feet” (Ps. 91:13). This promise would have been of wonderful comfort, as
throughout the wilderness temptations the Lord “was with the wild beasts” (Mk.
1:13).
1:15 The
good news of potential deliverance from Babylon is quoted as the good
news of salvation from sin (Is. 52:7-10 = Mk. 1:15; Mt. 10:7,8;
Rom. 10:15; Eph. 6:15; Is. 61:1,2 = Lk. 4:16-21).
“Repent
ye and believe the Gospel" might seem to be in
the wrong order- for surely belief of the Gospel comes before repentance. And
so it does. But the point is, life after conversion is
a life of believing the basic Gospel which led us to conversion and repentance
in the first place. Thus Rom. 6 teaches that we were once servants of sin...
and we expect the sentence to conclude: 'But now you are servants of
righteousness'. But it doesn't. We were once servants of sin but now we have
obeyed the form of doctrine delivered to us... and are therefore servants of
righteousness.
1:17 - see on Lk. 9:59.
It was whilst Simon and Andrew were in the very act of
casting their net into the sea, snap shotted in a
freeze-frame of still life, silhouetted against the sea and hills of Galilee,
that the Lord calls them to go preaching (Mk. 1:17). The Lord surely intended
them to [at least later] figure out His allusion to Jer. 16:14-16, which
prophesied that fishermen would be sent out to catch Israel and bring them home to the Father. And He called them to do that,
right in the very midst of everyday life.
1:18- see
on Mk. 10:28.
1:33 It was the mentally sick who were the main group to 'know him to be the Christ' (Mk. 1:33 RVmg.). And it was a woman, and one with a history of mental illness, who was chosen as the first and leading witness of His resurrection. And women had no legal power as witnesses.
1:34 The Lord had to command those who knew Him not to speak out that knowledge (Mk. 1:34 cp. 44)- because people knew Him, they quite naturally wanted to preach it. One cannot truly know the Lord and not tell others of Him. This is the power of true knowledge, believed as it should be believed.
1:35 The Lord Himself was noted for rising up early and praying (Mk. 1:35). Is. 50:4 prophesies of the Lord Jesus that morning by morning, God awoke His ear "to learn as a disciple". That last phrase is surely to signal the intended similarities between the Lord's path of growth, and that of all disciples. The next two verses go on to predict that because of this morning-by-morning teaching process, "I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting" (Is. 50:5,6). Thus we come to the cross, the life of cross carrying, as the end result of our morning reflections. It was from His own experience that the Lord could bid us take up our cross- His cross- each morning.
The Lord's attitude to prayer was radical in itself. The observant Jew prayed three times / day, the first and last prayers being merely the recital of the shema. Yet Jesus spent hours in those morning and evening prayers (Mk. 1:35; 6:46). Perhaps He was motivated in His prayers by the lengthy implications of the fact that Yahweh is indeed one, and this demands so much of us.
1:40 Faith is inculcated by an appreciation of the
height of Christ’s exaltation. He now has all power in Heaven and in earth, and
this in itself should inspire us with faith in prayer and hope in His coming
salvation. On the basis of passages like Ex. 4:7; Num. 12:10-15; 2 Kings 5:7,8,
“leprosy was regarded as a “stroke" only to be removed by the Divine hand
which had imposed it" (L.G. Sargent,The Gospel Of The Son Of God,
p. 28). The leper of Mk. 1:40 lived with this understanding, and yet he saw in
Jesus nothing less than God manifest. Inspired by the height of the position
which he gave Jesus in his heart, he could ask him in faith for a cure: “If
thou wilt, thou canst
[as only God was understood to be able to] make me clean".
1:41 It has been observed that oral performance of texts like e.g. the Gospel of Mark was designed towards producing an emotional impact upon the hearers. We who read the same text and seek [quite rightly] to understand from it doctrine and practical commands for living somehow miss much of this; we inevitably subject the text to intellectual analysis, whereas the first century audience would have felt from their performance an appeal to convert, to accept, to feel something in response towards the Man Jesus who was presented there. Perhaps this is why a reading of the Gospels produces less response in us than that from a first century group hearing the same Gospels read / performed to them. Thus a first century reciter / listener would have paid special attention to the way Mark indicates the emotional state of Jesus as He said His words- angry (Mk. 3:5), compassionate (Mk. 1:41), snorting like a horse (Mk. 1:43 Gk.), troubled and distressed (Mk. 14:33). Likewise Mark's constant use of the term "immediately..." in his early chapters would've created a sense of urgency, fast flowing narrative, perhaps matched by the reciter speaking quickly.
1:43- see on Mk. 1:41.
2:1- see on Mk. 6:2.
2:3-12- see
on Mk. 7:32-35.
2:5 Prayer really does change things. God is willing to do things in the life of a third party (even forgive them) for the sake of the prayers and efforts of others. Thus when the Lord saw the faith of the friends, He forgave and cured the paralytic (Mk. 2:5). “When Jesus saw the faith of the friends , He said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee” (Mk. 2:5). That man was healed for the sake of the faith of others. The widow woman’s son was resurrected because God heard Elijah’s faithful prayer (1 Kings 17:22).
2:8 Perhaps we're helped to understand the ability of the
mind / spirit of the Lord Jesus to connect with that of human beings by Mk.
2:8: "Now immediately, when Jesus realized in his spirit that they were
contemplating such thoughts, he said to them, "Why are you thinking such
things in your hearts?" (NET Bible). The spirit / mind of Jesus was at one with the spirit / mind of those men. Such was His
sensitivity. I don't think it was a gift of Holy Spirit knowledge so much as
His sensitvity to the minds of men... and yet Rom.
8:16 calls Jesus "The Spirit" as a title, saying that He bears
witness with our spirit / mind, in His intercession to the Father. So Mk 2:8
gives us as it were an insight into how He now
operates too... He's the same today as yesterday. He's at one with our mind /
spirit, and also with the mind / Spirit of the Father. Thus is He such a
matchless mediator.
2:10 He cured the man sick of a palsy that the onlooking, cynical Scribes might know that He had power to forgive sins (Mk. 2:10). He didn’t only reward the faith of the man’s friends; His motive for the miracle was to seek to teach those Scribes. Our tendency surely would have been to ignore them, to be angry that in the face of grace they could be so legalistic and petty and so far, far from God... and get on and heal the sick man who believed. But the Lord’s picture of human salvation was far wider and more inclusive and more hopeful than that.
He understood Himself as rightful judge of humanity exactly because He was "son of man" (Jn. 5:27)- because every time we sin, He as a man would've chosen differently, He is therefore able to be our judge. And likewise, exactly because He was a "son of man", "the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mk. 2:10). If it is indeed true that "'Son of Man' represents the highest conceivable declaration of exaltation in Judaism", then we can understand the play on words the Lord was making- for the term 'son of man' can also without doubt just mean 'humanity generally'. Exactly because He was human, and yet perfect, He was so exalted.
2:14 He valued persons for who they were, and this had radical results in practice. And yet He spoke with "authority" in the eyes of the people. What gave Him this? Surely it was His lifestyle, who He was, the way there was no gap between His words and who He was. The word of the Gospel, the message, was made flesh in Him. There was a perfect congruence between His theory and His practice. The repeated amazement which people expressed at the Lord's teaching may not only refer to the actual content of His material; but more at the way in which He expressed it, the unique way in which word was made flesh in Him. The way the Lord could ask men to follow Him, and they arose and followed (Mk. 2:14), is surely testimony to the absolute, direct and unaccountable authority of Jesus. It was surely His very ordinariness which made Him so compelling.
2:17 The way the Lord Jesus 'knew' things because of His extreme sensitivity, rather than necessarily by some flash of Holy Spirit insight, isn't unparalleled amongst other men. Elisha knew what Gehazi had done when Gehazi went back to ask Naaman for a reward- Elisha commented: "Went not my heart with you, when the man turned again from his chariot to meet you?" (2 Kings 5:26). Elisha imagined Naaman dismounting from his chariot, etc. And he could guess that the request had involved "money... garments" etc. That the Lord's knowledge wasn't necessarily automatic is reflected in the way we read things like "When he saw their faith... when Jesus heard it..." (Mk. 2:5,17). He 'saw' and knew things by the sensitivity of His perception.
2:19 Time and again, the Lord uses language about the restoration from exile and applies it to Himself. Thus fasting was common amongst Palestinian Jews of His time, and it was involved with mourning the destruction of the temple and Judah's submission to Rome. And yet the Lord pronounced that the days of fasting were over, and His people were to be feasting because of His work (Mk. 2:19). But He brought no freedom from Rome, and spoke of the principles of the Messianic Kingdom as being non-resistance to evil rather than military resistance to it. He spoke of Yahweh as 'visiting' His people- but not to save them as they expected, but rather to judge them, with Messiah on His behalf at the head of the Roman armies who would come to destroy Jerusalem and the temple. And thus Jesus deeply disappointed people who didn't want to change their self-centred, nationalistic outlook- those who didn't want to see things spiritually rather than naturally, those who refused to accept the extent of Israel's sin.
2:20- see on Jn. 14:2.
2:23 The
Pharisees had reasoned themselves into a position whereby plucking heads of
corn whilst walking through a corn field on the Sabbath was regarded as
reaping. When the Lord was questioned about this issue, He didn’t reply as most
of us would have done: to attack the ridiculous definition of ‘work on the
Sabbath’. He seeks to teach by general principle that the extent of His Lordship
meant that He and His men were free to do as they pleased on this kind of
matter.
2:23-28 The
Lord’s men were accused of ‘threshing’ on the Sabbath because they rubbed corn
in their hands (Mk. 2:23-28). The Lord could have answered ‘No, this is a non-Biblical
definition of working on the Sabbath’. But He didn’t. Instead He reasoned that
‘OK, let’s assume you’re right, but David and his men broke the law because they were
about God’s business, this over-rode the need for technical obedience’. The
Lord Jesus wasn’t constantly correcting specific errors of interpretation. He
dealt in principles much larger than this, in order to make a more essential,
practical, useful point.
2:25 We need to reflect upon the implications of the fact that the vast majority of the early Christians were illiterate. Literacy levels in first century Palestine were only 10% at the highest estimate. Some estimate that the literacy level in the Roman empire was a maximum of 10%, and literacy levels in Palestine were at most 3%. Most of the literate people in Palestine would have been either the wealthy or the Jewish scribes. And yet it was to the poor that the Gospel was preached, and even in Corinth there were not many educated or “mighty” in this world within the ecclesia. Notice how the Lord said to the Pharisees: “Have you not read?” (Mk. 2:25; Mt. 12:5; 19:4), whilst He says to those who responded to Him: “You have heard” (Mt. 5:21,27,33). His followers were largely the illiterate. As the ecclesial world developed, Paul wrote inspired letters to the ecclesias. Those letters would have been read to the brethren and sisters. Hence the great importance of ‘teachers’ in the early churches, those who could faithfully read and transmit to others what had been written.
2:26 The opposite of love isn’t so much hatred, as indifference. To be indifferent to the real welfare of our fellows in this world, and of all our own brethren, is perhaps our most common sin. The Lord taught us that we should have a sense of urgency in our response to others. The Lord showed by His example that it is better to meet the hunger of human need than to keep the letter of Sabbath law (Mk. 2:25,26). His urgency, God’s urgency, our consequent urgency… all means that when even Divine principles appear to come into conflict, we are to be influenced above all by the urgency of others’ need.
2:27 God's law was made for man, rather than man being built in such a way as to easily fit in with God's word (Mk. 2:27).
2:32 Note how it was the Egyptian people who were judged (Gen. 15:14); their idols (“gods”) are used by metonymy to stand for those who believed in them. Likewise “demons” is sometimes put by metonymy for those who believed in them (e.g. Mk. 2:32,34).
3:4 When the Lord taught that it was right to break the Sabbath because they were in the business of saving life (Mk. 3:4), His words were purposefully alluding to how the Maccabees had pronounced that it was acceptable for Jewish soldiers to break the Sabbath in time of war, in order to save lives through their fighting (1 Macc. 2:32). He intended His people to live as active soldiers on duty, at war in order to save the lives of God’s people. Indeed, so frequently, the whole language of the future judgment is applied to us right here and now. We are living out our judgment now; we are standing as it were before the final judgment seat, and receiving our judgment for how we act, speak and feel and are.
He said that if Had omitted to heal the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath, this would have been 'doing evil' and even 'killing' (Mk. 3:4). That's how seriously He took omitting to do good when it's in our power to do it. See on Mk. 7:11.
The Lord said that He had a choice of saving life or destroying life, were He to prefer to keep the Sabbath laws above the need for preserving life. Clearly He saw failing to act to save life as tantamount to destroying life. We must give our Lord's words their due weight here in our decision making. To not act to save life, to excuse ourselves for whatever reason, is effectively destroying life, or, as Mark's record puts it, “to kill" (Mk. 3:4; Lk. 6:9). We can't therefore be passive in this matter. The context of the Lord's statement was in response to questions about whether something was "lawful" or not; it was the age old question, 'Is it is a sin to do X, Y or Z?'. His answer was as ever in terms of a principle- that our guiding principle must be the saving and healing and preservation of human life. The attitude of the Pharisees was that the Lord was infringing a letter of the law and therefore was guilty of death. They murdered Him on the sabbath days; and thus they chose to destroy life rather than save it. The word for “to kill" in Mk. 3:4 is so often used in the Gospels about the killing of Jesus. They failed to take His exhortation. The crucifixion of God's Son was thus a result of legalism; it was because of His attitude to the man with the withered hand that the Pharisees first plotted to kill Jesus (Lk. 6:11). Whatever our individual conscience, let us not "be filled with madness" as the Pharisees were at the fact the Lord approached human behaviour in terms of principles, rather than reducing everything to a common right / wrong scenario. The principle is clearly the saving and preservation and enriching of others' lives. Surely we should each allow each other to articulate this fundamental issue as we each have occasion to do so.
3:5- see on Mk. 1:41.
The way the Lord didn’t just ignore the Jewish leaders, as
we might ignore trouble makers at a public meeting or correspondence course
students who ask endless questions... this is really quite something. He
grieved for the hardness of their hearts (Mk. 3:5), and finally broke down and
wept over Jerusalem, in an agony of soul that they would not respond. The
apparently foolish catch questions of Mk. 3:21-29 are answered in some depth by
the Lord, and He concludes with pointing out that they are putting themselves “in danger of eternal
damnation” (although, notice, not yet condemned). One senses the urgency with
which He put it to them. He was angry [i.e. frustrated?], “being grieved for
the blindness of their hearts” (Mk. 3:5). Are we just indifferent or evenly
smugly happy that men are so blind…? Or do we grieve about it to the point of
angry frustration? Remember how Moses and Paul would fain have given their
eternal life for the conversion of Israel, this is how
they felt for them.
3:13 In the
same way as Moses was called up into the mount to receive his Divine
commission, so the Lord Jesus called up to the mount His disciples- implying
that they, who represent all of us, were now a new Moses (Mk. 3:13). Moses was
thus an example that challenged those from a Jewish background especially.
3:14 It is simply so, that when we witness, the words we speak are in effect the words of Jesus. Our words are His. This is how close we are to Him. And this is why our deportment and manner of life, which is the essential witness, must be in Him. For He is articulated to the world through us. And it explains the paradox of Mk. 3:14, whereby Jesus chose men that they should “be with him and that he might send them forth to preach”. As they went out to witness, they were with Him, just as He is with us in our witness, to the end of the world [both geographically and in time]. And this solves another Marcan paradox, in Mk. 4:10: “When he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked him…”. Was He alone, or not? Mark speaks as if when the Lord was away from the crowd and with His true followers, He was “alone”- for He counted them as one body with Him. This was why the Lord told Mary, when she so desperately wanted to be personally with Him, to go and preach to His brethren (Jn. 20:18), just as He had told some of those whom He had healed- for going and preaching Him was in effect being with Him.
3:17 James and John were to be the “sons of thunder"
(Mk. 3:17), another Rabbinic phrase, used of the young trainee Rabbis who stood
at the left and right of the Master of the Synagogue during the Sabbath
services (hence the later appeal for confirmation as to whether they would really stand at the
Master’s right and left in His Kingdom). These uneducated men were to take the
place of the learned Scribes whom they had always respected and lived in fear
of... truly they were being pushed against the grain. See on Mt. 16:19.
3:21 As
Paul wrote to his unspiritual Corinthian brethren, he was doubtless hurt at the
thought of their opposition to him; yet his mind flew to the similarities
between himself and his Lord being rejected by his brethren (Mk. 3:21 = 2 Cor. 5:13).
When she stands outside the house asking to speak with Jesus, Mary is identified with her other children who considered Jesus crazy. Jesus says that His mothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. This must have so cut her. There is a rather unpleasant connection between Mk. 3:32 “they stood without” and Mark 4:11 " unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables”. And further, Lk. 13:25 speaks of how the rejected shall stand without [same words] knocking and asking to speak with the Lord. Mk. 3:20 RVmg. says that Jesus came home- i.e. to the family home in Nazareth, and it turned out that the interested visitors took the house over, with His relatives, mother, brothers, sisters etc. left outside (Mk. 3:21 RVmg.). No wonder the point was made that He now had a new family; and His natural family, Mary amongst them, resented it.
The incident of Mary and her other children coming to Jesus is inserted by Mark in the context of his record that the Scribes concluded that He had “an unclean spirit”. In that same context, we read that Mary and His brothers concluded that He was “beside himself” (Mk. 3:21,22). The language of demon / unclean spirit possession is used in the Gospels to describe mental rather than physical illness. The Scribes thought that Jesus was demon possessed; His family and mother thought He was mentally ill. The two thoughts are parallel, as if to imply that His family had been influenced by the prevailing opinion of the elders about Him. The Lord responded to the Scribes by warning them that they ran the risk of blaspheming the Holy Spirit by saying this of Him. And it would appear that His own mother may have been running the same risk. This is such a tragic difference from the young, spiritually minded woman who was so convinced that her Son was indeed Messiah and the uniquely begotten Son of God. And it happened simply because she was influenced by what others thought of Jesus, rather than what she had learnt from the word and experienced herself. It’s a powerful warning to us.
3:21 In Mk. 3:21,31-35 we read of how “his own” family thought He was crazy and came to talk to Him. Then we read that it was His mother and brothers who demanded an audience with Him, perhaps linking Mary with her other children. Their cynicism of Jesus, their lack of perception of Him, came to influence her- for He effectively rebuffs her special claims upon Him by saying that His mother and brethren are all who hear God’s word. The parallel Mt. 12:46-50 five times repeats the phrase “his mother and his brethren”, as if to link her with them. Clearly the brothers, who didn’t believe in Jesus (Jn. 7:5) influenced her. When He speaks of how His real family are those who hear the word of God and do it, the Lord is alluding to Dt. 33:9, where we have the commendation of Levi for refusing to recognize his apostate brethren at the time of the golden calf: “Who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren… for they [Levi] have observed thy word, and kept thy covenant”. The last sentence is the essence of the Lord’s saying that His true family are those who keep God’s word and do it. The strong implication of the allusion is that the Lord felt that His mother and brethren had committed some kind of apostasy.
3:23 When accused of being
in league with ‘satan’, the Lord didn’t read them a charge of blasphemy. He
reasoned instead that a thief cannot bind a strong man; and likewise He
couldn’t bind ‘satan’ unless He were stronger than Satan (Mk. 3:23-27). He
doesn’t take the tack that ‘Satan / Beelzebub / demons’ don’t exist; He showed
instead that He was evidently stronger than any such being or force, to the
point that belief in such a concept was meaningless. Faith must rather be in
Him alone.
3:24 The Lord Jesus framed His parable about Satan's kingdom rising up and being divided against itself (Mk. 3:23-26) in the very language of the Kingdom of Israel being "divided" against itself by Jeroboam's 'rising up' (1 Kings 12:21; 2 Chron. 13:6)- as if Israel's Kingdom was Satan's kingdom.
3:26 . The Jews accused
the Lord of being in league with the prince of the demons, Beelzebub. His
comment was that if the family / house of Satan was so divided, then Satan “has
an end” (Mk. 3:26). His approach was ‘OK you believe in demons, Beelzebub etc.
Well if that’s the case, then according to the extension of your logic, Satan
will soon come to an end, will cease existence. That’s the bottom line. As it
happens, I am indeed ‘binding the strong man’, rendering Satan powerless,
making him ‘have an end’, and so whichever way you look at it, believing in
demons or not, the bottom line is that My miracles demonstrate that effectively
Satan is powerless and not an item now’. The way the New Testament is written
reflects the same approach. When the Lord was alone with His disciples, He
explained further: “If they have called the Master of the House [i.e. Jesus]
‘Beelzebub’, how much more shall they call them of his household?” [i.e. the disciples] (Mt. 10:25). By saying this, the Lord
was clarifying that of course He didn’t really
mean that He was part of the Satan family, working against Satan to
destroy the entire family. Rather was He and His
family quite separate from the Satan family. But He didn’t make that clarification
to the Jewish crowds – He simply used their idea and reasoned with them on
their own terms. Note in passing how the Jews actually thought Jesus was
Beelzebub, or Satan. This would be one explanation for their mad passion to
kill Him; for those labelled ‘Satan’ were hunted to their death in such
societies, as seen later in the witch hunts of the middle ages. The Jews say
Jesus as a false miracle worker, a false Messiah, a bogus Son of God – all
characteristics of their view of ‘Satan’. Some centuries later, the Jewish sage
Maimonides described Jesus in terms of the antichrist: “Daniel had already
alluded to him when he presaged the downfall of a wicked one and a heretic
among the Jews who would endeavour to destroy the Law, claim prophecy for
himself, make pretences to miracles, and allege that he is the Messiah” (Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen).
It’s been suggested that the way the Jewish rabbinical writings call Him Yeshu is an acronym for
the Hebrew expression ימח שמו וזכרו
(yemach shemo vezichro – “May his name and memory be
obliterated”). This was the very Jewish definition of Satan. They saw Jesus as
Satan himself; hence they were so insistent on slaying Him. Yet by the deft
twist of Divine providence, it was through the death of Jesus that the real Devil (i.e. the power
of sin) was in fact slain (Heb. 2:14). To those with perceptive enough minds to
see it, yet once again the Jewish ideas had been turned back upon them to
reveal the real nature of the Devil to them, within their own frames of reference
and terminology. Likewise Beelzebub means literally ‘the lord of the house’;
and the Lord Jesus alludes to this in describing Himself as the Master of the
House of God.
3:27 When accused of being in league with ‘satan’, the Lord didn’t read them a charge of blasphemy. He reasoned instead that a thief cannot bind a strong man; and likewise He couldn’t bind ‘satan’ unless He were stronger than satan (Mk. 3:23-27). He doesn’t take the tack that ‘satan / Beelzebub / demons’ don’t exist; He showed instead that He was evidently stronger than any such being or force, to the point that belief in such a concept was meaningless. Faith must rather be in Him alone.
Judaism
had taken over the surrounding pagan notion of a personal ‘Satan’. And the Lord
Jesus and the Gospel writers use this term, but in the way they use it, they
redefine it. The parable of the Lord Jesus binding the “strong man” – the Devil
– was really to show that the “Devil” as they understood it was now no more,
and his supposed Kingdom now taken over by that of Christ. The last Gospel,
John, doesn’t use the term in the way the earlier Gospels do. He defines what
the earlier writers called “the Devil” as actual people, such as the Jews or
the brothers of Jesus, in their articulation of an adversarial [‘satanic’]
position to Jesus.
3:28 His simple claim that God can forgive men all sins was radical (Mk. 3:28)- for the Rabbis had a whole list of unforgivable sins, like murder, apostasy, contempt for the Law, etc. But the Lord went further. His many words of judgment weren’t directed to the murderers and whores and Sabbath breakers; they were instead directed against those who condemned those people, considering themselves righteous. He calls those who appeared so righteous a ‘generation of vipers’. The publican, not the Pharisee, finds God’s acceptance, according to Jesus. And again, the Lord is making a telling point- because Rabbis held that repentance for publicans was almost impossible, because it was impossible for them to know exactly all the people they’d cheated. Very clearly, the Lord’s message was radical. He was out to form a holy people from whores and gamblers, no-good boys and conmen. And moreover, He was out to show that what God especially judges and hates are the things that humanity doesn’t think twice about: hypocrisy, self-righteousness, judgmentalism, exclusion of others… See on Mt. 10:29.
3:29 Whenever we sin, we are judged by the court of Heaven as deserving condemnation. Yet now is our day of opportunity; the verdict really is given, but we can mercifully change it. Consider the implications of Mk. 3:29: "he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness but is in danger of eternal damnation". Not being ever forgiven is paralleled with having eternal damnation. The implication is that when we sin and are unforgiven, we are condemned. But in this life we can be forgiven, and therefore become uncondemned. Abimelech was "but a dead man" for taking Sarah (Gen. 20:3), as if although he was alive, for that sin he was in God's eyes condemned and dead. But that verdict for that case was changed by his change of the situation. See on Rev. 3:17.
3:32- see
on Mk. 3:21.
Note how in Mk. 3:32 we read that “thy mother and brethren seek for thee”, and in Mk. 1:37 the same word occurred: “all men seek for thee"; and also in Lk. 2:45, of how Mary sought for Jesus. The similarity is such that the intention may be to show us how Mary had been influenced by the world's perception of Him. And we too can be influenced by the world’s light hearted view of the Lord of glory. It’s so easy to allow their patterns of language use to lead us into blaspheming, taking His Name in vain, seeing His religion as just a hobby, a social activity… In passing, it was not that the Lord was insensitive or discounted her. It is in Mt. 12:46 that Mary wanted to speak with Him, and presumably she did- but then He goes to His home town, back to where she had come from (Mt. 13:54), as if He did in fact pay her attention. See on Mk. 6:3.
4:1
We read that Jesus “entered in to a
ship, and sat in the sea” (Mk. 4:1). Of course He didn’t literally sit in the
sea. But this is how it would have appeared to a spectator sitting on the
grassy hillside, hearing Jesus’ voice clearly from a great distance because of
the natural amphitheatre provided by the topography. In this case, the Spirit adopts
this perspective in order to invite us to take our place on that same hillside,
as it were, beholding the Lord Jesus in the middle distance, looking as if He
were sitting in the sea. Perhaps the record is implying that listeners were so
transfixed by the words and person of Jesus that they stopped seeing the boat
and only saw Jesus, giving the picture of a magnetic man with gripping words
sitting in the sea teaching a spellbound audience. There’s another example of
this kind of thing in Jud. 4:5: “The mountains melted [‘flowed’, AV mg.]” – to
a distant onlooker, the water flowing down the mountains gave the impression
that they themselves were melting; not, of course, that they actually were.
Think about how Mark speaks of Jesus "sitting
in the sea" teaching the people on the shore (Mk. 4:1). All else was
irrelevant- even the boat He was in. The focus is so zoomed in on the person of
Jesus. And Paul in his more 'academic' approach sees
Jesus as the very core of the whole cosmos, the reason for everything in
the whole of existence.
4:4 “The
kingdom of God” was then understood to have been the nation of Israel, and many
parables of the Kingdom focus upon them (e.g. the leaven of Mt. 13:33 is “the
leaven of the Pharisees” of Lk. 12:1; those who would not understand the word
in Mk. 4:4 are those of Judges 2:17).
4:5 When you perceive an opportunity to do the Lord's service, respond immediately. See
it as another opportunity for "redeeming the time". This is a major
Biblical theme. Israel were not to delay in offering their firstfruits to God
(Ex. 22:29), lest their intentions weren't translated into practice. The
disciples immediately
left the ship, simply put their nets down and followed (Mt. 4:20,22); Matthew left his opened books and queue of clients in
the tax office and walked out never to return (Lk. 5:17,18 implies). There is a
marked theme in the NT of men and women hearing the Gospel and immediately responding
by accepting baptism. In this spirit Cornelius immediately sent for Peter (Acts
10:33), and the Philippian jailer was immediately
baptized, even though there were many other things to think about that night
(Acts 16:33). Joseph was twice told in dreams to “arise” and take the child
Jesus to another country. Both times he “arose” in the morning and just
did it, leaving all he had, responding immediately (Mt. 2:13,14,20,21).
Paul and Luke immediately went to preach in Macedonia after seeing the inviting
vision (Acts 16:10); Paul "straightway" preached Christ after
receiving his vision of preaching commission (Acts 9:20). Indeed, the records
of the Lord's ministry are shot through (in Mark especially) with words like
"immediately", "straightway", "forthwith",
"as soon as...". He was a man of immediate
response, Yahweh's servant par
excellence. He dismissed the man who would fain follow Him after he
had buried his father, i.e. who wanted to wait some years until his father’s
death and then set out in earnest on the Christian life. The Lord’s point was
that we must immediately respond to the call to live and preach Him, with none
of the delay and hesitancy to total commitment which masquerades as careful
planning. Note how the Lord told another parable in which He characterized
those not worthy of Him as those who thought they had valid reason to delay
their response to the call (Lk. 14:16-20). They didn't turn Him down, they just thought He would understand if they delayed.
But He is a demanding Lord, in some ways. What He seeks is an immediacy of
response. If we have this in the daily calls to service in this life, we will
likewise respond immediately to the knowledge that 'He's back' (Lk. 12:36, cp.
the wise virgins going immediately, whilst the others delayed). And whether we
respond immediately or not will be the litmus test as to whether our life's
spirituality was worth anything or not. All this is not to say that we should
rush off in hot-headed enthusiasm, crushing the work and systematic efforts of
other brethren and committees under foot. But when we see the need, when we
catch the vision of service, let's not hesitate in our response, dilly dallying
until we are left with simply a host of good intentions swimming around in our
brain cells. Instead, let's appreciate that one aspect of the seed in good soil
was that there was an immediacy
of response to the word, a joyful and speedy 'springing up' in
response (Mk. 4:5).
4:6 The sun arising and withering the seed is a symbol of
tribulation arising in the life of the believer (Mk. 4:6). But the sun arising
is also a clear symbol of the day of the Lord’s return. Thus whenever we
encounter tribulation, our response to it is in some sense a preview of our
response to the Lord’s coming in judgment. Trials and reproofs from God are Him
“entering with thee into judgment”, here and now (Job 22:4).
4:8 Even if some preaching work appears not to bear fruit, this
shouldn't discourage us from the essentially outgoing spirit we should have in
spreading the word far and wide. Many of the parables have an element of
unreality about them, designed to focus our attention on a vital aspect of
teaching. The sower parable has 75% of the seed sowed on bad ground, due to the
almost fanatic way the sower throws the seed so far and wide, evidently without
too much attention to whether it lands on responsive soil or not. His emphasis
was clearly on broadcasting the seed far and wide. We should desire to see the
spread of God’s ways, His Truth, His will, the knowledge of the real Christ, to
as many as possible.
4:8 Mk.4:8 adds the significant detail that it was the fruit
that the plant yielded which "sprung up and increased". The picture
is of a plant bringing forth seeds which themselves germinate into separate
plants and bear fruit. This can be interpreted in two ways:
1) True spiritual development in our lives is a cumulative upward spiral; successfully developing spiritual fruit leads to developing yet more.
2) The new plants which come out of our fruit refer to our converts, both from the world and those within the ecclesia whom we help to yield spiritual fruit. There is another link here with the parable of the vine bearing fruit: "I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain" (Jn.15:8,16). This connects with Christ's command to them to go into the world preaching the Gospel and thereby making converts. In this sense our spiritual fruiting is partly through our bringing others to glorify God through the development of a God-like character. It is in this context of using the word for preaching and personal spiritual development that we receive the glorious encouragement "that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he (will) give it you" (Jn.15:7,16). Every believer who truly strives to bring forth fruit to God's glory, both in preaching to others and in personal character development, will find this promise constantly true.
God works like this because He is prepared to accept that different people will make something different of His Truth. The parable of the sower shows that; the "good ground" brings forth 30, 60 or 100 fold. Some believers respond three times as actively to the Gospel as others; yet they will all be accepted at the end. I see a connection between this parable and Christ's words to the rich, righteous young man: '"If thou wilt be perfect..." sell what you've got; and then you'll receive 100 fold in this life, and eternal life in the Kingdom' (Mt. 19:12,21). Presumably, that man at that time was (say) in the 30 or 60 fold category. Christ wanted him in the 100 fold category. But if that man didn't sell all that he had, it doesn't necessarily mean that Christ would have rejected him ultimately. In this context, He says: " Many that are first (in this life) will be last (least- in the Kingdom); and the last shall be first" (Mt. 19:30). Those who don't sell all that they have will be in the Kingdom, but least in it. The poor of his world, rich in faith, will be great in the Kingdom (James 2:5). We need to ask ourselves whether we really accept the parable of the sower; whether we are strong enough to let another brother be weak, to accept that even if he's in the 30 fold category, he's still acceptable to his Lord, just living on a different level. Indeed, it isn't for us to go very deeply at all into how exactly Christ sees others; because we can't know. The point to note is that God wants us to rise up the levels of commitment. Paul was persuaded that the Romans were “full of goodness, filled with all knowledge”, but he prayed they would be filled yet further (Rom. 15:13,14).
An Unreal Response
The sower parable has 75% of the seed sowed on bad ground, due to the almost fanatic way the sower throws the seed so far and wide, evidently without too much attention to whether it lands on responsive soil or not. His emphasis was clearly on broadcasting the seed far and wide, rather than sowing like any normal sower would do. This taught that even if some preaching work appears not to bear fruit, this shouldn't discourage us from the essentially outgoing spirit we should have in spreading the word far and wide. To reach “all men” must be our brief; all types of men and women, including those who are obviously going to respond poorly (1). Yet the parable talks of one grain of corn that yields one hundredfold (Mk. 4:8). Any farmer would pick up on this impossibility. An average yield in 1st century Palestine was about ten fold (2). What kind of response was this? What kind of grain of corn? Clearly, the Lord Jesus- who described Himself in John's record as the grain of corn that was to fall into the ground and bring forth much fruit. But the other grains of corn yielded 30 and 60 fold. This was quite amazing response too, totally unheard of in practice. Was it not that the Lord was trying to show us just how radically His Gospel can transform human life? Amazing fertility was a feature of the future Messianic Kingdom (Amos 9:13; Jer. 31:27; Ez. 36:29,30)- it’s as if the Lord is saying in the sower parable that the abundance of the future Kingdom can begin in human life now.
(1) In fairness, this parable can be
read another way. In Palestine, sowing precedes ploughing. The sower sows on
the path which the villagers have beaten over the stubble, since he intends to
plough up the path with the rest of the field. He sows amongst thorns because
they too will be ploughed in. And it has been suggested that the rocky ground
was land with underlying limestone which barely shows above the surface.
(2) This has been carefully worked out by R.K. McIver ‘One Hundred-Fold Yield’, New Testament Studies Vol. 40 (1994) pp. 606-608.
4:10- see
on Mk. 3:14.
The Lord’s
grace to His men is reflected in Mark’s record of how the twelve were confused
by the Lord’s parables. He responds that He speaks in parables so that “them
that are without” would not understand; but His followers would, He implies,
“know the mystery of the Kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all
these things are done in parables”. And yet it’s immediately apparent that the
disciples were equally confused by the parables. We sense the Lord’s
frustration with this: “Know ye not this parable? How
then will ye know all parables?”- i.e. ‘If you don’t understand this parable,
it means you won’t understand any of them, which makes you equal with the crowd
of those outside of Me, whom I’m seeking to leave confused’. And we note how
straight away Mark notes, perhaps in sadness and yet marvel at the Lord’s
grace: “But without a parable spake he not unto them [the disciples]: and when
they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples” (Mk. 4:10-13,34). Mark, or Peter writing through Mark, could look back
in wonder. They the supposed disciples, learners, of the Lord Jesus had been as
dumb as the crowd; but by grace alone the Lord had privately explained the
parables to them. And our understanding of true Bible teaching is likewise a
gift of grace, when we are every bit as obtuse as the people in darkness who
surround us.
4:11 The
Lord had said that parables only remained incomprehensible to "them that
are without" (Mk. 4:11). That phrase seems to have stuck with Paul; he uses
it five times. Perhaps he saw that a characteristic of the believers, those
separated from the world of darkness, was that they understood the parables;
and this would explain Paul's frequent allusion to them, stressing as he does
the need to appreciate their power.
The Lord speaks of how “to them that are without all these
things are done in parables” (Mk. 4:11). But those “without” in His other
teaching clearly refer to those rejected at the judgment, who will stand
“without” begging for admission to the Kingdom (Lk. 13:25; Rev. 20:15). But
those ‘without’ in Mk. 4:11 are those who chose not to understand the Lord’s
teaching, for whom it’s all parables, fascinating perhaps, but confusing,
unclear, and not something they are really bothered to understand. This
connection of thought doesn’t mean that intellectual clarity of understanding
alone decides who will be, indeed who is, within or without of the Kingdom. But
it is all the same true that the Kingdom life both now and in the future
requires us to understand so that we might believe and live and be as the Lord
requires.
4:11- see
on Jn. 16:25.
4:12 Understanding
and perceiving the meaning of the parables would result in conversion,
repentance and forgiveness (Mk. 4:12). Moses persevered because he understood. “Give me
understanding, and I shall keep thy law” (Ps. 119:35) is one of many links in
David’s thought between understanding and obedience. See on Mk. 7:29.
4:17 It
is quite possible that our Lord's sad prophecy of the disciples being offended
because of having to identify with his sufferings looked back to this parable,
concerning those who impulsively respond to the word in joy, but are offended
because they have no deep root (Mk.4:17 = Mk.14:27; Mt.26:31). The fact that
the disciples became good ground after this encourages us that we can change
the type of ground which we are on initially receiving the seed.
4:20 One example of the
Lord Jesus' emphasis on our salvation being through grace rather than our works
is found in the way the parables teach that our acceptance is to some degree
dependent on our predestination. Thus the parable of the types of ground
suggests that we are good or bad ground at the time the seed is first sown; the
fish are good or bad at the time they first enter the net; the wise virgins
take the oil with them from the start of their vigil. I would suggest that this
is not just part of the story. It was evidently within the Lord's ability to
construct stories which featured the idea of bad seed or fish etc. changing to
good, and vice versa. But He didn't; indeed, His emphasis seems to have been on
the idea of predestination. This isn't to decry the effort for spirituality
which we must make; but His stress of the predestination factor is surely to
remind us of the degree to which our calling and salvation is by pure grace.
4:21- see on Mt. 5:15.
The light of the candlestick is both the believer (Mt. 5:15) and the Gospel itself (Mk. 4:21). We are to be the Gospel.
The parable of the sower leaves us begging the question: ‘So how can we be good ground?’. Mark’s record goes straight on to record that the Lord right then said that a candle is lit so as to publicly give light and not to be hidden. He is speaking of how our conversion is in order to witness to others. But He says this in the context of being good ground. To respond to the word ourselves, our light must be spreading to all. The only way for the candle of our faith to burn is for it to be out in the open air. Hidden under the bucket of embarrassment or shyness or an inconsistent life, it will go out. We will lose our faith if we don’t in some sense witness to it. Witnessing is in that sense for our benefit. When the disciples ask how ever they can accomplish the standards which the Lord set them, He replied by saying that a city set on a hill cannot be hid (Mt. 5:14). He meant that the open exhibition of the Truth by us will help us in the life of personal obedience to Him.
We must give forth the light, not keep it under a bucket, because "there is nothing hid which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad" (Mk. 4:21,22). In other words, the very reason why God has hidden the things of His word from the world and some aspects of them from our brethren, is so that we can reveal them to them.
4:22- see on 1 Cor. 14:25.
The ecclesias, groups of believers, are lampstands (Rev. 2:5 cp. Ps. 18:28). We must give forth the light, not keep it under a bucket, letting laziness (under a bed) or worldly care (a bushel) distract us; because "there is nothing hid which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad" (Mk. 4:21,22). In other words, the very reason why God has hidden the things of His word from the world and some aspects of them from our brethren, is so that we can reveal them to them.
4:27 The humility of the Lord Jesus is a reflection of the humility of God His Father. He spoke of Himself as the sower, who sleeps (in His death) and then works night and day (His present Heavenly labour for us) so that the seed should bring forth fruit- "he knoweth not how" (Mk. 4:27, with allusion to Ecc. 11:1,5,6). Despite all things having been revealed unto Him, and the Spirit unmeasurably given to Him, He had the spiritual and intellectual humility to openly recognize that our spiritual growth and ultimate salvation is a mystery to Him. It was the Father alone who gave the increase.
He forgot things at times, didn't understand absolutely everything (e.g. the date of His return, or the mystery of spiritual growth, Mk. 4:27), made a mistake when working as a carpenter, cut His finger. But He was never frustrated with Himself; He was happy being human, comfortable with His humanity.
4:29 He is closely watching our spiritual growth, as the farmer watches the wheat and then immediately begins to harvest it once the humidity and growth is just right (Mk. 4:29). This is the enthusiasm with which the Lord watches our growth, not just individually, but as a community, i.e. the whole field. As the growth is still in some sense a mystery to the farmer, so it may be to Christ (Mk. 4:26,27); we grow, "he knoweth not how". This could be taken as an eloquent essay in the Lord's own limitation of knowledge.
4:31- see on Jn. 12:23-25.
Many of the Lord’s parables had some oblique reference to Himself. The parable of the sower speaks of the type of ground which gave one hundred fold yield- and surely the Lord was thinking of Himself in this. And yet the whole point of the parable is that all who receive the Lord’s word have the possibility of responding in this way. Or take the related parable of the mustard seed [=God’s word of the Gospel] which grows up into a huge tree under which all the birds can find refuge (Mk. 4:31,32). This image is replete with allusion to Old Testament pictures of God’s future Kingdom, and the growth of Messiah from a small twig into a great tree (Ez. 17:22). Here we see the power of the basic Gospel message- truly responded to, it can enable us to have a share in the very heights to which the Lord Jesus is exalted.
4:32- see on Rev. 17:18.
The mustard seed becomes a tree so big that all the birds of the air can live in it (Mk. 4:32). But mustard trees aren't this big. Surely the point is that the small seed of the Gospel produces a quite out of proportion result- by reading literature, spotting a press advertisement, getting baptized... we will by grace become part of the Kingdom of God, and provide shelter to the nations of this world. This is the extraordinary power of the Gospel. This is how far it will take us, and the extent to which we can, through the Gospel, become saviours of men. See on Mt. 13:33.
Each of the records of the great preaching commission in the
Gospels ties in with earlier passages within the same Gospel record. Mark’s
“preach the gospel to every creature” is to be understood in the context of the
Lord’s prophecy that the seed of His Gospel would be sown by preaching, and
would result in creatures of all kinds coming under its’ shadow (Mk.
16:15 cp. 4:32). The extent of witness we make is our choice; and according to
how well we do it, so the extent of the shadow of the Kingdom gives shelter to
many kinds.
4:33 The Lord
Jesus spoke the word to men “as they were able to hear it”, not as He was able
to expound it (Mk. 4:33). He didn’t always relay to men the maximum level of
understanding which He Himself possessed. The language of Jesus as recorded in
John's Gospel is very different to that we encounter in the other Gospels.
Indeed, the difference is so striking that some have claimed that John put the
words into Jesus' mouth in his account. My suggestion is that the Lord did in
fact say all the words attributed to Him in all the Gospel records. But He had
two levels of talking with people- a Heavenly, spiritual kind of style (which
John picked up on); and also a more earthly one, which Matthew, Mark and Luke
tended to record. In our context, the simple point that emerges is that Jesus
spoke in different ways to different people; He tailored His language in
accordance with His audience. It's significant that there are no records of
Jesus casting out demons in John's record; this occurs only in the more
audience-friendly accounts of the Synoptics.
There is tendency, it seems
to me, for brethren particularly to insist on flaunting their knowledge, to have
to correct others who have inferior knowledge or less mature interpretations.
The Lord taught men the word “as they were able to hear it” (Mk. 4:33), not as
He was able to expound it. If we ask where He obtained this humility and
ability from, it is clearly an inheritance from His dear mother, who stored up
things in her heart and didn’t reveal them to others, just quietly meditating
over the years. He spoke the word to men “as they
were able to hear
it”- He didn’t always relay to men the maximum level of understanding which He
Himself possessed . There is a tendency amongst some
personality types to turn every disagreement over interpretation of Scripture
into a right : wrong, truth : error scenario. Matters
relating to basic doctrine are capable of being dealt with like this. But to
turn the interpretation of every Bible verse into a conflict area is a recipe
for ecclesial disaster. So often the debate becomes personal, with a brother
sure that he
is right and the other wrong, and the other must be shown to be wrong. This
leads inevitably to pride, and there is the possibility that the other party is
degraded and feels abused by the other. We simply have to accept that much of
Scripture is open to various levels of interpretation, which if placed side by
side would appear to be contradictory. Consider, for example, how many
different applications the NT gives to Psalms 2 and 110.
4:37 The changes of tense in the Gospel records suggest an eye witness telling the story. Take Mk. 4:37: "And there arises a great storm of wind , and the waves beat into the boat, insomuch that the boat was now filling" (RV). But the rest of the account in the surrounding verses is in proper past tenses- e.g. "He arose, and rebuked the wind, and said..." (Mk. 4:39). The impression we have is of the author getting carried away with the memory of the event, and telling it as if it's happening. And this is especially fitting if in fact the Gospels were performed live rather than coldly memorized as prose.
4:38- see on Mt. 8:25; 20:32; Jn. 10:13.
“Carest thou not that we perish?” (Mk. 4:38). His whole life
and death were because He did
so care that they would not perish (Jn. 3:16). It’s so reminiscent of a child’s
total, if temporary, misunderstanding and lack of appreciation of the parent’s
love and self-sacrifice.
4:39 His
authoritative "Peace, be still" (Mk. 4:39) was probably primarily
addressed to the Angels controlling the natural elements. The reference to
Angels 'ministering' to Him after the temptations suggests their inferiority.
Thus He could summon twelve legions of Angels at the time of His greatest
passion- maybe He remembered this incident and it was a temptation to Him to
use this power over Angels at the crucifixion.
4:40- see on Mt. 8:26.
It seems to me that all the
Lord's servants are taught by increments, progressively, being given tests as
to the degree to which they have grasped what the Lord has sought to teach them
previously. And the Lord Jesus used a similar structured approach with the
training of the twelve disciples. When the Lord commented
“Have you not yet faith?” (Mk. 4:40 RV) it becomes immediately apparent
that He was working with the twelve according to some program of spiritual
development, and He was frustrated with their lack of response to it and slow
progress. He surely has a similar program in place, and makes similar patient
efforts, with each one of us.
It is apparent to any reader of the Greek text of the
Gospels that Jesus almost always left the verb “believe” without an object
(e.g. Mk. 4:40; 5:34,36; 9:23). The question naturally arose: ‘Believe in what or whom?’. And seeing the speaker of the words, the answer was there
before their eyes.
4:41 Jesus does not proclaim Himself, and yet He expects us to base our lives around Him. This is yet another paradox. Clearly we are intended to reconstruct Him from our repeated and sensitive readings of the Gospels. We in our day must read the Gospel records, portraying Him as they do from four different angles, and seek to reconstruct Him in our own minds as a person. His actions spoke loudly [and in this He is a pattern to us in our witness]. When He stilled the storm, the disciples marvelled: "What manner of man is this?", knowing full well that His actions were in fulfillment of the prophecy that Yahweh would still the waves of the sea. And in the context of stilling another storm, He comments: "Fear not, it is I" - not 'it's me'. He was surely suggesting they connect Him with the essence of the Yahweh Name, I am that I am. But the connection was only for those who would truly meditate and connect things together. As our Moslem friends have correctly pointed out many times, Jesus Himself never in so many words claimed to be Messiah. When others said this about Him, He replies by describing Himself as the "son of man". Indeed, this was His preferred self-image. He was intensely conscious of His humanity, His solidarity with us, and it was as if He directed us who later have believed to image Him first and foremost as a man of our nature. Of course, He was and is so much much more than that. But because we are human, we have to image ourselves around a perfect human- Jesus, the real and full humanity as God intended. Here those who believe Jesus was God Himself place themselves at a distinct disadvantage- our understanding that Jesus did indeed come "in the flesh" ought to be a tremendous inspiration to us to be like Him. The power and compulsion of His life and example are surely diminished by relating to Him as God Himself.
5:1- see on
Mk. 10:28.
The Gospel records, Mark especially, often paint a broad
scene and then zoom in upon the person of Jesus. Mark does this by using a
plural verb without an
explicit subject to paint a picture of the disciples or crowd
generally; and then follows this by a singular verb or pronoun referring
specifically to Jesus. Here are some examples: "They came to the other
side... and when He had stepped out of the boat" (Mk. 5:1,2); "when they came from Bethany, he was hungry"
(Mk. 8:22); "they went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his
disciples..." (Mk. 14:32). The grammatical feature is more evident in
Greek than in English. If the writer of Mark had been a cameraman, he'd have
taken a broad sweep, and then suddenly hit the zoom to focus right up close
upon Jesus Himself. This is what is being done with words, and it reflects the
Christ-centredness of the whole narrative and
preaching of the Gospel, of which the Gospels are transcripts.
Mark
5:1–17 (Matthew 8:28–34; Luke 8:26–38) “They came to the other side of the sea,
to the country of the Gerasenes. and when Jesus had
stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with
an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore,
not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains,
but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one
had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the
mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. And when he
saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And
crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son
of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” For he
was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” And Jesus asked
him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” And
he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd
of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, “Send
us to the pigs; let us enter them.” So he gave them permission. And the unclean
spirits came out, and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two
thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea.
The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came
to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the
demon–possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and
in his right mind, and they were afraid. And those who had seen it described to
them what had happened to the demon–possessed man and to the pigs. And they
began to beg Jesus to depart from their region”.
In
considering this passage, let’s bear in mind some conclusions reached
elsewhere:
–
The Bible uses the language of the day, speaking of some things as they
appeared in the eyes of their first audience
–
‘Casting out demons’ is a way of saying that mental illness had been cured
–
‘Demons’ in the first century were understood to be demigods responsible for
illness; they are paralleled with idols, and we are assured that demons / idols
have no ultimate power or existence
These
principles enable us to understand the passage as an account of the healing of
a mentally disturbed man – albeit written in the language of the day, from the
perspective and worldview of those who first saw the miracle. The following
comments hopefully assist in clarifying this interpretation:
1.
Mk. 5:2 describes Legion as a man with an “unclean spirit”. He cried out. But
when we meet a similar situation in Acts 8:7 of unclean spirits crying out, the
Eastern (Aramaic) text reads: “Many who were mentally afflicted cried out”.
This is because, according to George Lamsa, ““Unclean spirits” is an Aramaic
term used to describe lunatics” (1). It should be noted that Lamsa
was a native Aramaic speaker with a fine understanding of Aramaic terms. He
grew up in a remote part of Kurdistan which had maintained the Aramaic language
almost unchanged since the time of Jesus. It’s significant that Lamsa’s
extensive writings indicate that he failed to see in the teachings of Jesus and
Paul any support for the popular conception of the Devil and demons – he
insisted that the Semitic and Aramaic terms used by them have been
misunderstood by Western readers and misused in order to lend support for their
conceptions of a personal Devil and demons.
2.
When Legion was cured of his ‘demons’, we read of him as now “clothed and in
his right mind” (Mk. 5:15). His ‘demon possession’ therefore referred to a sick
state of mind; and the ‘casting out’ of those demons to the healing of his
mental state. People thought that Jesus was mad and said this must be because
He had a demon – “He has a demon, and is mad” (Jn. 10:20; 7:19–20; 8:52). They
therefore believed that demons caused madness.
3.
A comparison of the records indicates that the voice of the individual man is
paralleled with that of the ‘demons’ – the man was called Legion, because he believed
and spoke as if he were inhabited by hundreds of ‘demons’:
“Torment
me not” (Mk.5:7)
= “Are you come to torment us?”
(Mt. 8:29).
“He [singular] besought
him” (Mk. 5:9) = “the demons
besought him” (Mk. 5:12)
The
man’s own words explain his self-perception: “My name [singular] is Legion: for we are many (Mk. 5:9)”.
This is classic schizophrenic behaviour and language. Thus Lk. 8:30 explains
that Legion spoke as he did because [he thought that] many demons had entered
into him.
4.
Note that the sick man is paralleled with the demons. “He begged him earnestly
not to send them
out of the country” (Mk. 5:10) parallels “he”, the man, with “them”, the
demons. And the parallel record speaks as if it were the demons who did the begging: “They
begged him not to order them to go into the abyss” (Lk. 8:31). This
is significant in that the record doesn’t suggest that demons were manipulating
the man to speak and be mad; rather are they made parallel with the man
himself. This indicates, on the level of linguistics at least, that the
language of “demons” is being used as a synonym for the mentally ill man.
There’s another example of this, in Mark 3:11: “Whenever the unclean spirits
saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, “You are the Son of God!”“. Who
fell down on their knees and who shouted? The mentally
disturbed people. But they are called “unclean spirits”. James 2:19
likewise: “The demons believe and tremble”. This is surely an allusion to the
trembling of those people whom
Jesus cured, and ‘belief’ is appropriate to persons not [supposed] eternally
damned agents of Satan. Clearly James is putting “demons” for ‘mentally
disturbed people who believed and were cured’. And thus we can better
understand why in Mk. 5:8 Jesus addresses Himself not to these supposed
spirits; but to the man himself: “Jesus said to him, Come out of the man, you unclean
spirit”. He doesn’t say to the
unclean spirit “Come out of the man”. Jesus addresses Himself to
“the man”. The demons / unclean spirits never actually say anything in the
records; it’s always the man himself who speaks. Josephus records that when the
first century Rabbis cast out demons [as they supposed],
they first had to ask for the name of the demon. The Lord Jesus doesn’t do this;
He asks the man for his
personal name. The difference is instructive – the Lord wasn’t speaking to
demons, He was speaking to the mentally sick man, and going along with the
man’s belief that he had demons within him. The ‘demons’ plead with Jesus not
to torment them, and back this up by invoking God. ‘They’ believed in God and
honoured Him to the point of believing He was the ultimate authenticator of
oaths. ‘They’ hardly fit the classical idea that demons are anti–God and in
conflict with Him. Clearly enough, when we read of demons and spirits in this
passage we are not reading of the actual existence of ‘demons’ as they are
classically understood, but simply of the mentally ill man himself.
5.
Why did the pigs run over the cliff, and why did the Lord Jesus agree to the
man’s request for this?
Because
mental illness features intermittent episodes, it’s understandable that the
Lord sought to comfort those cured that the change He had brought was
permanent. Thus the Lord tells the ‘spirit’ assumed to be tormenting the
mentally afflicted child: “I command you, come out of him, and enter no more into
him” (Mk. 9:25). It’s in the same vein that He drove the pigs into the lake as
a sign that Legion’s cure was permanent. I suggest that it was a kind of visual
aide memoire, of
the kind often used in the Bible to impress a point upon illiterate people. I
suggest that’s why in the ritual of the Day of Atonement, the scapegoat ran off
into the wilderness bearing Israel’s sins. As the bobbing animal was watched by
thousands of eyes, thousands of minds would’ve reflected that their sins were
being cast out. And the same principle was in the curing of the schizophrenic
Legion – the pigs were made to run into the lake by the Lord Jesus, not because
they were actually possessed by demons in reality, but as an aide memoire to the cured
Legion that his illness, all his perceived personalities,
were now no more. Mental illness is typically intermittent. Legion had
met Jesus, for he recognized Him afar off, and knew that He was God’s Son (Mk.
5:6); indeed, one assumes the man probably had some faith for the miracle to be
performed (Mt. 13:58). He comes to meet Jesus “from out of the city” (Lk. 8:27)
and yet Mt. 8:28 speaks of him living in the tombs outside the city. He pleads
with the Lord not to torment him (Mk. 5:7) – full of memories of how the local
folk had tied him up and beaten him to try to exorcise the demons. Probably
Legion’s greatest fear was that he would relapse into madness again; that the
cure which he believed Jesus could offer him might not be permanent. And so the
Lord agreed to the man’s request that the demons he perceived as within him
should be permanently cast out; and the sight of the herd of pigs running over
the cliff to permanent death below, with the awful sound this would’ve made,
would have remained an abiding memory for the man. Note how the ‘demon
possessed’ man in Mk. 1:23 sits in the synagogue and then suddenly screams out
(Mk. 1:23) – showing he was likewise afflicted by intermittent fits. Steve
Keating pointed out to me that the madness may have been an infection in the
brain of the trichina parasite, commonly found infecting the muscles of pigs –
and transmissible to humans in undercooked pork. The infected man would likely
have been forced by poverty to eat this kind of food, and likely associated his
“problem” with it because of the prohibition of pork under the Levitical law.
The desire to see the disease return to the herds of swine probably stemmed
from a need to know that his affliction had been cured in a rather permanent
sort of way. And the Lord went along with this.
The
idea of transference of disease from one to another was a common Semitic
perception, and it’s an idea used by God. And thus God went along with the
peoples’ idea of disease transference, and the result is recorded in terms of
demons [which was how they understood illness] going from one person to
another. Likewise the leprosy of Naaman clave to Gehazi (2 Kings 5:27). God
threatened to make the diseases of the inhabitants of Canaan and Egypt to
cleave to Israel if they were disobedient (Dt. 28:21,60).
Here too, as with Legion, there is Divine accommodation to the ideas of disease
transference which people had at the time.
6.
The Lord focused the man’s attention upon the man’s beliefs about himself – by
asking him “What is your name?”, to which he replies
“Legion! For we are many!”. Thus the man was brought
to realize on later reflection that the pig stampede was a miracle by the Lord,
and a judgment against illegal keeping of unclean animals – rather than an
action performed by the demons he thought inhabited him. The idea of
transference of disease from one to another was a common Semitic perception,
and it’s an idea used by God. And thus God went along with the peoples’ idea of
disease transference, and the result is recorded in terms of demons [which was
how they understood illness] going from one person to another. Likewise the
leprosy of Naaman clave to Gehazi (2 Kings 5:27). God threatened to make the
diseases of the inhabitants of Canaan and Egypt to cleave to Israel if they
were disobedient (Dt. 28:21,60). Here too, God is
accommodating the ideas of disease transference which people had at the time.
7.
Legion believed he was demon possessed. But the Lord didn’t correct him
regarding this before healing him. Anyone dealing with mentally disturbed
people soon learns that you can’t correct all of their delusions at one go. You
have to chose your battles, and walk and laugh with them to some extent. Lk.
8:29 says that Legion “was driven of the Devil into the wilderness”, in the
same way as the Lord had been driven into the wilderness by the spirit (Mk.
1:12) and yet overcame the ‘Devil’ in whatever form at this time. The man was
surely intended to reflect on these more subtle things and see that whatever he
had once believed in was immaterial and irrelevant compared to the Spirit power
of the Lord. And yet the Lord ‘went along’ with his request for the demons he
thought were within him to be cast into ‘the deep’, thoroughly rooted as it was
in misunderstanding of demons and sinners being thrown into the abyss. This was
in keeping with the kind of healing styles people were used to at the time –
e.g. Josephus records how Eleazar cast demons out of people and placed a cup of
water nearby, which was then [supposedly] tipped over by the demons as they
left the sick person [Antiquities
of the Jews 8.46–48]. It seems to me that the Lord ‘went along
with’ that kind of need for reassurance, and so He made the pigs stampede over
the cliff to symbolize to the healed man how his disease had really left him.
8.
A fairly detailed case can be made that the man Legion was to be understood as
representative of Judah in captivity, suffering for their sins, who despite
initially opposing Christ (Legion ran up to Jesus just as he had ‘run upon’
people in aggressive fits earlier), could still repent as Legion did, be healed
of their sins and be His witnesses to the world. This fits in with the whole theme
which the Lord had – that the restoration of Israel’s fortunes would not be by
violent opposition to the Legions of Rome but by repentance and spiritual
witness to the world. The point is, Israel were bound in fetters and beaten by
the Gentiles because of their sins, which they were culpable of, for which they
had responsibility and from which they could repent; rather than because they
had been taken over by powerful demons against their will. Here then are reasons for understanding Legion as representative
of Judah under Gentile oppression; I am grateful to John Allfree and Andrew
Perry for bringing some of them to my attention:
–
Israel were “A people... which remain among
the tombs, and lodge in the monuments” (Is. 65:3–4).
–
Legion was always “in the mountains” – the “high places” where Israel sinned
(Is. 65:7; Hos. 4:13).
–
The man’s name, Legion, suggests he was under the ownership of Rome. The
miracle occurred in Gentile territory, suggesting Judah in the Gentile
dominated world.
–
‘What is your name?’ is the same question asked of Jacob
–
Legion’s comment that ‘we are many’ is identical to the words of Ez. 33:24
about Israel: “Son of man, they that inhabit those wastes of the land of Israel
speak, saying, Abraham was one, and he inherited the land: but we are many; the land is
given us for inheritance. Wherefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Ye
eat with the blood, and lift up your eyes toward your idols, and shed blood:
and shall ye possess the land?”.
–
Legion had often been bound with fetters and chains (Mk. 5:3,4)
– just as God’s people had so often been taken into captivity in “fetters and
chains” (2 Chron. 33:11; 36:6, 2 Kings 24:7).
–
When the sick man asks that the unclean spirits not be sent “out of the
country” (Mk. 5:10), I take this as his resisting the healing. But he later
repents and asks for them to be sent into the herd of pigs. This recalls a
prophecy about the restoration of Judah in Zech. 13:2: “And it shall come to
pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the
idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will
cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land”.
–
The herd of pigs being “destroyed” in the water recalls the Egyptians being
“destroyed” in the Red Sea when Israel were delivered from Gentile power
before. The Gadarene Gentiles “were afraid”, just as the Gentile world was at
the time of the Exodus (Ex 15:14). The curing of Legion is termed “great
things” (Mk 5:19); and Israel’s exodus from Gentile power and the destruction
of the Egyptians is likewise called “great things” (Ps 106:21).
Note
(1) George Lamsa, New Testament Commentary
(Philadelphia: A.J. Holman, 1945) pp. 57,58.
5:12
Mark 5 records three prayers to Jesus: "the devils besought
him", and "Jesus gave them leave" (vv. 12,13);
the Gadarenes "began to pray him to depart out
of their coasts" (v. 17); and He obliged. And yet when the cured,
earnestly zealous man "prayed him that he might be with him... Jesus
suffered him not" (vv. 18,19). After the
fascination, physically and intellectually, had worn off, very few of the
crowds continued their interest. The Lord scarcely converted more than 100
people in the course of His ministry. We are familiar, from our own experience
of sin and failure, with the pure grace of the Lord Jesus. We see that
largeness and generosity of spirit within Him, that manifestation of the God of
love, that willingness to concede to our weakness; and therefore we can tend to
overlook the fact that the Lord Jesus set uncompromisingly high standards. I
would even use the word "demanding" about His attitude.
5:19,20 The Gospels are
transcripts of the twelve disciples’ own preaching and obedience to the Lord’s
commission for them to go into all the world and tell the news of what they had
seen and heard of Him. Yet there is a theme in the Gospels, consciously
included by the writers and speakers, of men being disobedient to the preaching
commission which the Lord gave them. When some were told to say nothing, they
went and told many others (Mk. 7:36). And as Acts makes clear, the disciples
themselves were disobedient, initially, to the commission to go tell the
Gentiles the good news of their salvation. Legion’s disobedience is especially
instructive for us:
|
Mk.
5:19 |
Mk.
5:20 |
|
Go to thy house |
He goes to the ten cities [Decapolis] |
|
unto thy friends |
He goes to strangers |
|
tell them [Lk. 8:39 “show them”- by personal
demonstration to individuals] |
He “publishes” |
|
how great things |
how great things |
|
the Lord [i.e. God] hath
done for thee |
Jesus had done for him |
|
and how he had mercy on thee. |
[ignored] |
The record
of the commission given him and his obedience to it are clearly intended to be compared.
The man went to strange cities, indeed he organized a whole preaching tour of
ten cities- rather than going home and telling his immediate friends / family. And how true this is of us. It’s so much easier to embark
upon a campaign to strangers, to do ‘mission work’, to ‘publish’ the Gospel
loudly, rather than tell and show it to our immediate personal
contacts. And we notice too how he omits to tell others of the Lord’s merciful
grace to him personally. Rather does he speak only of the material, the
literality of the healing. And he tells others what
Jesus had done for him, rather than take the Lord Jesus’ invitation to perceive
the bigger picture in all this- that this was the hand of God. One wonders
whether the disciples were commenting upon their own sense of inadequacy in
their initial personal witness.
The Lord told the cured demoniac to go back to his friends (Mk. 5:19) and family (Lk. 8:39) and witness to them. Clearly enough, the man didn’t have any friends- for he had a history of violence and lived alone, many having tried unsuccessfully to bind him due to the grievous harm he must have inflicted upon many. Yet the man went out and preached to the whole area (Mk. 5:20). Was this just rank disobedience to what His Saviour Lord had just told him? Perhaps, due to unrestrained enthusiasm. But more likely is that the man now considered the whole world around him to be his family and friends, and therefore he witnessed to them. His care for others in desiring to witness to them flowed quite naturally from his experience of conversion at the Lord’s hands.
5:30
Jesus focused on the essential whilst still being human enough to be involved in the irrelevancies which cloud the lives of all other men. Just glancing through a few random chapters from the Gospels reveals this tremendous sense of focus which He had, and His refusal to be distracted by self-justification. In all of the following examples I suspect we would have become caught up with justifying ourselves and answering the distractions to the point that our initial aim was paralyzed.
Focus |
Distraction |
Resumed Focus |
|
The sick woman touches His clothes, and He turns around to see her. He wants to talk to her. |
The disciples tell Him that this is unreasonable, as a huge crowd is pressing on to Him |
"He looked round about [again] to see her that had done this thing" (Mk. 5:30-32). He talks to her. |
|
He says that the dead girl is only sleeping; for He wants to raise her. |
"They laughed Him to scorn" |
"But..." He put them all out of the house and raised her (Mk. 5:40,41). |
|
He was moved with compassion for the crowds, and wants to feed them and teach them more. |
The disciples tell Him to send the people away as it was getting late |
He tells the disciples to feed them so that they can stay and hear more (Mk. 6:35-37) |
|
Again He has compassion on the hunger of the crowd |
The disciples mock His plan to feed them |
He feeds them (Mk. 8:3-6) |
|
He explains how He must die |
Peter rebukes Him |
He repeats His message, telling them that they too must follow the way of the cross (Mk. 8:31-34) |
5:31- see on Mk. 14:70.
5:34 The
faith of the
sick woman is commended by the Lord (Mk. 5:34; Mt. 9:20)-
when it was due to her understanding
of the significance of the hem
of the Lord's robe that she had touched Him. She had perceived the connection
with the High Priest's hem; perhaps too she had added Job's comment about our
touching but the hem of God's garment into the equation. And certainly she
perceived that the sun of righteousness of Mal. 4 had healing in his hems /
wings of his garment.
5:37- see
on Mt. 17:1.
5:39- see
on Acts 21:13.
5:41 "Talitha cumi, which is, My child, I say to you, Get up" (Mk. 5:41). "Get up" there isn't from the 'anastasis' group of words which are used about the 'rising up' of dead people in resurrection. It's egeiro, which more literally means 'to get up'. 'Honey, it's time to get up now' was what the Lord was saying- not 'I command you to resurrect'. He had raised her, given her life, and He knew that. In fact, He'd done it a while beforehand. For He told the mourners: "The girl isn't dead, she's only sleeping" (Mk. 5:39). He raised her even before going into the room- and He knew that. And so when He finally saw her, He took her hand and gently asked her to get up out of bed. His gentleness, His faith, His calmness, His certainty that the Father heard Him- are all wondrous.
6:1 We read that Jesus “came into his own country” (Mk. 6:1)- an artless reflection of the way in which He really was so human, having His “own” native area- here on this earth and not in any pre-existent form in Heaven! He had a very common Jewish name. The brothers of Jesus had names which were among the commonest Jewish names at the time- James, Joseph, Simon and Judas (Mt. 13:55; Mk. 6:3). I know we know this, but just remember how Jesus truly shared our nature. He smelt the smells of the marketplace, as He walked around helping a little child crying because he'd lost his mum. From the larynx of a Palestinian Jew there truly came the words of Almighty God. There, in the very flesh and body tissue of the man Jesus, was God manifested in flesh. And yet that wondrous man, that being, that Son of God who had no human father, readily laughed at the funny side of events, just like anyone else. His hands and arms would have been those of a working man. He is always described as walking everywhere- and it's been calculated that He must have walked 10,000 km. during His ministry. He slept under the Olive trees at the foot of the Mount of Olives; the Son of man had nowhere to lay His head. So He would often have appeared a bit rough, His feet would have developed large blisters, and His skin would have been sunburnt. Palestine was infested with bandits at the time. It was almost inevitable that the Lord was robbed and threatened at least once. He would have gone through all the gut feelings one does when they are mugged: the initial shock, the obvious question that skates through the mind 'How much harm are they gonna do me...?', the bad taste left in the mouth afterwards, the way one keeps on re-living every moment of what happened. He would have known those feelings.
6:2 To
my mind, one of the most artless and surpassing things about the Lord was that
He lived a sinless life for 30 years, and yet when He began His ministry those
He lived with were shocked that He could ever be the Messiah. He was “in
favour” with men (Lk. 2:52), not despised and resented as many righteous men
have been. He was the carpenter, a good guy- but not Son of God. Somehow He
showed utter perfection in a manner which didn’t distance ordinary people from
Him. There was no ‘other-wordliness’ to Him which we
so often project to those we live with. We seem to find it hard to live a good
life without appearing somehow distasteful to those around us. In fact the
villagers were scandalized [skandalizein] that Jesus should even
be a religious figure; they had never noticed His wisdom, and wondered where He
had suddenly gotten it from (Mk. 6:2,3). This suppression of His specialness,
His uniqueness, must have been most disarming and confusing to Mary. Her son
appeared as an ordinary man; there was no halo around His head, no special
signs. Just an ordinary guy. And this may well have
eroded her earlier clear understanding that here in her arms was the Son of
God. Until age 30, the Lord was “hidden” as an arrow in a quiver (Is. 49:2). So
profound was this that Mary may have come to doubt whether after all He was
really as special as she had thought, 30 years ago. 30 years is a long time. We
also need to bear in mind that opposition to Jesus both from the other siblings
and from His home town was significant. A fair case can be made that He
actually moved away to Capernaum, perhaps before the start of His ministry. Mk.
2:1 RVmg. describes Him as being “at home” there; Mt. 4:13 NIV says He lived
there; Mt. 9:1 calls it his “own city” (cp. Mk. 2:1). Don’t forget that the
Nazareth people tried to kill Jesus early on in His ministry- this was how
strong the opposition was. And Mary had to show herself for or against... and
it seems she at least on the surface didn’t exactly show herself for Him.
6:3 It has been suggested that the title “son of Mary” given to Him in Mk. 6:3 implied that they considered Him illegitimate- for men were usually called by their father’s name. ““Jesus, son of Mary” has a pejorative sense… [there is a] Jewish principle: A man is illegitimate when he is called by his mother’s name”. The perception of the surrounding world may have influenced Joseph, and must have surely given rise to at least temptations of doubt within Mary as the years went by. See on Mk. 3:21. It has also been observed that it was unusual for the villagers to describe Jesus as “the son of Mary” (Mk. 6:3)- even if Joseph were dead, He would have been known as Jesus-ben-Joseph. It could well be that this was a reflection of their perception of how closely linked Jesus was to His mother.
According to Talmudic writings like Yebamot 78b, Dt. 23:3 was interpretted as meaning that a fatherless man wasn’t allowed to enter the temple or marry a true Israelite. The reference to Jesus as “son of Mary” (Mk. 6:3) rather than “son of Joseph” is, apparently, very unusual. It reflects the Lord’s lack of social identity in first century Israel; He had no father’s house to belong to. In passing, the jibe in Mt. 27:64 “the last deception shall be worse than the first” is likely a reference to Mary and Jesus claiming that He was the result of a virgin birth- this, as far as the Jews were concerned, was the “first deception”.
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James? And they were offended at him" (Mk. 6:3). In essence, the same is happening to Trinitarians. They just can't hack that Jesus, Son of God, perfect human being... was truly human, with a human brother, mother and relatives. And so they have stumbled off into various wrong theories and theologies about Jesus to try to rationalize and spiritually legitimise their lack of faith in Him as a human person.
One of the most surpassing wonders of the Lord’s character was that He could live for 30 years in a small town in Galilee, never ever committing sin, and never ever omitting an act of righteousness... and yet when He stood up and basically proclaimed Himself to be Messiah, the people were scandalized. They were shocked that this carpenter’s son should think He was anything much more than them. Yet whenever we try to be a bit more righteous than our fellows, it’s always noticed and held against us. Yet the Lord Jesus was both perfect, and also in favour with men. He came over as the ordinary guy, and yet He was perfect, and the light of this world. In this there is a matchless example for us. This wondrous feature of the Lord’s achievement in His own character is reflected by the way His own brothers, who knew Him better than any, perceived Him to be just an ordinary person. When He started implying that He was the Son of God, they thought He’d gone crazy.
When He declared Himself as Messiah, the people who had grown up with Him were scandalized (Mk. 6:3 Gk.). He was so human that even though He never sinned, the people who intimately knew Him for 30 years thought that He was truly one of them. In our making the word flesh, we tend to irritate people by our apparent righteousness, or turn them away from us by our hypocrisy. But the Lord truly made the word flesh, to the extent that the very dregs of society could relate to Him as one of them. There is a wonder in this that requires sustained meditation.
Jesus was poor. He was from Nazareth, a village of between 200 to 2,000 people, about 7 km. away from Sepphoris, a city of 40,000. And He would have gone through the process of socialization which anyone does who lives in a village under the shadow of the big town. He is described as a tekton or manual worker ("carpenter" in many translations). "A tekton was at the lower end of the peasant class, more marginalized than a peasant who owned a small piece of land. We should not think of a tekton as being a step up from a subsistence farmer; rather, a tekton belonged to a family that had lost its land”. The problem was that the Jewish authorities insisted that the tithes were still paid, and these could amount to around 20% of agricultural income. But the Romans added their own heavy taxation system on top of this. Farmers had to pay a 1% land tax, plus a 12% crop tax on produce, as well as various other custom, toll and tribute taxes. For those who wished to be obedient to the Government as well as the Jewish law, there was a total taxation of around 35%. Those who could no longer pay their taxes to Rome lost their land, and a tekton was one in this class. It has been noted: “Some peasant who were forced from their lands turned to carpentry as a profession”. A case has even been made that the term "Abba" ['daddy'] was specifically "from lower class Palestinian piety". If this is so, then we see yet another window into the poverty of the Lord Jesus, extending even to the kind of language He used to address His Father in prayer. So Jesus was Himself marginalized, the poorest of the poor [perhaps because of paying all the required taxes and not being dishonest], in one of the poorest corners of the Roman empire. The poor needn't think of Jesus as so Heavenly that He doesn't know their crises; the crises that come from not having food or money, the problems of drought, the worry about the weather, the rains not coming, the problem of broken equipment and worn out clothes and shoes, the distress that a little brother is sick, there's medicine in the nearby town, but no money for it...He knows. He really does. He can and does relate to all this. And it's why He is so especially watchful, according to His own teaching, of how we respond to those in such need. It means a lot to Him; because as a poor man, He must have known what it was to receive charity, to be given a few eggs by a neighbour, some milk from a kind woman down the street. When He taught "Blessed are the poor... the hungry", He immediately had a realness and credibility. For all the poor want to be better off. But He was so self-evidently content with who He was. The poor also want a bit more security for the future than just knowing that they have enough food for today. Yet Jesus could teach people to pray only for the food they needed for each day. And they were to forgive their debtors. This was radical stuff for people who lived a generally hand to mouth existence as day labourers and subsistence farmers. Only if Jesus was real and credible would people have flocked to hear Him and taken His teaching seriously. The fact He preached to the poor was a sign that He was indeed Messiah (Lk. 7:22); the context of that passage suggests it was something totally unusual, that a religious leader should bother with the poor. Serious religion was some kind of hobby for those rich enough to be able to spare the time for it. But Jesus turned all this upside down; He, the poor man, preached to the poor, and showed them that God and salvation was truly for them more than anyone else.
6:5 He could not do a mighty work in Nazareth because of their unbelief- as if He would have done a mighty miracle greater than the few healings He did perform there, but that possibility was discounted by their lack of faith (Mk. 6:5,6).
6:6- see on Lk. 2:33.
The Lord Himself marvelled at the unbelief of men (Mk. 6:6), despite knowing what was in man. Surely He could only have genuinely felt such marvel because He began with such an essentially positive spirit.
6:8-10 Our
Lord's perceptive mind picked out the picture of Israel as they were on Passover
night, as an illustration of how his disciples should be on their preaching
mission. "He called unto him the twelve, and began to send them
forth... and commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey,
save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money
in their purse: but be shod with sandals; and not put on two
coats". All this is couched in the language of Israel on
Passover night. His next words for them appear to be stating the obvious,
unless they allude to Israel remaining at whatever place they reached until the
fire and cloud moved them on: "In what place soever
ye enter... there abide till ye depart from that place" (Mk.
6:8-10). It must be remembered that God intended Israel to be a
missionary nation, teaching the surrounding world of His ways by their example
of obedience to His law. As Israel left Egypt with the gold and jewels of
Egypt, so, Jesus implied, the disciples were to carry the precious things of
the Gospel.
6:11 The disciples were to shake off the dust of their feet
against unbelieving Israel (Mt. 10:14; Mk. 6:11; Acts 8:51), in allusion to the
Rabbinic teaching that the dust of Gentile lands caused defilement. Israel who
rejected the Gospel were thus to be treated as Gentiles. Indeed, John’s
immersion of repentant Israelites would have recalled the way that Gentiles had
to be likewise dipped before being accepted into the synagogue. He was teaching
“that all Israel were Gentiles in the eyes of God”. Time and again the prophets
describe the judgments to fall upon Israel in the same terms as they speak of
the condemnations of the surrounding nations. The message was clear: rejected
Israel would be treated as Gentiles. Thus Joel
describes the locust invasion of Israel in the language of locusts covering the
face of Egypt (Joel 2:2,20 = Ex. 10:14,15,19). Israel’s hardness of heart is
explicitly likened to that of Pharaoh (1 Sam. 6:6); as the Egyptians were
drowned, so would Israel be (Am. 9:5-8). As Pharaoh’s heart was plagued (Ex.
9:14), so was Israel’s (1 Kings 8:38); as Egypt was a reed, so were Israel (1
Kings 14:15). As Pharaoh-hophra was given into the
hand of his enemies, so would Israel be (Jer. 44:30). She would be “Condemned with the world...”.
6:12 Mt.
10:7 and Mk. 6:12 parallel preaching the soon coming of the Kingdom with
preaching repentance. See on Heb. 7:19.
6:14 When the disciples went out preaching around Israel, Herod heard of the fame of Jesus- because they so manifested Him (Mk. 6:12-14).
The Lord's relationship with His cousin John provides an
exquisite insight into both His humanity and His humility. The people thought
that Jesus was John the Baptist resurrected (Mk. 6:14). Perhaps this was
because they looked somehow similar, as cousins?
6:36 They
ask the Lord to send the multitude away (Mk. 6:36), whereas Jesus had taught by
word and example, that whoever came to Him He would not turn away (Jn. 6:37),
and had just shown that He did not ‘send away’ the demons from the sick man,
because the man had asked for them not to be sent [far] away (Mk. 5:10).
6:37 The Lord told the disciples to feed the crowd, when they had nothing to give them (Mk. 6:37). He was actually quoting from 2 Kings 4:42, where the man of God told his servant to do the same. He gave what bread he had to the people, and miraculously it fed them. The disciples don't seem to have seen the point; otherwise, they would have realized that if they went ahead in faith, another such miracle would likely be wrought. But it seems that God almost over-ruled them to make the response of the faithless servant of 2 Kings 4:43: "Shall we... give them to eat?" (Mk. 6:37). They were almost 'made' to do this to make them later see the similarity with the 2 Kings 4 incident. If they had been more spiritually aware at the time, the Lord's quotation would have been a fillip for their faith.
6:38 He calmly bid them feed a huge crowd with just a few
loaves: “How many loaves have ye? Go and see” (Mk. 6:38).
We are left to imagine those men, almost paralysed and certainly gobsmacked by
the extent of the demand, awkwardly going away to count their few loaves. He
could be seen as a demanding Lord. The Lord Jesus said many "hard
sayings" which dissuaded people from seriously following Him. He kept
speaking about a condemned criminal's last walk to his cross, and telling
people they had to do this. He told them, amidst wondrous stories of flowers
and birds, to rip out their eyes, cut off their limbs- and if they didn't, He
didn't think they were serious and would put a stone round their neck and hurl
them into the sea (Mk. 9:42-48). He healed a leper, and then spoke sternly to
Him (Mk. 1:43 AV mg.).
6:45-51 Mark’s account of this incident omits all reference to Peter walking on the water (Mk. 6:45-51). Yet there is good reason to think that Mark is really Peter’s gospel; in characteristic humility, he emphasizes his failures and downplays his achievements in his Gospel record. Hence this omission of any reference to Peter’s bravery may indicate that this incident places Peter in a positive light; it was a tremendous achievement, and he humbly declines to mention it.
6:48 Mk. 6:48 says that “He saw them toiling in rowing” and then, later, He went to them. He didn’t literally see them rowing; but in His sensitive mind, He imagined just how it would be for them, and so He went to them.
Walking
on the sea, Jesus “would have passed by them” (Mk. 6:48). I don’t suppose He would have done, because
He was ‘coming unto them’, but this was how they perceived it – and thus the
record stands written, from a human perspective.
6:56- see on Mt. 9:21.
Mk. 6:56 speaks of His preaching campaign as focusing on the towns, villages and "country" - in modern terms, the villages, hamlets and isolated rural dwellings. He made the effort to get out to the individuals, the poorest and loneliest of society.
7:2-8 Jesus
had asked the disciples to be obedient to every jot and tittle
of the teaching of the Scribes, because they “sit in Moses’ seat”. And yet when
they are criticized for not doing what He’d asked them to do, for not washing
hands before a meal, the Lord Jesus vigorously defends them by criticizing
their critics as hypocrites (Mk. 7:2-8). Indeed, the Lord’s passion and anger
with the critics comes out very clearly in the subsequent record of the
incident; and it is the essence of that passion which He has for us in
mediating for us.
7:6- see on
Heb. 11:4.
7:9 They honoured with their lips, but their heart was far from God; they kept His commandments, but they frustrated their intention by not letting them influence their essential selves (Mk. 7:6-9). They fiercely guarded the pronunciation of His Covenant Name; but in reality, they forgot that Name (Jer. 23:27).
7:10 Thus the Lord Jesus saw as parallel the commands to
honour parents and also not to curse them. These two separate commands (from
Ex. 20:12 and 21:17) He spoke of as only one: "the commandment" (Mk. 7:9). He
therefore saw that not to honour parents was effectively to curse them (Mk.
7:10). Omitting to
honour parents, even if it involved appearing to give one's labour to God's temple,
was therefore the same as committing
the sin of cursing them.
7:11 The
Lord taught that to wangle one's way out of caring for their parents by
delegating it to the synagogue was effectively cursing them, and those guilty
must "die the death" (Mk. 7:10,11). To him who knows to do good but does it not, this omission is counted as sin (James
4:17- written in the context of brethren omitting to help each other). See on
Mk. 3:4.
7:13- see
on Mt. 13:39.
7:17- see
on Mk. 8:29.
7:17 The crowds
that followed the Lord didn’t understand His parables; in fact, He spoke in
parables so that they wouldn’t understand, as He intended His teaching only to
be grasped by the disciples (Mk. 7:17,18). Therefore,
in that very context, it is significant to read of the Lord’s frustration and
disappointment when the disciples likewise didn’t understand the parables. And
the record goes on to show that in fact it was a regular occurrence, that they
like the crowds didn’t understand the parables, and
the Lord had to explain to them later. So the disciples, contrary to the Lord’s
high hopes of them, were no better than the crowds. They too ‘didn’t get it’;
and Mark’s [i.e. Peter’s] record of the Gospel therefore brings out the point
that they too, the ones now preaching to the crowds, only got the understanding
they did of the Lord by an undeserved grace. This is the kind of humility we
need in our teaching of others, especially when it involves correcting their
lack of understanding on a point.
7:18 The world would not perceive (Mk. 4:12); but they did, or so
the Lord told them. And hence His distress that they did not perceive (Mk. 7:18;
8:17); and yet He said that blessed were their ears and minds, because they understood
what had been hidden from so many. Surely He imputed more perception to them
than they really had.
7:19- see
on Acts 10:35,36.
7:19 Paul
really did meditate on every word of his Lord. Thus he says he was persuaded by the Lord
Jesus that all foods were clean (Rom. 14:14)- this is
how he took the Lord's teaching in Mk. 7:19. Those words lived to Paul, they were
as the personal persuasion of his Lord, as if Christ
was talking to him personally through the Gospel records.
7:19 Jesus clearly explained that nothing a man eats can spiritually defile him; it is what comes out of the heart which does this (Mark 7:15-23). "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods 'clean'" (Mark 7:19 NIV). Peter was taught the same lesson (Acts 10:14,15), as was Paul: "I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself" (Rom. 14:14). Earlier, Paul had reasoned that to refuse certain foods was a sign of spiritual weakness (Rom. 14:2). Our attitude to food "does not commend us to God" (1 Cor. 8:8). Most incriminating of all is the warning that apostate Christians would teach men, "to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth" (1 Tim. 4:3).
7:27 The Lord so respected Israel that He felt giving the Gospel to the Gentiles instead of them was like casting good food to dogs (Mk. 7:27). Israel (the children) didn't want to eat, but the Lord painted them as if they did. The "crumb" that was cast to the dogs was a great miracle; but Christ saw that as only a crumb of the huge meal that was prepared for Israel. It seems the idea here is meant to be connected with His invitation to us to sit at table with Him and share the meal, both now (Lk. 14:8) and in the Kingdom (Lk. 12:37). Just one crumb of the Lord's meal is a mighty miracle, and yet we are asked to sit down and eat the whole meal with Him: as symbolised in our eating of "the Lord's supper". This is an eloquent picture of the greatness of our position as members of His table now, as well as in the future.
7:28 Sometimes what is recorded as
being actually said may be only a summary of the real words (consider what the
Canaanite woman actually said: Mt. 15:27 cp. Mk. 7:28).
7:29 “For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter" (Mk. 7:29) shows the value which the Lord placed on correct understanding. The Gentile woman had seen the feeding of the 5,000 and understood the implications of the lesson which the Lord was teaching. We get the feeling that the Lord was overjoyed at her perception and therefore made an exception to His rule of not being sent at that time to the Gentiles, but to the house of Israel.
I think the extraordinary sensitivity of the Lord Jesus is
reflected in the many examples of Him displaying extraordinary perception and
precognition of what had happened or was going to happen. He had felt that
Nathanael was sitting under a fig tree before they even met (Jn. 1:48); He knew
the Syro-Phoenician woman’s daughter had been cured
(Mk. 7:29); He knew the thoughts of men, etc. Now all this may have been due to
the Father directly beaming that knowledge into Him through a Holy Spirit gift
of knowledge. Maybe. And this was the explanation I
assumed for many years. But I have noticed in myself and others that at times,
we too have flashes of inexplicable precognition; we somehow know something’s
happened. I remember sitting next to a sister, and she suddenly came over
looking distressed. She simply said: “John Barker’s mother has just died”. And
so indeed it was. I think we’ve all had such things happen. And we share the
same nature which the Lord had. So my restless mind wonders, and no more than
that, whether His extraordinary precognition was not simply a result of a bolt
of Holy Spirit knowledge, but rather an outflow of His extraordinary
sensitivity to other people and their situations. This Lord is our Lord, the
same today as He was back then yesterday. In any case, living as such a
sensitive person in such a cruel and insensitive and blunt world would itself
have been almost unbearable. And yet He was like that for us, the insensitive,
the ignorant, the selfish and the uncaring, in so many moments of our lives.
7:32-35 Many of the Kingdom
prophecies of healing were it seems consciously fulfilled in the Lord’s
healings: Is. 35:6 LXX the stammerer healed = Mk.
7:32-35; Is.
35:3 = Mk. 2:3-12; 3:1-6; Is. 35:8,10 = Mk. 11:1 Bartimaeus
following on the Jerusalem road. The Kingdom prophecy of Zech. 14:21 that there
will no longer be a trafficker in the Lord's house was
fulfilled by the Lord's casting out the traders from the temple. This doesn’t
mean that these passages will not have a glorious future fulfilment.
But in the person of Jesus and in the record of His life we see the “Kingdom
come nigh”, as He Himself said it did. We can so focus on the future fulfilment that we can forget that He was the Kingdom in
the midst of men; the essence of our eternal future, of the coming political
Kingdom of God, was and is to seen in Him. Satan fell from Heaven during His
ministry ((Lk. 10:18), as it will at the second coming (Rev. 12).
7:33 Because the tongue controls swallowing, surely the man was frothing in his own spittle. And yet the Lord spits and puts His spittle on that of the man, to show His complete ability to identify with the human condition.
The
Lord Jesus used well known medical techniques in His ministry (Mk. 7:33; Jn.
9:6); not because He needed to use them, but in order to somehow get His
hearers at ease. And so, it seems to me, He used the language of demons. He
dealt with people in terms which they would be able to accept.
7:36- see on Mk. 5:19,20.
8:2 Reflect how the Lord called His men unto Him, and informed
them that He had compassion on the hungry multitude. He said no more than that.
But the disciples immediately started bleating on about how there was no way
they had the money nor ability to arrange so much bread in a deserted place
(Mk. 8:2). They understood that their Lord had transferred His compassion onto
them; all that was true of Him became true for them. He wanted to feed
the multitude; He was feeling compassionate to the crowd; so,
axiomatically, so must they. And so must we today, as we face the crowds too.
Whatever are the feelings, the mind, of Jesus towards this world; so must our
mind be. And He came, without controversy, above all to give His all, to die,
for this world’s redemption.
8:4 “From whence shall we
get bread here in the wilderness?” is how Peter / Mark recorded their question
to the Lord (Mk. 8:4). But the wording is so very similar to the LXX of Ex.
16:3, where a faithless Israel asked the same of Moses; and Moses responded, as
did the Lord, in providing bread from Heaven. Did the disciples actually say
those words? Would they really have said the very words which Israel did in one
of their lowest ebbs of faith and understanding? My suggestion is that they did
indeed say something similar in essence, but Mark / Peter purposefully recorded
it in terms which highlight the similarity with unbelieving Israel- to as it
were emphasize how weak the disciples were at that point. Peter was the
public leader of the early ecclesia, and yet the Gospels all emphasise his
weaknesses. The Gospels all stress the disciples’ lack of spirituality, their
primitive earthiness in comparison to the matchless moral glory of God’s Son,
their slowness to understand the cross. But there are also more studied
references to their failures. Mark’s account of their words at the feeding of
the crowd is shot through with reference to the attitude of faithless Israel in
the wilderness: “Where shall we [‘And this includes me, Mark...this is what we
said to Him...’] get bread to satisfy this people in the wilderness?”.
8:6 The
Lord gave the broken bread to the disciples, eloquently speaking of the
gift of His life. They in their turn “did set before the people” (Mk. 8:6). We
must pass on that which was given to us by the Lord. Paul is our example in
this (1 Cor. 11:23). We must, of course, have a valid relationship with the
Lord in the first place, feeling we have definitely received something from
Him, if we are to pass it on. The Greek term for “set before” recurs in 1 Tim.
1:18 and 2 Tim. 2:2 concerning how we simply must
pass on the word which has been given to us. Quite simply, if we’ve really
heard it, really received it, we must pass it on.
8:14-21 The Lord’s teaching style continually revolved around posing explicit and implicit questions to His hearers. John’s Gospel contains a total of 161 questions; and one brief passage in Mark (Mk. 8:14-21) records how the Lord asked seven questions in quick succession. In this sense, the Lord Jesus intended to be intrusive into human life; He penetrates the depths of our being. His call to pick up a cross and follow Him was radical- so radical, that His hearers both then and now tended to [even unconsciously] negate the totally radical import of His demands.
8:15 The preaching of the Kingdom by us is likened to leaven- a symbol for that which is unclean (Mk. 8:15; 1 Cor. 5:6-8). Perhaps the Lord used this symbol to show that it is our witnessing as humans, as the sons of men, which is what will influence the ‘lump’ of humanity. People are increasingly acting like the personalities they feel they are expected to be, rather than being who they are.
8:17 If, as
we have discussed elsewhere, Mark is really Peter’s Gospel, it is surely
significant that Mark especially emphasizes how Peter especially didn’t
understand the need for Jesus to suffer crucifixion (Mk. 8:17-21,27-33; 9:6,32; 14:37). Showing the chinks in our own armour is surely the way to be a credible warrior for the
Gospel.
8:17- see
on Mk. 7:18.
8:18 There's so much we don't perceive as we should, so much we are blind to. And this blindness separates us from God. It frustrates the Lord Jesus; he is angry when those who have eyes to see (i.e. have been converted) still don't see (Mk. 8:18).
8:19-21 On their own admission in the Gospel
records, the understanding of the disciples was pitiful. Not only did they not
really listen to the Lord’s words, the words of the Only Begotten Son of God,
but they retained many misconceptions from the world around them which did not
accept Him. Thus they failed to see after two miracles relating to bread, that
literal bread was not so significant to the Lord (Mk. 8:19-21)
8:22- see
on Mk. 5:1.
8:23 Ultimately, we will only truly see in the Kingdom (Is.
29:18; 42:6; 1 Cor. 13:12). Then we will know (see) face to face. We will see
God face to face, i.e. understand Him. It follows therefore that in some ways
we are blind, or partially sighted, now. This is indicated by the Lord's
symbolic healing of the blind man in two stages (Mk. 8:23-26). Firstly, the man
saw men as if they were walking trees. Probably he scarcely knew what a tree or
man looked like. Yet he is described as receiving his sight at this stage (8:24
Gk.). And then the Lord touched his eyes again, and again he is described (in
the Greek) as receiving his sight (8:25- same phrase as in v.24). This time he
saw all things (Gk.) clearly. This surely represents the full spiritual vision
of the Kingdom. According to this type, we are at the stage of seeing men as if
they are walking trees, perhaps wildly guessing about some things, lacking the
most basic sense of proportion. Perhaps when we speak so glibly about
"eternal life" or being in the Kingdom, we are speaking as that
partially healed blind man.
8:24 Having a true, accurate self-perception and appreciating the
tremendous significance of the true person as opposed to our mere personas...
this affects our relation to others. We will seek to decode the images
presented to us by our brethren, and relate to the Christ-man within them, to
the real and true person rather than the persona they act out. Because we see
the Christ within them, the real Duncan or Dmitry or Ludmila
or Sue or Jorge… we will realize that relationships are worth fighting for. The
world of unbelievers then becomes perceived as a mass of persons waiting to be
born, to become born again after the image of Christ through their conversion
and baptism. The healing of the blind man as recorded in Mk. 8:22-26 is unusual
in that the healing was in two stages. Initially the man only “beheld men as
trees, walking”. As a blind man, he would have had very limited experience of
people. He initially saw them merely as part of the landscape, as important to
him as trees. But the aim of the miracle was to convict him of this, and lead
him to understand people as more than trees, more than just part of the natural
creation with as much meaning as trees. That man represented us all; part of
coming to the light, of receiving spiritual sight, is to perceive the value and
meaning of persons; to see the world of persons rather than a world of things.
No longer will we divide people as the world does into winners and losers,
successes and failures; rather will we see in each one we meet a potential
brother or sister. For they have all been invited into God’s family, insofar as
we pass them the invitation.
8:25- see
on Mt. 20:32.
The way the Lord healed people reflects His sensitivity- He
commanded food to be brought for a girl who had been dead and was therefore
hungry (Lk. 8:55), He healed the blind man in two stages so that he wouldn’t be
scared when he first saw people moving (Mk. 8:25).
8:27 Mark, who as we have suggested was effectively Peter writing, records three instances of where the Lord’s prediction of the cross was met by the disciples’ misunderstanding, and His subsequent efforts to teach them the real meaning of discipleship, and the paradoxes which this involves:
|
|
Mark 8 |
Mark 9 |
Mark 10 |
|
Geographical description |
Mk. 8:27 |
Mk. 9:30 |
10:32 |
|
Note that the incident took place
whilst they were on the road walking |
8:27 |
9:31 |
10:33,34 |
|
Misunderstanding by the disciples |
8:32,33 |
9:32 |
10:35-41 |
|
Jesus calls the disciples to Him,
implying they were no longer following behind Him |
8:34 |
9:35 |
10:42 |
|
Teaching about true cross-carrying
discipleship |
8:34-9:1 |
9:33-37 |
10:42-45 |
|
Paradox |
Save life / lose life |
First / last |
Great / least |
The point is,
that following Jesus in the way involves picking up and carrying His cross. But
this repeatedly wasn’t understood by the disciples, and they seem to have
stopped walking behind Him as they should’ve done. Be aware that Mark is a
transcript of Peter’s preaching of the Gospel message; He’s surely pointing out
how terribly slow he had been himself to pick up the fact that walking behind
Jesus is a call to carry a cross. And of course a glance back at our own
discipleship and walk behind Jesus indicates just the same with us; and perhaps
we should admit that more freely in our preaching, in order to like Peter make
a stronger appeal for men to follow Jesus with no misunderstanding of what this
involves.
Qualms of conscience about ‘wasting time’ can so often be
part of a guilty fear of not having ‘done’ enough. The Lord Jesus was not beset
by guilt, and a sensitive reading of the Gospels reflects the way that this
ultimately zealous servant of the Lord never appeared to be in hurry. He had ample
time to speak to the woman He met at the well (Jn. 4:1-26), to take time out
with the disciples (Mk. 8:27), He had the leisure time to admire wild flowers
(Mt. 6:28), comment upon a sunset (Mt. 16:2), to go through the lengthy process
of washing the feet of His men (Jn. 13:5) and to be able to answer their naieve questions without the slightest hint of impatience
(Jn. 14:5-10)… and of course to walk some distance to find a place conducive to
prayer (Lk. 5:16).
8:29- see
Jn. 1:41.
Twice in Mark, Jesus is addressed as "Messiah" but
He replies by calling Himself "the Son of man" (Mk. 8:29-31; 14:61,62). If this was His preferred self-perception, should it
not be how we perceive Him?
Peter is set up as our
example and pattern. The records portray him in such a way that we see so
clearly the similarities between him and us. The good
intentions, the flashes of zeal, the miserable failures, the essential loyalty
to the Man who was better than he. The Gospels also portray Peter as the
representative of the group of disciples. It is Peter who answers when the Lord
asks a question of them all (Mk. 8:29 cp. the other accounts). The way Jesus
looks upon all the disciples as He speaks to Peter makes Peter some kind of
representative of them all in the Lord’s eyes (Mk. 8:33). In Mt. 16:17 Peter is
commended for having had the Father reveal Jesus to Him. Yet Mt. 11:27 says
that the Father reveals the identity of His Son to all who truly come
to Him. Thus Peter is representative of all who have truly perceived the Son’s
identity in Jesus of Nazareth. In one Gospel, all the disciples ask a question,
while in the parallel passage Peter is stated to have asked it (Mk. 7:17 cp.
Mt. 15:15 and Mt. 21:20 cp. Mk. 11:21). Even outsiders considered Peter to be
representative of all the disciples (Mt. 17:24). “Peter and those with him” is
how the group is described (Mk. 1:36; Lk. 8:45 Gk.; 9:32). Peter’s crucial
confession that he believed that Jesus was the Son of God is repeated almost
verbatim by all the disciples, some time later (Jn.
6:69; 16:30). He is truly the representative disciple.
The confession of Messiahship and this incident of trying to stop the Lord dying are juxtaposed in Mark’s Gospel, which seems to be Mark’s transcript of the Gospel account Peter usually preached [note, e.g., how Peter defines the termini of the Lord’s life in Acts 1:21,22; 10:36-42- just as Mark does in his gospel]. Surely Peter is saying that yes, he had grasped the theory that Jesus of Nazareth was Messiah; but the import of Messiahship was totally lost upon him. For he had utterly failed to see the connection between Messianic kingship and suffering the death of the cross. He knew Jesus was Messiah, but strongly rejected the suggestion Messiah must suffer. And yet the Lord warmly and positively grasped hold of Peter’s positive understanding, such as it was. The Lord’s comment ‘Get behind me’ was exactly the same phrase He had earlier used to the ‘satan’ in the wilderness when the same temptation to take the Kingdom without the cross had been suggested. It could even be that Peter was the ‘satan’ of the wilderness conversations; or at least, in essence he was united with that satan. Hence the Lord told him that he was a satan. And interestingly, only Mark [aka Peter] describes the Lord as being tempted in the wilderness of satan [rather than the devil]. And he records how he was a satan to the Lord later on.
The effort required in interpreting Jesus is, it seems to me, designed by God, whose word it is which we are discussing. The intention is to make us think about Jesus, struggle with the issue of His identity and nature, in order that we should understand Him better, and thereby love and serve Him the more intently. Perhaps that is why so little is recorded of Jesus- all the speeches and actions of Jesus found in the Gospels would've occupied only three weeks or so of real time. The rest of His life, words and actions we are left to imagine, given what we do know of Him. He wants us to reflect, as He did the disciples, "Whom do you think I am?" (Mk. 8:29). Perhaps that is why at least in Mark's Gospel there is the theme of Jesus not wanting men to be told in point blank terms that He was Messiah.
8:32 When He spoke of the cross and His sacrifice, His followers either changed the subject or turned away. They were even against the idea of crucifixion (Mk. 8:32; 9:32-4; 10:35-40). They failed to see the centrality of the cross. And these reactions can characterize our response to the cross, both in terms of turning away from considering its physicalities, and also in our own cross-carrying. And yet there is a sense of inevitability about the cross. We must face these things. Circle all the times in John 19 words like "therefore" occur (and cp. Acts 2:23). Consider how Luke records the indefatigable determination in the Lord's face during the final journey up to Jerusalem. There is the same inevitability about our cross carrying; even if we flunk it all the way through our lives, we eventually come to death. My name chiselled by some disinterested artist on a gravestone, with the radio playing in the background as he sits hunched up in his workshop.
8:33 The Lord “rebuked” Peter for seeking to stop Him die on the cross (Mk. 8:33). But the very same Greek word has occurred just prior in the narrative, when Peter has just declared Jesus to be “the Christ of God”. The Lord responded by commending Peter for his blessed insight, but the record continues: “And [Jesus] straitly charged them [s.w. “rebuked”] them, and commanded them to tell [i.e. preach to] no man that thing”, and He goes on to underline to them how He must suffer on the cross (Lk. 9:21). Why did the Lord both commend and rebuke Peter for discerning that He was indeed the Christ of God? Surely because, in the context, Peter understood Messiah to be someone who would there and then bring salvation without the cross. Again we see how there was something in Peter as there is in us all which somehow revolted at the idea of real cross carrying. And it was for the same reason that the Lord “straitly charged” [s.w. rebuked] those who wanted to blaze around the news that He was Messiah- because they didn’t perceive that the Messiah must first suffer and rise again before being declared in fullness “Lord and Christ”.
8:34- see on Gal. 6:10.
8:34-37 I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that it is the process of our engagement with God's word, our love of it, our integrity in considering it etc., which is therefore more important to God than our grasping the final 'truth' of each clause in a final, Euclidean sense. By saying this I take nothing away from the fact that "the truth" is "in Jesus", that there is a wonderful personal reality of salvation for each of us in Christ, a living personal relationship with Him. My point is simply that God's intention in giving us His word is surely not to relay to us a heap of individual specific truths- for the written word isn't the best way to convey such things to simple, illiterate folk, nor indeed to computer-assisted students of our own times. Rather does He seek us to enter into relationship with Him and His Son, and He uses His word and its ambiguities as a way of achieving this. The Lord Jesus used language like this- consider how He uses the word psuche, life, in Mk. 8:34-37. We are to lose our life in order to find life... and "what does a man gain by winning the whole world at the cost of his true self? What can he give to buy that self back?" (NEB). The ambigious usage of psuche is surely in order to get us thinking about our relationship with Him. And thus the Lord's parables often end with questions which have open-ended, ambiguous answers, through which we reveal and develop our relationship with Jesus- e.g. "What will the owner of the vineyard do?" (Mk. 12:9- kill them? be gracious to them? give them yet another chance? keep them as His people anyway?). I am not saying that correct interpretation of Scripture doesn't matter; rather am I saying that in some ways, in some places, in some aspects, interpreting the Lord's words is designed by Him to be open-ended rather than intended to lead us all to identical conclusions.
8:35 The Lord Jesus paralleled "my sake and the gospel's" with "me and my words" (Mk. 8:35,38). He Himself thus understood the Gospel to be His words.
Preaching, in whatever form, is not glamorous. It is a sacrifice of self, a not saying and doing as we feel, a surrendering of our own rights- for the sake of others’ salvation, both in the preaching of the Gospel and in helping our brethren to salvation. To lose life is paralleled with the Lord to unashamedly witnessing to Him in an unbelieving world; and He calls us each one to lose our lives in this way (Mk. 8:35).
8:36 Mt. 16:26 records the Lord as teaching: “What will it profit a man [i.e. at the future judgment], if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?”. Mk. 8:36 has: “What does it [right now] profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?”. Could it be that the Lord said both these things at the same time- to make His point, that the essence of judgment day is being decided right now by our decisions today? And the Lord’s next words make the same point: “What shall [at judgment day] a man give in return for his life?” (Mt. 16:26) is matched by Mk. 8:37: “What can [right now] a man give in return for his life?”. The question we will face at judgment day, the obvious issue between winning for a moment and losing eternally, or losing now and winning eternally… this is being worked out right now. The choice is ours, hour by hour, decision by decision.
8:37 Having spoken of the need to take up the cross daily, the Lord Jesus employed this form of logic to encourage people to really take on board what He was suggesting: " Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross...for whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, and the gospel's, the same shall find it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own life (AV " soul" )? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mk. 8:34-37). If we follow Christ, we must lose our natural life. If we don't, even if we gain the whole world, we will lose our natural life. I must lose my life, one way or the other. We need to go through life muttering that to ourselves. God asks our life, our all. If we hold it back in this life because we want to keep it for ourselves, He will take it anyway. The cross was a symbol of shame (Heb. 12:2 speaks of the shame of the cross). In this context verse 38 continues: " Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed" at the day of judgment. We either go through the shame of carrying the cross now, especially in our personal witnessing to those around us; or we will suffer the eternal shame of rejection (Dan. 12:2); our shame will then be evident to all (Rev. 16:15).
8:38- see on Rom. 1:16.
Being ashamed of Christ's
words doesn't just apply to not speaking up for the Truth when someone invites
us to a topless bar after work. It's equally true, and the punishment for it
just the same, in the context of not speaking out Christ's word in the
ecclesia, to our very own brethren (Mk. 8:38 = 2 Tim. 1:8).
Having spoken of the need to take up the cross daily, the Lord Jesus employed this form of logic to encourage people to really take on board what he was suggesting: "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross...for whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, and the gospel's, the same shall find it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own life (AV "soul")? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mk. 8:34-37). If we follow Christ, we must lose our natural life. If we don't, even if we gain the whole world, we will lose our natural life. I must lose my life, one way or the other. We need to go through life muttering that to ourselves. God asks our life, our all. If we hold it back in this life because we want to keep it for ourselves, He will take it anyway. The cross was a symbol of shame (Heb. 12:2 speaks of the shame of the cross). In this context verse 38 continues: "Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed" at the day of judgment. We either go through the shame of carrying the cross now, especially in our personal witnessing to those around us; or we will suffer the eternal shame of rejection (Dan. 12:2); our shame will be evident to all then (Rev. 16:15).
The Lord Jesus will be ashamed of the rejected when He comes in the glory of the Father (Mk. 8:38). There is a telling juxtaposition of ideas here- shame and glory. Amidst the utter glory of the Father's throne, surrounded by Angels, the Lord will be sitting there with eyes downwards in shame as the rejected stand before Him and walk away. The Proverbs speak of how shame is to be the ultimate end of the wicked, and glory the end of the righteous. Yet it is the rejected who go away "into shame". They will be "ashamed before him at his coming". Yet the Lord will so feel for even the rejected, that He feels for them and reflects their feelings. This is no stern-faced judge chasing away those He is angry with. This is a window into the Lord's ineffable love and feelings even for those for whom it truly is too late, for whom the way to the tree of life is now barred.
The way the Lord Jesus says that He will be "ashamed" of those He has to reject (Mk. 8:38) opens an interesting window into what it means to have Divine nature. It doesn't mean that we will not then know the range of emotions which we have as humans today- for we are made in God's image. To think of the Lord of Heaven and earth, on the throne of His glory, sitting or standing there "ashamed"... because of His people. And shame is really a concept relevant to the presence of others- and the others who will be present will be the Angels and ourselves. Before us, we who are ourselves so weak and saved by His grace alone, He will feel shame because of those He has to reject. But there's another way of looking at the Lord's 'shame'. It is the rejected who will have shame in that day (Dan. 12:2). Such is the nature of the Lord's love and empathy that He will somehow feel their shame, feel embarassed for them as it were. Which thought in itself should banish for ever any idea that we are coming before an angry Master. The Lord of grace is the One who will be, and is, our judge. And even in His condemnation of men, His essential love shines through. His condemnation of Israel involved them wandering for years in the wilderness; but during that wandering, "in all their affliction, he was afflicted" (Is. 63:9). God shared in their feelings and suffering of rejection; just as the Lord Jesus will share in the shame of those who walk away from Him at the last day in shame. God's being with Israel during their wilderness wanderings is cited in Am. 2:10 as an example of His especial love for His people.
9:1 The Lord will essentially be the same as the Gospels present Him when we
see Him again. This is why Jesus even in His earthly life could be called
"the Kingdom of God", so close was the link between the man who
walked Palestine and the One who will come again in glory. “They see the
Kingdom of God come” (Mk. 9:1) is paralleled by “They see the Son of man
coming” (Mt. 16:28). Indeed it would seem that the references in the Synoptic
Gospels to the ‘coming’ of the Kingdom are interpreted in the rest of the New
Testament as referring to the personal ‘coming’ of the Lord Jesus (e.g. 1 Cor.
16:22; Rev. 22:20). In that very context of referring to Himself as "the
Kingdom of God", the Lord speaks of His return as 'the days of the Son of
man'- the human Jesus. And yet He also speaks in that context of how after His
death, men will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, i.e. how He had
been in His mortal life (Lk. 17:20-26). As He was in His mortal days, so He
will essentially be in the day of His final glory.
9:5 Throughout the Lord's ministry, Peter had a mental barrier to the idea of his Lord suffering and dying. It could be argued that his desire to build tents and remain in the mountain of transfiguration was rooted in this- Moses and Elijah had just spoken with the Lord Jesus about the path He must take to death, and Peter somehow wants the Lord to stay there in the mountain (Mk. 9:5). And yet Peter's later preaching has so much to say about the Lord's death. And his letters contain quotations and allusions from Isaiah's suffering servant prophecies (1 Pet. 2:21 etc.). Further, if we accept the idea elsewhere discussed that Mark's Gospel is a transcript of Peter's preaching of the Gospel, it becomes significant that Mark's version of the Gospel likewise emphasizes Jesus as the suffering servant. Thus what Peter was once blind to, he made a special point of preaching. The content of his witness reflected his deep awareness of his past blindness- and therefore his appeal to others to 'get it' was the more powerful seeing that he himself had patently 'not got it' for some years. And it shouldn't be hard to translate his example into our daily experience, speaking of our weaknesses and former blindnesses rather than coming over as the self-congratulatory religious guy.
9:11 The
disciples were evidently still under the influence of Judaism and the religious
world around them, and this background died hard for them. “Why say the
scribes…?”, they reasoned (Mk. 9:11), implying that
their view was of at least equal if not greater weight when compared with that
of the Lord Jesus [as they also did in Mt. 17:9,10]. He had to specifically
warn them against the Scribes in Lk. 20:45,46; He had
to specifically tell them not to address the Rabbis as ‘father’ (Mt. 23:8,9),
implying they had too much respect for them.
9:17 When the father of the dumb child brought him to the disciples, he tells Jesus that “I brought unto thee my son”, but the disciples couldn’t cure him (Mk. 9:17 RV); he perceived Jesus as His followers, just as folk do today.
9:21- see on Mt. 20:32.
9:22 Descriptions of the rejected as gnashing teeth, cast into fire and water, wallowing helpless... is all the language of the demoniac (Mk. 9:18-22). This connection shows at least two things: that there will be a madness in the rejected, the tragic aimlessness of the demented. And secondly, that because the demoniac was cured, it is possible for a man whose behaviour leads to his condemnation now to still repent, before it's too late. And yet although the rejected may appear demented, they may well not feel like this. They will gnash their teeth with anger, not least against themselves.
9:23 In Mk. 9:23, the father of the child was asked whether he could believe [i.e., that Jesus could cast out the demon]. The man replied that yes, although his faith was weak, he believed [that Jesus could cast out the demon]. His faith was focused on by Jesus, rather than his wrong beliefs. Faith above all was what the Lord was focusing on in the first instance.
We frequently commit the horror of limiting God in our attitude to prayer. All too often we see ourselves in the man who believed and yet still had unbelief: "If thou (Jesus) canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us. Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible" (Mk. 9:22,23). The man thought that Christ's power to help was limited: 'If you can do anything to help, well, please do'. The Lord Jesus turned things right round: 'If you can believe, anything's possible' - in other words, God can do anything, but His ability to directly respond to some particular need is limited by our faith, not by any intrinsic lack of ability within Himself. The man hadn't thought about this. He saw God as sometimes able to help a bit; Christ turned the man's words round to show that God's power is infinite, limited only by our faith. The same message is taught by putting together the fact that with God nothing is impossible (Lk. 1:37), and the fact that nothing is impossible unto us (Mt. 17:20). God’s possibility is our possibility; and this is what the Lord was teaching the man who thought that it all depended upon the Lord’s possibility alone. There are other instances where the extent and nature of the Lord's healing seems to have been limited by the faith of the recipient (Mt. 8:13 " as...so" ; 9:29 " according to" ; 12:22 " inasmuch" ).
The word " believe" is omitted from many texts. Thus we
could paraphrase: “Regarding that " If you
can..." which you said- as regards that, well, all things are possible”.
This is the view of F.B. Meyer and Marvin
Vincent. The RV reads: “And Jesus said unto him, If
thou canst! All things are possible to him that believeth”.
It is clear enough that God at times limits His power. He could save everybody,
indeed He wishes to do this, yet He allows human freewill to be genuine and
meaningful, to the extent that not all will be saved. Israel in the wilderness
“limited the Holy One of Israel". He was left by Israel as a mighty man
powerless to save. The Greek word dunatos
translated 16 times "mighty" is also 13 times translated
"possible". God's might is His possibility. But our freewill can
limit that might. All things are possible to God, and therefore all things are
possible to the believer- but if the believer has no faith, then, those
possibilities of God will not occur (Lk. 1:49; Mk. 9:23; 10:27). And so I have
no problem with a God who limits His omniscience.
9:24- see on Lk. 1:13.
It is a
feature of our nature that we can believe and yet disbelieve at the same time.
The father of the epileptic boy is the clearest example: "I believe; help
thou mine unbelief" (Mk. 9:24).
9:25 There
are a number of parallels between the language used of ‘casting out’ demons,
and that used about healings. Jesus “rebuked” demons in Mk. 9:25, and yet He
“rebuked” a fever (Lk. 4:39) and the wind (Mt. 8:26). Demons are spoken of as
having “departed” (Mt. 17:18), yet we read of leprosy ‘departing’ (Mk. 1:42)
and diseases ‘departing’ after cure (Acts 19:12). I’d go so far as to say that
every case of a person being spoken of as demon possessed has its equivalent in
diseases which we can identify today – e.g. epilepsy, schizophrenia.
9:29 They tried to do miracles without even praying about it (Mk.
9:29).
The Lord Jesus went on to comment on the healing of the boy: "This kind (of cure) can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting" (Mk. 9:29). Only intense prayer could send forth this kind of answer from God; He does not act on emotional grounds, just because He feels sorry for somebody. It needs to be noted that initially the man's child was not cured because the disciples didn't have the faith to do it. This teaches that God's activity for others is partly dependent on the prayers of a third party.
9:31- see on Mt. 27:26; Lk. 9:44.
9:31-34
When the Lord taught them about His death, they always seem to have started
arguing amongst themselves; the tremendous significance of what He was saying
was evidently lost on them (Mk. 9:31-34; 10:34-38).
9:35 The
Lord Jesus was the supreme example of spiritual ambition in daily
life. When the disciples debated about who would be greatest in the
Kingdom, Christ said that "If any man desire to be first, the same shall
be...servant of all" (Mk. 9:34,35).
Christ was the "servant of all" because He desired to be the
greatest in the Kingdom. It was this ambition which motivated His
endurance of the daily cross of His life: "Whosoever will be chief
among you, let him be your servant: even
as the Son of man came... to minister, and to give his life a
ransom for many" (Mt. 20:27,28). He was drawing
on the ideas of Hos. 13:1, where Ephraim exalted himself when he humbled
himself to speak to God with the trembling of a true humility. The Lord Jesus
was not esteemed by men in His death (Is. 53:3); the same word occurs in Dan.
4:17, concerning how Yahweh will exalt the basest,
the least esteemed, to be King over the kingdoms of this world. That
made-basest man was a reference to the Lord Jesus. He humbled Himself on the cross,
that He might be exalted. Peter had his eye on this fact when he asks us to
humble ourselves, after the pattern of the Lord, that we might be exalted in
due time (1 Pet. 5:6). Christ desired greatness in the Kingdom, and so
can we; for the brighter stars only reflect more
glory of the Sun (1 Cor. 15:41). This very thought alone should
lift us up on the eagle wings of Spirit above whatever monotony or grief we now
endure.
9:36 In Against
Celsus 3.55, Origen defends Christianity against the allegation that it
requires men to leave the world of men and go mix with women and children in
“the washerwoman’s shop”- presumably a house church Celsus knew. Lucian of Samosata even mocked Christianity as being largely
comprised of children and “old hags called widows”. Marcus Cornelius Fronto likewise mocked the way “children” [and by that term
he would’ve referred to teenagers too] participated in the breaking of bread [Octavius 8-9]. The teaching of the Lord Jesus
was attractive to children / young people. They like women were treated as of
little worth; the Greco-Roman world considered that children had to be taught,
and couldn’t teach a man anything. But the Lord Jesus repeatedly set children
up as examples of discipleship (Mk. 9:36,37; Lk.
9:47,48; as Heb. 12:5-9). So we can understand the appeal of early Christianity
to young people, teenagers, especially girls. O.M. Bakke
has written a fascinating study entitled When Children Became People.
The thesis is that the teaching of Christianity gave disenfranchised people an
identity and meaning as persons- women and slaves are obvious examples- but
this also applied to children / young people. They too were disregarded as
people in Mediterranean society; and yet in Christ they were given their value
as people. In the house church setting, we can imagine how this happened.
Celsus mocks how teenage boys go to Christian house churches to be taught by
women- reflecting how attractive Christianity was for young people.
9:41 His attitude to John’s disciples is very telling. He saw those who “follow not us” as being “on our part”, not losing their reward, as being the little ones who believed in Him; and He saw wisdom as being justified by all her children, be they His personal disciples or those of John (Mk. 9:38-41; Lk. 7:35). John’s men had a wrong attitude to fellowship- they should have ‘followed with’ the disciples of Jesus; and it would seem their doctrinal understanding of the Holy Spirit was lacking, although not wrong (Acts 19:1-5). Indeed, they are called there “disciples”, a term synonymous with all believers in Luke’s writing. And the Lord too spoke in such an inclusive way towards them. No wonder His disciples had and have such difficulty grasping His inclusiveness and breadth of desire to fellowship and save.
9:45 The Lord Jesus spoke several times of taking up the cross and following Him. This is the life you have committed yourself to by baptism; you have at least tried to take up the cross. The full horror and shock of what He was saying doubtless registered more powerfully with the first century believers than with us. They would have seen men in the agony of approaching death carrying their crosses and then being nailed to them. And the Lord Jesus asked men to do this to themselves. Our takings up of the cross will result in damage- the plucked out eye, the cut off foot. And notice that the Lord says that we will enter lame into the eternal life, or enter the Kingdom with just one eye (Mk. 9:45-47). Surely this means that the effects of our self-sacrifice in this life will in fact be eternally evident in the life which is to come. The idea of taking up the cross suggests a conscious, decided willingness to take on board the life of self-crucifixion. Taking up the cross is therefore not just a passive acceptance of the trials of life.
9:46 There's a radical in each of us, even if the years have mellowed it. The way to express it is surely through radical devotion to the Father's cause. On one hand, Jesus spoke to men as they were able to hear it, not as He was able to expound it. Yet on the other, He gave His radicalism free reign. The Sabbath miracles seem to have purposefully provoked the Jews. When He encouraged His men to rub the corn heads and eat them like peanuts as they walked through a field one Sabbath, He knew full well this was going to provoke confrontation. And he said what was anathema to the Jews: "The Law was made for man and not man for the Law". Where there is human need, the law can bend. This was a startling concept for a Jew. Jesus described the essence of His Kingdom as mustard seed, which was basically a weed. It was like a woman putting leaven [both symbols of impurity] into flour. Surely the Lord was trying to show that His message was not so Heavenly that it was unrelated to earthly life. It was real and relevant to the ordinary dirty business of life. The woman who have everything she had was noted by the Lord as His ideal devotee. He taught that it was preferable to rid oneself of an eye or a limb and to sacrifice sex if that is for us the price of entry into the Kingdom (Mk. 9:45-47). The parable of the man who built bigger barns taught that in some senses we should in His service like there's no tomorrow. He expected His followers to respond immediately, to pay the price today rather than tomorrow, with no delay or procrastination. There is an emphasis in His teaching on immediacy of response, single-mindedness and unrestrained giving. This is radical stuff for 21st century people in the grip of manic materialism.
9:47 The personality we will be in the Kingdom will reflect the struggles we have personally endured in this life. Relationships in the Kingdom of God will reflect these. Thus those who had consciously chosen to be eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom are comforted that in the Kingdom they will be given a name and place in God's temple better than of children in this life (Is. 56:5). All the faithful will be given a name and place in the temple; so what especial consolation was this to those eunuchs? Surely the point is that the name (personality) they will then have will gloriously reflect the self-sacrifice and personal Biblical understanding which they went through in this life. This alone proves that the reward will be individual. The Lord's picture of men entering the Kingdom without limbs is surely making the same point (Mk. 9:47); the result of our self-sacrifice in this life will be reflected by the personality we have in the Kingdom. And there is evidence that the Man we follow will still bear in His body, throughout eternity, the marks of the crucifixion (Zech. 13:6; Rev. 5:6).
The
Jews believed that ‘hell’ had three sections: Gehenna, a place of eternal fire
for those Jews who broke the covenant and blasphemed God; ‘the shades’, an
intermediate place similar to the Catholic idea of purgatory; and a place of
rest where the faithful Jew awaited the resurrection at the last day).
This distinction has no basis in the Bible. However, it’s significant that the
Lord Jesus uses ‘Gehenna’ and the figure of eternal fire to describe the
punishment of people for what the Jews of His day would’ve considered
incidental sins, matters which were far from blasphemy and breaking the
covenant – glancing at a woman with a lustful eye (Mk. 9:47), hypocrisy (Lk.
12:1,5; Mt. 23:27–33), not giving a cup of water to a “little one”, forbidding
a disciple of John the Baptist to follow Jesus (Mk. 9:39–43); not preaching the
Gospel fearlessly and boldly (Mt. 10:25–28). These matters were and are shrugged
off as of no eternal consequence. But just like the prophets of Israel did, the
Lord Jesus seizes upon such issues and purposefully associates them with the most dire possible punishment which His Jewish hearers could
conceive – Gehenna. Time and again, the Bible alludes to incorrect ideas and
reasons with people from the temporary assumption those ideas might be true.
The language of demons, as we will show later, is a classic example. And it’s
quite possible the Lord is doing the same here with the concept of Gehenna –
the punishment for the Jew who breaks the covenant and blasphemes. The Lord was
primarily teaching about behaviour, not giving a lecture about the state of the
dead. And so He takes the maximum category of eternal punishment known to His audience,
and says that this awaits those who sin in matters which on His agenda are so
major, even if in the eyes of the Jewish world and humanity generally they were
insignificant.
9:49 He
spoke of the destruction of the unworthy in Gehenna fire, and went straight on
to comment: "For every one shall be salted with (Gk. 'for the') fire, and
every sacrifice shall be salted" (Mk. 9:48,49).
Unless we become a living sacrifice, wholly consumed by God's fire, laying
ourselves down upon the altar, then we will be consumed by the figurative fire
of Gehenna at the day of judgment. Again, there's no
real choice: it's fire, or fire. See on Mt. 3:11; Lk.
15:24.
9:50- see
on Rom. 12:18.
The need for peace amongst ourselves as a community is
brought out in the parable of the salt that lost its saltiness. Straight away,
we’re faced with a paradox- for true salt can’t lose its saltiness, seeing that
sodium chloride is a stable compound, free of impurities. Salt was a symbol in
the Lord’s teaching for having peace with one another. If we don’t have this,
we’re not salt. If we’re not any influence upon others, we’re not salt. It’s as
simple as that.
The Lord realized that it was easy to have an apparent love and peace with our brethren, when actually we have nothing of the sort. In the context of His men arguing with John's disciples, the Lord told a small parable, in which He made having salt in ourselves equal to having peace with our brethren (Mk. 9:38-40; 49,50). He warned that salt which has lost its saltness looks just the same as good salt; but salt that has lost its saltiness is nothing, it's just a lump of substance. Surely He's saying: 'You may think you have peace and love for your brethren, when actually you don't; and if you don't have it, you're nothing, just a lump'. Not without relevance He mentioned that every sacrifice had to have good salt added to it. His point was that all our devotion and sacrifice is meaningless if it lacks the real salt of true love for our brethren. Which is exactly the teaching of 1 Cor. 13. Love is a matter of deep attitude as shown in the small things of life, not the occasional heroism of (e.g.) giving our body to be burned.
The command
to have salt and therefore peace with each other (Mk. 9:50) is fulfilled, Paul
saw, by watching our words (= Col. 4:6).
10:1- see
on 2 Tim. 2:24.
10:5- see
on Dt. 31:9.
10:12 The
Rabbis in Christ’s time were split into two schools on the question of divorce.
One school taught that divorce was available for any reason, whilst the other
said that it was only for sexual impurity. The question was put to Jesus as to
when he thought divorce was possible. It seemed that he was going to be forced
to take sides with one of the two contemporary attitudes. But he cut clean
through the whole thinking of first century Israel by basing his argument on the
principles of Eden: God created man and woman, and joined them together;
therefore, he reasoned, the ideal standard is that there should be no divorce
for any reason, including adultery. This is a cameo of the teaching of Christ;
through radical and fundamental recourse to the Old Testament, his teachings
cut right through all the conceptions and expectations which were present in
the mind of first century Jewry as a result of their cultural conditioning. We
too must cut through the cultural conditioning of our era. In the time of
Jesus, Roman law allowed women to divorce their husbands; some of the women of
Herod’s family got divorces like this. Jesus was aware of this, and commented
upon this local social attitude, roundly condemning it: “If a woman shall put
away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth
adultery”. If Jesus was so unafraid to challenge local cultural attitudes
towards women, why should we think that He merely went along with those local
contemporary attitudes?
10:14 The value of persons felt by the Lord is made very obvious
when we notice His attention to women, children, Gentiles and the mentally ill
/ deformed. These three groups often occur together in the Rabbis’ teaching.
The very people who were not counted as persons, the Lord went out of His way
to express value for. And in this He sets us an example. Children were counted
as of little value- but the Lord spoke about salvation for children (Mk.
10:14), and of the need to become like a child if we are to enter His Kingdom
(Mt. 18:3). This purposeful recognition of the value of all human persons was a
radical and difficult thing in His surrounding culture. And so it can be in
ours too.
10:17 This young man (Mt. 19:20) was a "ruler" (Lk.
18:18). To come to Jesus in a public place ["in the way"] and
running- when rulers were supposed to never run in public but maintain decorum-
all positively indicates a genuine belief in Jesus. Kneeling before Him was
also a public sign of acceptance of Jesus as Lord. But he failed as so many do
with respect to his wealth. He was a yuppy, a high
flier, a rich young man who was also a "ruler". And he wasn't going
to give that up; his 'sincerity' is shown by his sadness [RV "his
countenance fell"] and his going away "grieved" (:22). This
walking away is an anticlimax, not the expected outcome of all the devotion
displayed. But the account is structured in this unexpected way to highlight the
extraordinary significance of a person's attitude to wealth, and how this can
make all their other devotion meaningless.
Inherit-
but Jesus had taught that the Kingdom of God on earth would be 'inherited' by
the poor and meek (Mt. 5:5). If the man had thought that one through, he
would've known the answer ahead of time. If he was rich and young, the chances
are he had inherited his wealth- and he wanted to know how he could inherit
eternity as well. He likely figured that money can buy everything- and in a
strange way, the Lord was saying that the giving of wealth and inheriting
eternity aren
in fact related, although actually ultimate 'goodness' and acceptance with God
can't come from any such work of obedience.
10:18 The
extent to which this man from Nazareth, who sneezed and slept and thirsted as
we do, was really God manifest in the flesh... this needs sustained personal
meditation. That from the larynx of a Palestinian Jew really came forth the
words of Almighty God; to the extent that it had to be said that never man
spake like this man; and He Himself could assure us that heaven and earth would
pass, but not His words (note the links with Ps. 102:25-27; Heb. 1:10-12)...
that this man died for us... rose again, ascended... and now works His saving
work for us, hour by hour. Mark records how a man once in an offhand way
addressed the Lord Jesus as “good master". The Lord’s response was to say
that if the man really
accepted Him as ‘good’ he ought to share His cross, and sell what he had and
give to the poor. The real extent of Jesus’ goodness will move us to deep
personal response, if we truly perceive it.
10:20
"From my youth"- but he was a "young man" (Mt. 19:20). Note
the Lord's grace- instead of being turned away by the man's youthful arrogance,
instead the Lord perceives the positive in him and loves him for it (:21). See
on Mk. 10:40.
10:21 Thou lackest- s.w. to be destitute of.
In response to the man's question "What lack I yet?" (Mt. 19:20). He
lacked nothing materially, but therefore he lacked the important thing-
treasure in Heaven. The word play involving 'lacking' suggests that spiritual
wealth and material wealth are opposites; likewise to give away treasure on
earth is to as it were transfer it to Heaven. All this underscores the point
that we can't have both. All our material wealth is to be given away in order
to get spiritual treasure (Mt. 13:44). "What thou lackest"
is parallel to the phrase Mt. 19:21 records: "If you will be perfect /
complete". The man could still have had a relationship with the Lord if he
hadn't sold all; but he wanted perfection and went away from Jesus because he
couldn't face up to the fact that he wasn't perfect, would be saved by grace
and now by his own obedience. And so many 'perfectionists' have done likewise.
It's perhaps because of the man's tendency to perfectionism that the Lord
prefaced His answer to the question by saying that even He wasn't completely
"good" as God alone is "good" (10:18). The humanity of
Jesus is therefore, in a way, an answer to 'perfectionism'. Not that there is
ultimately any such thing as 'perfectionism', for it cannot be in man to be
perfect. Perfectionism is merely an arrogant illusion. The record in Mt. 19:16,17 brings this out clearer- "Good Master, what good thing shall I do...
why do you call me "good"?
There is none "good"
but one, that is, God". The man thought that by his "good" deeds
he could become as "good" as God, the only "good" One. And
He walked away from Jesus because he was unable to accept that this is not in
fact the case, and that even Jesus Himself stood as 'not good' compared to God;
He stood 'perfect' with God by reason of the relationship He had with God, not
solely on the basis of His good works. However, even total generosity and
giving away of wealth will not bring total completeness. 'You lack one thing'
appears to be an allusion to Ps. 23:1 LXX: "The Lord is my shepherd; not
one thing is lacking to me". To take up the cross and follow the Lord
Jesus as our shepherd, with the loss of material wealth this implies, is the essence
of lacking nothing. For walking with Him is perfection, completeness, our everything.
The very fact that we want to rise up to the heights
commends us to God. When the rich young man, in his zeal for righteousness,
claimed: "Master, all these have I observed from my youth", the Lord
didn't rebuke him for self-righteousness; instead, He beheld Him (with His head
cocked to one side?), He took a long wistful look at Him,
and loved him
(Mk. 10:21). The Lord had a wave of warmth come over Him for that arrogant
young man, simply because He appreciated the evident spiritual ambition which
was within him. It was for this reason that the Father so loved the Son. God
caused the Lord Jesus to approach unto Him; "for who would dare of himself
to approach unto me?" (Jer. 30:21 RSV). The
Father confirmed the Son in His spiritual ambition, recognizing that very few
men would rise up to the honour of truly approaching unto God.
The rich
young man would fain have followed Jesus. But he was told that he must sell all
that he had, give to the poor, and take up the cross to follow Christ (Mk.
10:21). Notice how the ideas of following Christ and taking up the cross are
linked. The man went away, unable to carry that cross, that sacrifice of those
material things that were dearest to him. Peter responds with the strong
implication that he had done all these things, he was following the
Master, and by implication he felt he was carrying the cross. Notice the
parallels between the Lord’s demand of the young man, and Peter’s comment (Lk.
18:22 cp. 28; Mk. 10:21 cp. 28):
|
“Sell all that thou hast and
distribute to the poor |
“We have left all |
|
…and come, take up the cross |
[no comment by Peter] |
|
and follow me” |
…and have followed thee” |
Peter seems to
have subconsciously bypassed the thing about taking up the cross. But he was
sure that he was really following the Lord. He blinded himself to the
inevitable link between following Christ and self-crucifixion; for the path of
the man Jesus lead to Golgotha. We have this same tendency, in that we can
break bread week after week, read the records of the crucifixion at several
times / year, and yet not let ourselves grasp the most basic message: that we
as followers of this man must likewise follow in our self-sacrifice to that
same end.
Take up the cross, and follow me" is inviting us to carry Christ's cross with Him - He speaks of "the cross" rather than 'a cross'. The Greek translated “ake up" is that translated 'to take away' in the context of Christ taking away our sins. Strong says that it implies "expiation" (of sins). This connection, between our taking away / up the cross, and Christ's taking away our sins, suggests that the efficacy of His cross for us depends upon our daily 'taking up the cross'. It is vital therefore that we “take up the cross" if our sins are to be taken away by Him. Of course we cannot literally take up the Lord's cross. Taking up the cross must therefore refer to an attitude of mind; it is paralleled with forsaking all that we have (Lk. 14:27,33), which is surely a command to be obeyed in our attitudes. "Take up" is translated 'take on' when we read of 'taking on' the yoke of Christ, i.e. learning of Him (Matt. 11:29). To take up Christ's cross, to take on His yoke, is to learn of Him, to come to know Him. Yet do we sense any pain in our coming to know Christ? We should do, because the cross was the ultimate symbol of pain, and to take it up is to take on the yoke, the knowledge, of Christ. Consider the contexts in which Christ spoke of taking up His cross:
(1) In Luke 9:23-26 He tells the crowds that they have come to His meetings because of the intriguing miracles of the loaves and fishes. The Lord is saying: 'Don't follow me because of the loaves and fishes; take up my cross'!
(2) The rich young man was willing to be obedient in everything apart from parting with his wealth. In this context, of asking the most difficult thing for him to do, Christ spoke of taking up His cross - in the man's case, giving up his wealth.
(3) The command to take up the cross in Matt. 10:38 is in the context of Christ's description of the family problems which would be caused by responding to His word. Presumably some were willing to follow Christ if they didn't have to break with their families; but Christ asks them to take up the cross in this sense.
In all of these cases people were willing to follow Christ - but only insofar as it didn't hurt them. They were unwilling to take on board the idea of consciously deciding to do something against the grain of their natures and immediate surroundings. Yet this is what taking up the cross is all about, and it is vital for our identification with Christ. It is very easy to serve God in ways which reinforce the lifestyles we choose to have anyway; it is easy to obey Divine principles only insofar as they compound our own personality. By doing so we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we are spiritually active when, in reality, we have never walked out against the wind, never picked up the cross of Christ. Israel were an empty vine, without fruit in God's eyes- because the spiritual fruit they appeared to bring forth was in fact fruit to themselves (Hos. 10:1).
10:22 Walking away from Jesus in sorrow is a picture from the
scenes of the final judgment. In this case, the man rejected himself, he chose
to walk away- just because he couldn't accept that he wasn't perfect.
10:23 Have
riches... paralleled, or expanded, in 10:24, with "those who trust in
riches". To have wealth is to trust in it. Hence the danger of it- wealth militates
against faith. Hence Paul warned "them that are rich in this world that
they... trust not
in uncertain riches but in the living God" (1 Tim. 6:9,10).
10:24- see
on Lk. 18:24.
Astonished-
the disciples were so immature that they thought wealth was a sign of Divine
blessing. And were astonished to hear that it's really hard
for wealthy people to be saved. Hence, in loving pity at their
immaturity, the Lord addresses them as "Children...".
10:25 The camel must shed its load of riches
and goods, so that it can pass through the gate into the Kingdom. But we are
doing that right now! We will pass through the gate into the Kingdom when the
Lord returns (Rev. 22:14), and yet through shedding our materialism, we do it
now. John puts it more bluntly and yet more absolutely: now, through the life
of faith, we have the eternal life, in that we begin to live now the type of
life which we will eternally live. We receive the Kingdom of God here and now,
in that we receive the Gospel of the Kingdom; and if we accept it as a little
child, we begin to enter it, now- in that the lives we live determine whether
or not we will enter it at the Lord’s coming. We are on our way into life! We
have received the Kingdom, our names were written from the foundation of the
world, and only our falling from grace can take that away. This is almost too
good news to believe.
10:27 Having said that it is so hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom- as hard as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle- the Lord comments that ‘what is impossible with man, is possible with God’ (Mk. 10:27). In first century Palestinian Judaism, this saying was a kind of figure of speech for describing a miracle. If any rich person gets into the Kingdom- it will be a miracle. That’s what the Lord is saying. And He says it to us today. Generosity alone, of course, won’t bring us into the Kingdom. It’s not as if we can buy our way in. But there are major implications that our attitude to wealth is in fact a crucial indicator of whether or not we will be there.
Having explained “how hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom”, the Lord went on to comment: “With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible” (Mk. 10:25,27). It is impossible for a rich man to be saved, He seems to be saying. And as we seek to convert the rich and self-satisfied in the societies in which we live, this does indeed seem the case. But although on one hand it is an impossibility, yet not with God: for He desires to seek and save the rich too. And indeed He does, achieving what with men is impossible. And the Father seeks to impress His positive attitude upon us.
10:28 Was Peter really correct to say that he had really “left all”? He evidently had in mind how he had
left his nets and walked away, following Jesus (Mk. 1:18). Then he thought he
was following Jesus in the way the Lord demanded. For some time later, the Lord
“entered into one of the ships, which was (i.e. still, at that time) Simon’s…”
(Lk. 5:1). Peter had been fishing all night in Jn. 21:3- strange, for a man who
had so dramatically left his nets to respond to the Lord’s call. But after the
miraculous catch of fishes, Peter “forsook all, and followed him”. Note that
Mark’s [Peter’s] Gospel omits many incidents, but also uses the device of
repetition to stress what the writer considers significant. Thus in Mk. 1:16
Peter tells us twice that he was
a fisherman [cp. 14:68]. By the time of Lk. 18 and the conversation with the
rich young man, Peter was confident he had forsaken all. But “I go a fishing”
(Jn. 21:3) would suggest that even this forsaking of all had not been so
dramatic. The boats were still there. Peter still carried his fishing tackle
round with him in his pack (Mt. 17:27). The Lord had taught that following Him
meant not just leaving behind for a moment, but selling up and giving the money
to the poor. This Peter had not done. But he assumed that because he was physically
following Jesus, well therefore what the Lord demanded of the rich young man,
he had as good as done; for that young man wouldn’t follow Jesus, but Peter
would. It is easy to understand how Peter reasoned- for the fact we are apparent followers of the Lord in a world which
chooses to reject Him, can lead to an assumption that we must of course be
following just as He asks of us.
10:32 Tragically He so often sought to explain to the disciples about the cross; and yet always they met His efforts either with silence, or with irrelevant changing of the subject, or even protest, in Peter’s case. The tragic mismatch between the Lord’s cross and the mind of the disciples is brought out in Mk. 10:32-40. Having set His face to go up to Jerusalem, the Lord “went before them: and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid". The words imply that He took the lead and walked forcefully a few paces ahead of them in a startling manner. “If anything in the Gospels has the stamp of real and live recollection upon it, it is this". His mind was evidently dwelling in His forthcoming death, in which He may well have foreseen that He would be crucified with sinners on His right and left. But then two of the disciples respond to His prediction of the cross by asking that they should sit on His right and left hand in glory over the others. Here we see, on the Gospel writers own admission, the paucity of their effort to grasp the real message of the cross. May it not be so with us. May we at least strive to enter into His struggle, and be moved to a true and unpretended humility by it.
There was something in His body language during His last
journey to Jerusalem which was nothing short of terrifying to the disciples:
"They were amazed; and as they followed Him, they were afraid" (Mk.
10:32-34). All this came to a climax in His extreme sweating in Gethsemane as
the great horror of darkness began to actually descend on Him (Mk. 14:33-42).
Contrast this with the calmness of suicide bombers or other religiously
persuaded zealots going to their death. The Lord- our Lord- was too sensitive to humanity, to
us, to His own humanity, to His own
sense of the possibility of failure which His humility pressed ever upon Him...
than to be like that. See on Heb. 5:7,8.
10:34-38-
see on Mk. 9:31-34.
10:36 “What would ye that I should do for you?" (Mk. 10:36) was surely said by the Lord with a gentle irony; He had just been speaking of how He would die for them. James and John evidently didn't appreciate the wonder, the blessing, the honour of the fact that the Son of God would love them unto the end. All they wanted was the human blessing, in this life, of being able to tell their brethren that they would be the greatest in the Kingdom. "What would ye that I should do for you" - in addition to loving you unto the death, of loving you with a love greater than that of anyone else? Their minds were all too set on the present, the petty glory of here and now. But when they actually beheld the cross (Lk. 23:49 suggests James also did), they would have learnt their lesson. And so it was with Job. Throughout the core of the book, he consistently addresses God as 'Shaddai', the fruitful one, the provider of blessing. But in the prologue and epilogue, he calls God 'Yahweh'. It may be that He came to know the wonder of God's Name to the extent that he quit his perception of God as only the provider of material blessing.
10:37 When the Lord Jesus promised those who overcome that
they would sit down with Him in His throne (Rev. 3:21), He was surely casting a
glance back at the way His men had asked to sit at His right and left hand, in
His glory (Mk. 10:37). He knew He was promising a future glory far above what
to them must have been the heights of their spiritual ambition.
10:38 In Gethsemane He spoke of drinking the cup of His final death and suffering. But earlier He had spoken in the present tense: “the cup that I drink of... the baptism that I am baptized with" (Mk. 10:38). The drinking of the cup of death was ongoing. Likewise there are several verses in Psalms 22 and 69 which are evidently relevant to both the Lord's life and also His final hours on the cross. "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up" is in the context of the cross, but is applied to an earlier period of the Lord's life (Ps. 69:9 cp. Jn. 2:17). "I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children" is another example (Ps. 69:8); it is a prophecy about the final sufferings of the Lord in crucifixion, and yet it is elsewhere quoted about the experiences of His ministry.
James and John pestered the Lord to give them glory in His Kingdom. He didn't refuse their request; He simply turned the question round to them: 'Can you really carry my cross? Don't be so obsessed with getting salvation out of me. Concentrate instead on carrying my cross, being baptized with my baptism, and then the corollary of that- sharing my resurrection- will follow in its own time'.
10:39- see on Gal. 3:27.
10:40 The altogether lovely manner of the Lord is shown in how He dealt with immature understanding and ambition amongst others. James and John wanted to sit on either side of the Lord in His Kingdom glory. Instead of telling them to be more humble, the Lord gently went along with them- so far. He said that this great honour would be given to “them for whom it is prepared” (Mk. 10:40). And whom is this? All those redeemed in Christ have that place “prepared” (Mt. 25:34). The immediate context speaks of the cross (Mk. 10:33,45), and it is this which prepared the places in the Kingdom (Jn. 14:1,2). Thus the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, and the Kingdom was prepared from the foundation of the world (Mt. 25:34). Actually, all those redeemed in Christ will sit down with Him in His very throne- not just on the right and left side of Him (Rev. 3:21). Indeed, the Lord’s subsequent parable about the places prepared in the Kingdom, and people being on the right and left hand of Him at judgment, with the rejected on the left hand, was perhaps His gentle corrective to James and John. But my point is that He was so gentle about the way He corrected their error. Actually twice before in Mark 10, the Lord had shown this spirit. The arrogant young man told Him that he’d kept all the commandments from his youth [and, get it, he was only a young guy anyway…]. And yet “Jesus beholding him, loved him” (Mk. 10:20). And then moments later in the record, Peter starts on about “Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee”- and the Lord so gently doesn’t disagree, even though Peter’s fishing business and family were still there for him to return to it seems, but promises reward for all who truly do leave all (Mk. 10:28-30). So just three times in one chapter, we see the gentle patience of the Lord with arrogant, small minded people, who thought they understood so much and were so righteous. They were nothing compared to Him. But the way He deals with them is indeed “altogether lovely”.
10:43 When the disciples argued about who should be the greatest, the Lord replied that "it is not so among you: whosoever will be great among you shall be your minister" (Mk .10:43 R. V.). He expected them to live up to the righteousness which He imputed to them.
10:44- see on Phil. 2:7.
It is a great NT theme that we are the bond slaves of the
Lord Jesus. And yet we are also to be slaves to all His people (Mk. 10:44), for
the Lord Jesus is
His people: they are His body. To serve our brethren is to serve the Lord
Himself. The Lord Jesus expects
us to relate to Him as bond slaves. He speaks of how a bond slave can be
working in the field all day, come home tired, and then be immediately
commanded by the master to prepare his meal and only then get his own meal- and
the master won't thank him, but just expects it of him. And the Lord Jesus
applies this to His relationship with us. The Lord of all grace is, by absolute
rights, a demanding Lord. He commented that we call Him Lord and Master, and we
say well, for so He is (Jn. 13:13). If we are truly the bond-slaves of the Lord
Jesus, we have no 'free time' for ourselves. Neither will we expect to have
time for ultimately our 'own thing'. The craze for personal and social freedom
which sweeps the modern world will leave us untouched. Ultimate freedom and
total independence is not for us.
10:45 In all ways, the Lord is our pattern. He was a servant of
all, and so should we be. His servanthood dominated His consciousness. He said
that He came not [so much as] to be ministered unto, but so as to minister,
with the end that He gave His life for others (Mk. 10:45). In His death for
Israel, He was “a minister [lowly servant] of the circumcision”, i.e. the Jews
(Rom. 15:8). Yet we are
His ministers, His slave / servants. The same word is used for how the women
and Angels ministered unto Him (Mk. 1:13,31; 15:41),
and how He anticipated men would minister to Him (Jn. 12:26 Gk. cp. 2 Cor.
11:23; Col. 1:7; 1 Tim. 4:6). But both then and now, He came and has come
in order to minister / serve us, rather than to be served by us; even though
this is what we give our lives to doing. Yet He is still all taken up with
ministering to us. He came more to serve than to be served. We are slaves, all
of us, of the lowest sort. It’s hard for us to realise the lowliness of being a
Roman slave; and the sheer wonder of being made a free man, purely by grace.
This is what each and
every one of us has experienced. Servanthood / slavery should be
the concept that dominates our lives; for we cannot be a servant of two masters
(Mt. 6:24). We are to be wholly dedicated to the service of the Lord Jesus and
those in Him. See on Lk. 17:10.
11:1- see
on Mk. 7:32-35.
11:13 God
is in search of man, and so is His Son. We surely all at times get depressed,
feeling we are nothing and nobody, just used rather than needed. But just as we
have our need to be needed, so does God, seeing we are made in His image and
likeness. We see it all worked out visually when the Lord Jesus was starving
hungry (Gk.), and saw a fig tree far away. He walked towards it, fixing His mind
upon the tree. It wasn't the time for figs, but the tree had leaves, and He was
so hungry, He'd have been been prepared to eat the
most immature, unripe figs (Mk. 11:12,13). This is an
acted parable, of His search for man, for fruit upon us. The same imagery of a
fig tree bearing fruit is used by the Lord in Lk. 13:6 to speak of His hope of
spiritual fruit from Israel. But when the Lord finally arrived at the leafy fig
tree, He found no fruit at all, and so He cursed it, and it withered. The same
word is used about the withering of those rejected at the last day by the Lord
Jesus- they will be withered, and then gathered up and burnt (Jn. 15:6). So as
the Lord Jesus strode the long way towards the fig tree, focused upon it with
all the focus and hope of a hungry man, so eager and hopeful to find fruit...
so He is striding towards us with the same hope in us, of finding at least
something, however immature, however unripe. But at least
something. The shortening of the days for the sake of a remnant is
predicted in Is. 65:8,9: “As the new wine is found in
the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it: so will I
do for my servants’ sakes, that I may not destroy them all. And I will bring
forth a seed [Jesus] out of Jacob… and mine elect shall inherit it, and my
servants shall dwell there”. The “elect” are paralleled with “my servants”.
Because of them, the minority of faithful fruit, the whole tree is not
destroyed. This is exactly the image of the fig tree parable; because of the
beginnings of spiritual fruit on the tree of Israel, the whole nation will not
be cut off and they will be saved by the coming of the Kingdom
11:14 Mk.
11:14,21,22 imply that Peter was amazed that something
the Lord had predicted about the fig tree had actually come true.
Sometimes God speaks as if He has rejected Israel, and other times as if they will eternally be His people. Such is the extent of His passionate feelings for them. And the Son of God entered into this- He said that no man would eat fruit of the tree of Israel for ever (Mk. 11:14), when in fact Israel one day will fill the face of the earth with fruit (Is. 27:6). We too, in the spirit of the prophets, are to enter into these feelings of God. God’s threats to punish His people and His desire to forgive them don’t somehow cancel each other out as in an equation. They exist within the mind of God in a terrible tension. He cries out through Hosea of how His many ‘repentings’ are “kindled together” as He struggles within Himself to give up His people as He has threatened (Hos. 11:8).
The fig tree would never bear fruit (Mk. 11:14). But
Israel will blossom and bud and fill the earth with fruit (Is. 27:6); hence the
fig tree bearing fruit when it has been condemned never to bear fruit is such a
dramatic sign (Lk. 21:29,30.). The Lord spoke His words about Israel's future
budding with full knowledge that He (and several OT passages) had condemned her
to eternal barrenness. He knew, however, the paradox of grace.
11:17 Some of the Bible’s ‘prophecies’ are command more than prediction. The Lord Jesus criticized the Jews for trading in the temple because “Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer” (Mk. 11:17). We can easily read this as meaning that one day, a ‘house of prayer for all nations’ was to be built in Jerusalem. But in that case, why should not the Jews trade in the temple there and then, well before this was to happen, say, 2000 years later? The Lord surely means that the prophecy that the temple “shall be called…” a house of prayer was a command more than a prediction. It “shall be” a place for prayer and not trading. The ‘fulfilment’ of this statement was dependent upon them praying there and encouraging all nations to pray there; yet they could limit the fulfilment of the ‘prophecy’ by stopping Gentiles praying there, and by discouraging prayer there because of their trading policies. Thus the Lord saw the prophecy as more of a command than mere prediction. ‘Prophecy’ really means the speaking forth of God’s word, rather than the foretelling of the future. The closer one looks, the more conditional prophecies and Divine statements there are. “My house shall be called a house of prayer” had the extent of its possible fulfilment limited by the Jews turning the temple into a trading centre (Mk. 11:17).
11:20 Take the incident of the
withered fig tree in Mark 11:20-24 as an example of where Jesus didn’t want us
to perceive Him as too different from us. The disciples are amazed at the faith
of Jesus in God’s power. He had commanded the fig tree to be withered- but this
had required Him to pray to God to make this happen. As the disciples looked at
Him, wide eyed with amazement at His faith, very much into the “Wow!”
experience, the Lord immediately urged them
to “have faith in God... whosoever
[and this was surely His emphasis] shall [ask a mountain to move in faith, it
will happen]... therefore I say unto you,
Whatsoever things you
desire [just as Jesus had desired the withering of the fig tree], when you pray [as Jesus had done
about the fig tree], believe that you
receive them, and you
shall have them”. I suggest His emphasis was upon the word you. He so desired them
to see His pattern of faith in prayer as a realistic image for them to copy.
How sad He must be at the way He has been turned into an
other-worldly figure, some wonderful, kindly God who saves us from the
weakness and lack of faith which we are so full of. Yes, He is our Saviour, and the
“Wow!” factor leads us to have a burning and undying sense of gratitude to Him.
But He isn’t only
that; He is an inspiration. It is in this sense that the spirit of Christ can
and does so radically transform human life in practice. Of course, we have
sinned, and we continue to do so. For whatever reason, we are not Jesus. But
our painful awareness of this [and it ought to be painful, not merely a
theoretical acceptance that we are sinners]... shouldn’t lead us to think that
His example isn’t a realistic pattern for us.
11:21- see on Mk. 8:29; Jn. 21:7.
11:22 We are asked to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect (Mt. 5:48); to have the faith of God (Mk. 11:22 AVmg.). By faith in the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, we can attain these heights; but not in our own strength. In our every spiritual struggle and victory against the flesh throughout the day, we are playing out the finest and highest heroism that any playwright could conceive: the absolute underdog, the outsider without a chance, winning, at the end, the ultimate victory against impossible odds.
11:22-24 Dear Peter exemplified how we so often behave, when
he gasped at how deep was Jesus’ faith, as he saw the fig tree withered in
exact accord with the Lord’s earlier words. But the Lord turns on Him
immediately: “[You]
have faith in God… you
must believe, and whatever you
ask in faith will happen, if you like me, see it as if it has happened at the
point of asking for it” (Mk. 11:22-24).
11:23- see
on Rev. 8:8.
It was the Lord's radical usage of language which led to the
huge, seething anger which He provoked, culminating in the demand for His
death. He seems to have purposefully reinterpreted and reapplied symbols and
ideas which spoke of Jewish national pride, and applied them to something quite
different. His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on an ass, not a war horse, and
in order to die... led to so much anger exactly because He had subverted such a
familiar and longed for hope and symbol. We have to remember the huge value of
symbols in the first century, living as we do in an age when the written word
has become paramount. For the illiterate, symbols and acted parables were of far
greater importance than the written word. We may think of 'Jesus' in terms of
His teachings recorded at a specific chapter and verse of our Bibles. To the
illiterate first century Jew, they thought of Him in terms of what He did- His cleansing of
the temple, His image of the temple mount being plucked up and cast into the
sea. The Lord's teaching about the temple was especially subversive- for the
temple played a "decisive role... in resistance toward Rome". It was
"the focal point of the hope of national liberation, and hence was
regarded as a guarantee of security against the pagans". But what does
Jesus teach about the temple? It will be destroyed, His body shall be greater
than the temple, it was to be a place of blessing for pagan Gentiles, because
of Israel's wickedness the abomination would be set there, every place was
hallowed ground, He was the true priest, etc. According to the Mishnah Berakoth
9.5, the faithful were to wash the dust from their feet before entering it- and
Jesus washed His disciples feet in likely allusion to this before they say down
in a private room and broke bread with Him (Jn. 13:1-20). As the Lithuanian
Jewish Rabbi Jacob Neusner commented about Jesus'
institution of the 'breaking of bread': "The holy place has shifted, now
being formed by the circle made up of the master and his disciples". The
Lord Jesus used the term "the blood of the covenant" at the last
Supper, with reference to how Zech. 9:9-11 prophesied that the restoration of
Israel's fortunes would be because of this "blood of my covenant".
Yet the restoration / redemption which the Lord had in mind was
not politically from Rome, but from sin and death through His blood. The temple
had no great role in the Lord's teaching. By driving out traders from the
temple, the Lord was effectively suggesting that the Kingdom prophecy of Zech.
14:21, of how in the restoration there would be no Gentile traders there, was
coming true in Him. And the elders of the Jews are thus paralleled by Him with
the Gentiles. He speaks of how "this mountain"- and He must've been
referring to Zion, the temple mount- was to be plucked up and cast into the sea
of Gentiles (Mk. 11:23). And He was alluding to Zech 4:6,7,
which spoke of how the mountain of Babylon would be cast into the sea at the
restoration- with the 'splash' expressed in the words "Grace, grace".
This was to associate the Jewish temple system with Babylon- just as Revelation
17 likewise does. The Lord opened up a new universe of symbols; in an almost
kaleidoscopic way, He twisted all the well loved symbols around. And when you
mess with symbols, people get angry. Having lived in the Baltic States many
years, I observed how inflammatory is the issue of messing
with war memorials. Russians and Balts can
slag each other off verbally all they wish, and people shrug. But mess with
symbols, remove or rededicate a war memorial- and the crowds are on the
streets. And this was, partially, what led to the fury with Jesus which led to
His lynching. He who proclaimed non-violent revolution, the radical
transformation of the inner mind into God's temple, Israel's true Messiah, was
seen as the ultimate threat to all that it meant to be Jewish- all because His
language and actions subverted the beloved symbols of the social club. When we
experience this... we are sharing something of His sufferings.
The Lord's utter confidence in the power of prayer is reflected in the way He speaks to lepers, to waves of the sea, to blind eyes and deaf ears, commanding them to do things. Yet clearly this was a result of His own prayer to the Father. Yet He was so confident that what He had requested would really come true. And in Mk. 11:23 He challenges us to tell mountains to be removed. He doesn’t tell us to ask God to move a mountain; rather does He teach us to talk directly to the mountain. It’s been observed that Biblical Hebrew has no word for ‘yes’; instead, in order to show agreement, the preceding words of the speaker are repeated. Examples are in Esther 5:7 Heb. and Gen. 18:15. Seeing that Biblical Hebrew reflects to us something of the mind of God, it seems to me that we’re being taught by this to believe that what we ask for from God, we will receive; our request is the nature of the answer. Hence the need for care in formulating what we ask for, believing that God’s ‘yes’ will be effectively a repeating back of our words to us.
The Christian must "believe that what he saith cometh to pass" - present tense. He is to visualize the immediate fulfilment of what he asks for in the court of Heaven. Compare the RV and AV of Ps. 92:11 in this connection: "Mine eye also shall see [RV 'hath seen'] my desire… and mine ears shall hear [RV 'have heard'] my desire". The confusion in the tenses is surely intentional- David really felt he had already received that which he prayed for. He shows this again by the way in which he uses tense moods perhaps purposefully ambiguously in Ps. 56:13. The AV has: “Wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling…?”, whereas the RV renders it: “Hast thou not delivered my feet from falling?”. Another example is in Ps. 18:44,47: “The strangers shall submit themselves… God [right now, by faith in prayer] subdueth the peoples”. David perhaps perceived that the requests of prayer must also be some sort of statement that the prayer was answered already.
The Lord taught that we should believe that "what [we] say [in prayer] shall come to pass" (Mk. 11:23 RV). This is very much the language of God's word- what He says, comes to pass for sure. And so we're being invited to see our words in prayer as effectively like God's words; for if we pray according to His word, surely we will be heard. See on Jn. 15:7.
Consider how the Lord taught ambition in prayer- He put before His men the real possibility of moving a mountain into the sea, if that was what was required (Mk. 11:23). This example wasn't off the top of His head; He was consciously alluding to Job 9:5, where Job says that God alone, but not man, can do something like moving a mountain into the sea. And the Lord is saying: 'Yes, God alone can do it; but such is the potential power of prayer, that He will hearken to your requests to do such things- and do them'. The whole process of Nazariteship was to encourage the normal Israelite to have the ambition to rise up to the spirit of the High Priest himself; the restrictions governing Nazariteship were a purposeful echo of those regarding the High Priest. The way God describes Himself as depriving Israel of "wine or strong drink" (Dt. 29:6) throughout the wilderness journey is Nazarite language: as if in all their weakness and profligacy, God still sought to inspire them to rise up to the heights.
11:24 The experience of answered prayer inspires us to pray yet more. "What things soever ye desire, believe that ye [did] receive them, and ye shall have them" (Mk. 11:24 Gk.) can be read as meaning that we should remember how we received things in the past, and therefore we should have faith that the things we now desire really will be likewise granted. It is for this reason that the prayers recorded in the Psalms constantly look back to previous experiences of answered prayer as a motivation for faith and Hope: Ps. 3:4,5; 44:1-4; 61:5; 63:7; 66:18-20; 77:4-16; 86:13; 94:5,7-19; 116:1; 120:1,2; 126:1,4; 140:6,7. Jeremiah likewise (Lam. 3:55,56). And even the fact other believers had received answers to prayer inspired David's faith in prayer (Ps. 74:11-15; 106).
The
close link between thought and prayer is developed in the Lord’s teaching in
Mk. 11:23,24: “Truly I say unto you, Whosoever shall
say unto this mountain, Be taken up and cast into the sea; and shall not doubt
in his heart, but shall believe that what he says comes to pass; he shall have
it. Therefore I say unto you, All things you pray and ask for, believe that you
receive them, and you shall have them”. Our self-talk is to be fantasy about
the fulfillment of our prayers. Yet how often do we hit ‘send’ on our requests
to God, like scribbling off a postcard, and hardly think again about them?
Even in His mortal life, the Lord was eager to as
it were close the gap between Himself and His followers, so that they didn't
feel He was an unattainable, distant icon to admire, but rather a true friend,
leader, King and example to realistically follow. Thus when He cursed the fig
tree, having prayed about it and firmly believing that what He had asked would
surely come about, Peter marvelled: "Master, behold, the fig tree you
cursed is withered!". The Lord replies by urging Peter to "Have faith
in God. For truly I tell you, whosoever
(and this is the stress, surely) shall say unto this mountain (far bigger than
a fig tree) , Be removed be cast into the sea (a far greater miracle than
withering a fig tree overnight), and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall
believe that those things which he says will come to pass (referring to how the
words of Jesus to the fig tree were effectively His prayer to God about it); he
shall whatever
he says. Therefore I say unto you,
Whatever you
desire (just as I desired the withering of the fig tree), when you pray, believe that
you receive them, and you
shall have them (just as I did regarding the fig tree)" (Mk. 11:21-24). Peter's
amazement at the power of the Lord's prayers was therefore turned back on him-
'You too can
do what I just did, and actually greater things are possible for you than what
I just did'. That was the message here- and He repeated it in the upper room,
in encouraging them that "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believes
on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall
he do" (Jn. 14:12).
11:25 The Lord assumed that whenever we pray, we will include a request for forgiveness. Not only is this one of the few requests in His model prayer, but Mk. 11:25 reflects the same assumption: "Whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any one; that your Father… may forgive you" (RV). Whenever we pray we should be seeking forgiveness. And the Lord also implies that whenever we pray, we will almost always have something against someone else. For He knew well that human society is inevitably filled with misunderstandings and bad feelings against each other.
11:26 The conditions on which God's love and forgiveness operate was likewise stressed by Christ: "When ye stand praying, forgive... that your Father... may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses" (Mk. 11:25,26). God's eagerness to forgive us is therefore reflected in His eagerness to see us forgive others. His desire to make all grace abound towards us is something beautiful, something wondrous.
11:30 The 'naturalness' of Jesus becomes all the more powerful when we grasp Biblically that Jesus is our representative; exactly because He was really, genuinely human, He is such a natural and powerful imperative to us in our behaviour. Take, for example, His perception of His own baptism. Surely why He went through with it was to show His solidarity with us, who would later be baptized. He lined up along the banks along with big time sinners, nobodies, dear old grannies, weirdos, starry-eyed youngsters, village people stuck in the monotony of a hand-to-mouth existence, all of them standing there probably half-naked... and took His turn to be baptized. When asked later to account for His authority, Jesus asked whether His questioners accepted John's baptism as from Heaven or from men (Mk. 11:30). This wasn't merely a diversionary question; it was dead relevant. His authority was [partly] because He had been baptized by John. This was how much John's baptism inspired Him. It meant so much to Him, to have been thus identified with us. And it was that very identification with humanity, as the "son of Man", that gave Him His authority.
11:32 Although we would all agree
that the Bible is the inspired word of God, it is quite possible that we fail
to feel this
as we might when we read it. The people "verily held John to be a
prophet" (Mk. 11:32 RV) but they rejoiced only for a short time in the
light of his words. They rejected his most essential message- whilst still
believing he was an inspired prophet. Or, thinking they believed he was.
12:6 It is noteworthy that the parable of
Mk. 12:6 has Jesus describing Himself as both a servant- the last servant- and
the only beloved son of the vineyard owner.
“Surely they will reverence my Son” is
the thought imputed to Almighty God in the parable, as He sends His only Son to
seek for spiritual response in Israel (Mk. 12:6). The parable frames God as
almost naive in believing that although Israel had killed the prophets, they
would reverence the Word made flesh, and the speaking of God to them in Him.
Yet of course God knew what would happen; but in order to express the
extraordinary, unenterable extent of His hopefulness,
He is framed in this way. Just as the Father thought that His people “surely”
would reverence His Son, so He was ‘certain’ that if His people went to Babylon
in captivity, “surely then shalt thou be ashamed… for all thy wickedness” (Jer.
22:22). But the reality was that they grew to like the soft life of Babylon and
refused to obey the command to return to God’s land. Such was and is the
hopefulness of God. The Father had the same attitude to Israel in Old Testament
times: “I thought that after she had done all this, she would return to me, but
she did not” (Jer. 3:7 NIV). The Lord Jesus reflected the Father’s positive
spirit in the way He framed the parable of the prodigal son to feature the
Heavenly Father as running out to meet the returning son, falling on his neck
and kissing him… in exactly
the language of Gen. 33:4 about Esau doing this to Jacob. The connection can’t
be denied; but what was the Lord’s point? Surely He was willing to see
something positive in the otherwise fleshly Esau at that time,
He as it were took a snapshot of Esau at that moment… and applied it to God
Himself, in His extravagant grace towards an unworthy Jacob. This was how
positive minded the Lord was in His reading of even the darkest characters.
12:9- see on
Mk. 8:34-37.
The Lord’s parable of the vineyard is shot through with
allusions to the vineyard parable of Is. 5. When the Lord asks “What will [the
owner of the vineyard] do?” (Mk. 12:9), those who picked up the Isaiah 5
allusions would have found the answer in Is. 5:4,5:
“What… to do… what I will do”.
12:10 Mind-
s.w. understanding, imagination. Our imaginations, our
small scale dreams and fantasies as we go about life, should be devoted to
loving God through loving our neighbour. "What could I do for him /
her...?" should be a recurrent question.
12:14- see
on Jn. 10:13.
12:29-31 Christ
taught that the command that God was one and therefore we must love God included the second
command: to love our neighbour as ourselves. The first and second commands were
in fact one command; they were inseparably part of the first commandment (Mk.
12:29-31). This is why the 'two' commandments, to love God and neighbour, are
spoken of in the singular in Lk. 10:28: "this do…".
See on Mt. 22:40.
Jesus was asked which was the first (i.e. the most important) commandment; we would expect Him to just recite one of them, and to say 'Well, there you are, that's my answer; that's the first one, either numerically, or in terms of importance'. But in reply to this request to name just one of the ten commandments, He actually quotes two of them. "Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these". There is no greater command (singular) than these two. So Jesus saw those two commands as one, the greatest, most important principle of our life before God. Yet He begins by speaking of the unity of God as expressed in His memorial Name, Yahweh your elohim, and says that this is what will lead to us loving God with all we have, and also to our loving our neighbour as ourselves. The Lord is saying that if we really appreciate this idea of the unity of God, that Yahweh is our God, then we will therefore love God, and also our neighbour. So what does it mean, to love our neighbour as ourselves? In the context of the Decalogue, the neighbour of the Israelite would have been his fellow Israelite, not the Gentile who lived next door to him. The command to love our neighbour as ourselves is elsewhere given an equivalent under the new Covenant: to love our brother or sister in the ecclesia as ourselves. Gal. 5:14 and James 2:8 quote this command in the context of ecclesial life.
The Lord said that the first, the most important, of the commandments was that God is one Yahweh. He didn't see this as an abstract doctrine. He saw the doctrine of the unity of God as a command, it demands behaviour in response to it. Thus the command continues: "And (therefore) thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart... soul... strength... mind... and the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment (singular) greater than these (two)" (Mk. 12:28-31). The Lord saw those two commandments as effectively one commandment; remember, He was answering the question about what was the greatest (singular) commandment. Christ saw the unity of God as part and parcel of the command to love our neighbour (in Christ) as ourselves. Why? Surely He saw that the facts that God's Name is one, and all His people are in some way in His Name, mean that we must love others in that Name as much as we love ourselves and as much as we love God. Now apply this to the phenomena of Christian disillusion with the church. We are in God, and God is one. So we are all one with each other. Loving our neighbour in Christ as ourselves is placed parallel with loving God with all our heart, strength etc. This means that the main drive of our service to God should be devoted to loving our brother, our neighbour. All those who are baptized into the Name must be loved as we love ourselves. This in itself sinks the possibility of a 'desert island' existence. We just can't live alone. We can't quit on the brotherhood if we want to love God. And this tough, far reaching conclusion comes from knowing that God is one, and all in Him are therefore one.
12:30- see on 1
Thess. 1:2.
12:32 In the same way as we cannot choose to live in isolation from the Father and Son, so we cannot separate ourselves from others who bear the same Name. The Scribe well understood all this: "There is one God... and to love him... and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices" (Mk. 12:32,33). Those whole offerings represented the whole body of Israel (Lev. 4:7-15). The Scribe understood that those offerings taught that all Israel were unified together on account of their bearing the same Name of Yahweh. We must love others who bear that Name "as ourselves", so intense is the unity between us. In some ways, we should lose the sense of our own self interest; we should somehow be able to have the same spiritual interest in others (for this is true love) as we do for ourselves. So this sense of true selflessness which we would dearly desire is connected with an appreciation of the doctrine of the intense unity of God and of His Name, and of the glorious principle of God manifestation. By sharing the one Name, we are one together. See on Jn. 5:23.
12:33 The Scribe said that the most important commandment to love God “with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly (Gk. ‘in an intellect-having way’), He said unto him, Thou art not far from the Kingdom”. Notice how ‘understanding’ with the intellect is put higher in the list than loving one’s neighbour. The fundamental thing is to correctly understand, and this will naturally lead to a life of practical love. Our surrounding ‘Christian’ world has inverted this order; love of neighbour has been placed above correct understanding of God. Because the Scribe answered in an intellect-having way, the Saviour said that He was near to the Kingdom. To reach the Kingdom therefore involves correct understanding. The words of Mk. 12:33 allude to a number of OT passages which likewise show the superiority of knowledge and practical service over sacrifices (1 Sam. 15:22; Hos. 6:6; Mic. 6:6-8). Putting them together we find the following parallels:
|
To
obey God’s word |
is
better than sacrifice |
|
To
listen to God’s word |
is
better than sacrifice |
|
To
show mercy |
is
better than sacrifice |
|
To
know God |
is
better than sacrifice |
|
To
be humble and just |
is
better than sacrifice |
|
To
understand God |
is
better than sacrifice |
Understanding
God, hearing His word, knowing God (all acts of the intellect) are therefore
paralleled with practical things like loving out neighbour, showing mercy,
justice etc. These practical things are an outcome of our correct knowledge of
God.
12:34 A correct understanding of the Law and the sacrifices meant that a man was near the Kingdom (Mk. 12:34).
12:43- see on 2 Cor. 8:11,12.
12:44 The Lord condemned the Pharisees for
devouring widow’s houses (Mk. 12:40), but then goes on to show how the widow
who threw in all her wealth to the treasuries of the corrupt Pharisees had
actually gained great approval in God’s eyes by doing so (Mk. 12:44). Out of
evil, good came. The Lord didn’t just lament the cruel selfishness of the
Jewish leadership. He pointed out how God worked through even this to enable a
poor woman to please Him immensely. There is a wondrous ecology in all this;
nothing is lost. Nothing, in the final end, can be done against the Truth, only
for the Truth.
13:4 The disciples repeat the Pharisees' question about
when the end will come- in almost the same words. They were clearly influenced
by them (Lk. 17:20 cp. Mk. 13:4).
13:4 The disciples (in their childish way)
showed the Lord the greatness of the temple, and he commented that soon it
would be destroyed. They asked the obvious question: When? Usually, the Lord
didn't reply directly to questions; he gave answers which branched out into
something altogether more comprehensive than the original question (Consider
Mt. 13:10,11; 15:2,3; Mk. 10:4,5; Lk. 17:20; Jn. 3:4,5; 4:9,10; 6:28,29;
8:53,54; 11:8,9; 14:22,23). Nearly every example of the Lord Jesus answering
a question includes this feature. To the disciples, the destruction of the
temple meant the end of the age- it was a calamity. They assumed that if the
temple was destroyed, it must be replaced immediately by their Jesus coming
again with his Messianic Kingdom. Their minds were still not suitably distanced
from their Judaist background. They asked one question: "When shall
these things (the destruction of the temple) be? and
what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?" (Mk.
13:4). Mt. 24:4 can make it seem that they asked two questions: "When
shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of they coming, and of the
end of the world?". But the parallel record in
Mk. 13:4 makes it clear that actually these were parts of the same question
concerning the temple's destruction. To the disciples, the coming of Christ,
the end of the world and the temple's destruction were all the same event. The
Lord answered their question by speaking of how there would be the destruction
of the temple, but his real coming and the main ending of this world would be
at a future date. His answer was therefore fundamentally relevant to his second
coming, although built into it was some reference to the destruction of the
temple in AD70. As He so often does, the Lord turned round the terms of the
question. They thought his "coming" would be at the temple's
destruction, and so they asked for signs of His "coming". But Christ
shows that this wasn't a correct view: His real "coming in the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory" (Mt. 24:30) would not be then, but
after all the various signs he described were fulfilled. He was surely saying:
'OK the temple will be destroyed, and many of the signs I'm giving will have
some application to that period; but the destruction of the temple isn't the
sign of my coming. Note the signs I give you, and watch for their fulfilment:
and then you'll know when to expect my coming'.
13:5 The persecution of God's people
was spoken of by the Lord as being one of the clearest signs. And he also
emphasized that apostacy within the ecclesia would be the other major sign.
When they asked him for the signs, Mk. 13:5 says that Jesus began by
warning them of deception from false teachers. The way the NT writers allude to
this passage indicates that they saw this deception as not coming from the
crazy bogus-Messiahs of the world, but from false teachers within the
ecclesia, sometimes supported by apparent possession of the Holy Spirit
(Eph. 5:6; 2 Thess. 2:3; Tit. 1:10; 2 Jn. 7). A state of total ecclesial
apostacy was the sign which Jesus began with, according to Mk. 13:5.
13:9 When the Lord said that His people would preach before rulers ‘for a witness / testimony against them’ (Mk. 13:9), we are left wondering when and how exactly this will be. It’s hard to come to any other conclusion than that this refers to how our words of preaching will be quoted back to the hearers at the judgment. It’s an incidental proof that it is hearing the word of the Gospel that makes a person responsible to the last judgment. But in our context, my point is that our words of preaching in this life will be quoted back to those who heard them, at the day of judgment. The simple point is, our words aren’t forgotten. They will be quoted back, in some form, at the day of judgment. And yet it appears we can speak and think how we like in this life. Indeed we can; but all these things will ultimately surface again in the last day.
The Lord predicted that His people would be cast out of the
synagogues, as if He was happy that Christianity remained a sect of Judaism
until such time as Judaism wouldn’t tolerate it. His prediction that His people
would be beaten in synagogues (Mk. 13:9) implies they would still be members,
for the synagogues only had power to discipline their own members, not the
general public. The Lord had no fear of ‘guilt by association’ with wrong
religious views such as there were within Judaism.
13:9-13-
see on Mk. 14:68.
13:10- see
on Acts 16.
13:11- see
on Ex. 4:12.
13:13 The Olivet prophecy as recorded in Mark 13 has many
allusions to the sufferings of our Lord, thereby suggesting that our sufferings
during the coming tribulation will make us fellowship the cross as never
before. The whole idea of darkness, earthquake, open graves, rocks shaking etc,
which we read of in the Olivet and other last day prophecies is evidently the langauge of the crucifxion. The
description of suffering before "the end" comes (Mk. 13:7,13; Mt. 24:14) invites connection with Christ's death also
being described as " the end" , coming as it did after a period of
suffering (Mt. 26:58; Lk. 22:37; Jn. 13:1). This connection is strengthened by
the way in which each record of the Olivet prophecy leads straight on into the
sufferings of the Lord Jesus. There is to be a “little while” between the death
of those persecuted in the last days, and the coming of the Lord; using the
very same word which John uses for the “little while” of the three days of the
Lord’s death (Rev. 6:11; Jn. 16:16-19). Rev. 12 speaks of how the dead bodies
of the tribulation victims will rest for three and a half days, just as the
Lord’s body did. They will fully fellowship His death and therefore His
resurrection. Similarly, the idea of all God's word being fulfilled by the
Lord's death (Lk. 24:44; Jn. 19:28; Acts 3:18) follows on from the prophecy
that all will be fulfilled at the time of suffering which heralds the second
coming (Lk. 21:22). Mt. 24:13 commenends
those who endure to the end- of the great tribulation. The same word
occurs in Heb. 12:2,3 about Christ enduring the cross-
we fellowship the cross during the last day tribulation. The word in Mt. 24:29
for “the tribulation” is used in Col. 1:24 about the
afflictions of Christ. And as the Lord’s critics could not find a way to answer
Him, so in our tribulation, all our adversaries will not be able to gainsay us
(Lk. 21:15). The Lord in Jn. 16:2,4,32 used the term “the hour” to refer both
to the ‘hour’ of His own sufferings, and the ‘hour’ of tribulation for His
people. He clearly saw what He was about to endure as being repeated in the
latter day tribulation of those for whom He was about to die.
The other tribulation prophecies,
notably in Revelation, are also shot through with allusions to Christ's
passion.
|
"They shall deliver you up to
the councils... |
As Christ to the Sannhedrin |
|
beaten... |
Christ buffeted |
|
rulers and kings for a testimony... |
Chief priests, Herod, Pilate |
|
brother shall betray the brother... |
Judas; Peter's denial? |
|
turn back to take up his garment... |
John Mark's linen garment |
|
false Christs... |
Barabbas |
|
the sun shall be darkened... |
As at the crucifixion |
|
watch and pray... |
" Watch with me" ;
Gethsemane |
|
at even... |
Last Supper |
|
at midnight... |
Gethsemane |
|
at the cock crowing... |
Peter's denials |
|
in the morning... |
Trial and crucifixion |
|
find you sleeping" |
Disciples in Gethsemane |
13:14 The
Lord speaks in a latter day context about “let him that readeth understand”
Daniel’s prophecies (Mk. 13:14)- referring to the
special gift of understanding them which Daniel himself was told would come in
the very end time. But note the parallels in the Lord’s teaching here: “Let
him… understand… let him… not go down… let him… not return… let them… flee”.
The understanding He refers to is not merely academic. It is the understanding
that will lead to concrete action.
The Lord's Olivet prophecy as recorded by Mark has so many allusions to the Maccabean revolt under Mattathias ("the abomination", flight to the hills, "let the reader understand" and many other phrases are all quotations from 1 Macc. 1-3). But in this context the Lord warns of false Messiahs- as if He considered the Maccabean heroes to be just that. And interestingly it is Mark more than any other Gospel writer who stresses the Messiahship of Jesus throughout the crucifixion record. A crucified Messiah was to the Jews a contradiction in terms. The idea of Jewish revolutionaries marching triumphantly to Jerusalem to liberate it was common in Jewish thought at the time- but Luke emphasizes that Christ's last journey to Jerusalem and triumphant entry to it was in fact in order to die the death of the cross there. The battle had been redefined by the Lord Jesus- not against Rome, but against internal sin and Jewish religious hypocrisy. Victory was by self-crucifixion, not military might. This was just too much for Jewish nationalism, just as legalists today end up baying for the blood of those who preach grace and not works. See on Heb. 5:6.
13:18 "Pray ye that your flight (the time of your flight) be not in winter" . This indicates that the exact timing of events in the tribulation will be changeable in accordance with the fervency of our latter day prayers. An AD70 application for this is hard to find; it may be that the exact timing of the Roman offer of amnesty was dependent on the intensity of prayer by the besieged Jerusalem ecclesia. That ecclesia, rent as they were by schism, false doctrine and materialism (if we accept the evidence that Hebrews was addressed to them) was a type of the faithful remnant of the last days. They were finally sorted out by the events of AD67 - 70, cp. the latter day tribulation.
13:19 The LXX uses this same word for “tribulation” in several passages pregnant with latter day significance:
“The day of my [Jacob’s] distress” at the hands of Esau (Gen. 35:3)
“The anguish of his [Joseph’s] soul” at the hands of his half brethren and the Ishmaelites (Gen. 42:21)
“I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?” (Dt. 31:17)- a passage in the Song of Moses regarding Israel’s latter day tribulations.
“Thus saith Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and blasphemy” (2 Kings 19:3)”- Sennacherib’s Assyrian invasion at this time was a clear prototype for the latter day invasion described in Ezekiel 38 and elsewhere.
“The time of Jacob’s trouble” from which he will be delivered (Jer. 30:7)
“There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book” (Dan. 12:1). This time of trouble is specifically for Israel in the last days.
Mk.
13:19 speaks of how "in those days" those in Judaea should flee to
the mountains; "for in those days shall be affliction, such as was
not from the beginning of creation... neither shall be (referring to Dan. 12:1
concerning our last days)... except that the Lord had shortened those days...
in those days, after that tribulation... then shall they see the
son of man coming". Surely “in those days" shouts for a continuous
application to the same "days" - the days of the second coming. At
best, "those days" can have a primary reference to the events of
AD70, but the main fulfilment of the whole prophecy must be in the last
days. This point seems impossible to answer by those who disallow any reference
to the second coming.
13:20 Both the Lord Jesus and Israel are called "the
elect" (Is. 42:1; 45:4); both are fulfilments of
the servant songs in Isaiah. The days will be shortened for the elect's sake
(Mk. 13:20); for the sake of Christ's intercession, as well as ours.
The vision
will in one sense “not delay / tarry” (Hab. 2:3 RV). And yet the same verse speaks
of how it does “tarry”. Perhaps in a human sense it delays, but not from God’s
perspective. “It hasteth toward the end” (Hab. 2:3
RV) could imply that things are speeded up in their fulfilment
in the very end time; for the elects sake the days until the second coming are
shortened (Mk. 13:20). And yet things are also delayed- the bridegroom tarries
/ delays, to the point that many realize that the Lord has delayed His coming,
and begin to act inappropriately. One reconciliation of these paradoxes could
be that some prophecies are speeded up in their fulfilment
because of the elect would otherwise lose their faith; and yet other prophecies
seem to be delayed in fulfilment because of the
unspirituality of others. The possibility of changing the fulfillment of
prophetic time periods is to be found in Hab. 3:2: "In the midst of the
years revive..."- i.e. please, God, do it immediately rather than waiting
until the end of days.
The Lord’s description of the shortening of the days uses some rather odd past tenses: “Except the Lord had shortened the days, no flesh would have been saved: but for the elect’s sake… he shortened the days” (Mk. 13:20 RV). One wonders if we have here an allusion back to the days of Noah, where again there was the possibility that no flesh would have been saved. The 150 days of flooding is perhaps the basis of Rev. 9:10, where Israel is to have 150 days of tribulation at the hands of her Arab enemies in the last days. The connection between the passages would therefore seem to be teaching that the final 150 days tribulation will be shortened due to the repentance of the remnant.
For the elects' sake, the days to the second coming will
be shortened (Mt. 24:22); but the Lord also said, perhaps in the same
sentence, that the days have already been shortened (Mk. 13:20). This
alone shows that God conceives of time in a radically different way to how we
do. The shortening of time in a sense hasn't take place, but in another sense
it has. There can therefore be no trite explanation of how God can hasten the
second coming in accordance with our prayers, and yet also have a set time to
favour Zion.
13:24- see
on Lk. 21:24,25.
"The sun shall be darkened" after the tribulation
(Mk.13:24), as it was when Jesus died (Lk.23:45). See on Mk. 13:13.
13:27 The preachers of His Gospel are His messengers / ‘angels’ reaping in the harvest and proclaiming God’s victory. And yet these are the very things which the Angels are described as doing in the last day (Mk. 13:27; Rev. 14:6-14). Yet we are doing it right now. In the preaching of the Gospel, we are sharing with the Angels in their work. We’re in tandem with them.
13:32,33 It is commonly thought that even the Lord Jesus doesn't know the time of his return, only the Father does. During his mortality, the Lord said exactly this (Mk. 13:32)- at the time he was speaking to the disciples, he himself didn't know. But after his resurrection and glorification, the Lord made two statements to the disciples which he surely intended to be connected: "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth... it is not for you (the inquisitive eleven standing on Olivet) to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power" (Mt. 28:18; Acts 1:7,8). But all the Father's power has been given to His glorified Son, and this therefore includes knowledge of the "times and seasons" of the second coming. In the exalted Lord "are hid all the riches of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3); it is thereby inconceivable that the Father would still keep back some knowledge from the Son. The point of all this is that when the Lord Jesus said that "of that day and that hour knoweth (present tense) no man, no, not the angels... neither the Son" he was not laying down a general principle for all time. He was speaking of the situation at that time: 'You can't know now, indeed at the moment even I don't know; but these are the signs which will tell the believers when I'll come'. By implication he was saying 'You can't understand them, although I'm giving them to you, but in the future some will understand them, because these signs will accurately pinpoint my return'. This was exactly the spirit of what the Angel told Daniel when he too wished to know when Messiah would come in glory; he was basically told 'It's not for you to understand, but in the last days understanding of these things will be increased among God's people; they will know the time, but you can't'. There are so many connections between the Olivet prophecy and Daniel that perhaps it is legitimate to think that the Lord was alluding to the Angel's refusal to tell Daniel the time of Messiah's coming. That the Lord was primarily referring to the twelve when he spoke of them not knowing "when the time is" (Mk. 13:33) is confirmed if we appreciate that the Lord Jesus sometimes uses "the time" as a reference to the appointed time for his own death (Mt. 26:18; Mk. 14:35; Jn. 7:6,8). The disciples were fascinated with the time of his return, and the Lord was giving them the signs. But knowing his death was only days away, inevitably he had in mind "the time" of his passion. And he knew that as they didn't know the time of his return, so they didn't understand the time of his death. Having pointed out that they knew not "the time", in words surely reminiscent of his criticism of Jewry generally for not knowing "the time" of his coming and death (Mt. 16:3; Lk. 19:44), the Lord went on to tell the story of the man (himself) who left his household (the disciples) and told them to watch, with warnings as to what would happen if they didn't. Every one of those warnings, and some other language in the Olivet prophecy, came true of the disciples in the next few days, in the context of "the time" being the time of Christ's death:
|
They
shall deliver you up to the councils |
As Christ to the Sannhedrin |
|
beaten |
Christ buffeted |
|
rulers
and kings for a testimony |
Chief priests, Herod, Pilate |
|
...brother
shall betray the brother |
Judas; Peter's denial? |
|
...turn
back to take up his garment |
John Mark's linen garment |
|
...false
Christs...
|
An echo of 'Barabbas'? |
|
the sun
shall be
darkened...
|
As at the crucifixion |
|
Watch
and
pray...
|
"Watch with me";
Gethsemane |
|
at
even... |
Last Supper |
|
at
midnight... |
Gethsemane |
|
at
the cock crowing |
Peter's denials |
|
in
the morning |
trials and crucifixion |
|
find
you sleeping |
disciples in Gethsemane |
13:34 Each has his or her calling, and therefore we should each have a sense of authority because we realize this. We have a job to do, a mission to accomplish, and we have authority from the Lord Himself. For the Son of man gives to each of His servants both "authority" and his or her specific work to do (Mk. 13:34). See on Mt. 21:41.
His enthusiasm for us comes out in Christ's description of Himself as 'taking a far journey' away from us to Heaven. The Greek strictly means 'to leave one's own native people to go abroad'; with the implication that the Lord feels closer towards us that the Angels. This is exactly the line of argument of Hebrews 1 and 2: Christ didn't come to save Angels, He came to save us, therefore He had exactly our nature and feelings, not theirs.
The "porter" was commanded to watch (Mk. 13:34);
and he represents us all (Mk. 13:37). Watching over God's household is an idea
taken from Ez. 3:17; as the prophets in the Old Testament parables of judgment
were the watchmen of the house of Israel, so each of us are. When the Lord had
earlier told this parable, Peter (like us) asked the obvious question:
"Speakest thou this parable unto us (the
twelve in the first century), or even to all?" (Lk. 12:41). The Lord's
basic reply was "To all", although He didn't say so explicitly.
Instead He said that if the Lord of the servant was away and came back
unexpectedly, late at night, what a joy it would be to him if he found the
lights on and the servant working diligently in caring for the others; any servant doing that
is going to give his Lord joy; 'So, Peter, don't think about whether others are
called to do the job, this is the ideal servant, you're all servants, so you
get on and try to be like this ideal servant!'. The porter's job was to keep
out wolves; the Greek for "porter" literally means 'the watcher' (s.w. Jn. 10:1, another example of how the parables fit
together). An apathy in looking out for false teachers means we aren't doing
the porter's job well, we are sleeping rather than
looking after the household. Mt. 24:43-45 define watching for Christ's return
as tending to the needs of our brethren; this is what will lead our hearts
towards preparedness for the second coming, rather than the hobby of trying to
match current events with Bible prophecy.
13:35 The Lord says that we are all the watchers of the door of the house of the ecclesia (Mk. 13:34,35; Lk. 12:39,40), as the prophets were the watchmen over the city of Zion, God's Old Testament ecclesia. We all therefore have a responsibility to guide and warn the ecclesia, not just to scrape out of condemnation for ourselves, but from a genuine, earnest desire to help others to the Kingdom road.
We
must speak the word as others are able to hear it, expressing the truths of
Christ in language and terms which will reach them. There are some differences
within the Gospels in the records of the parables. It could be that the
different writers, under inspiration, were rendering the Lord’s Aramaic words
into Greek in different styles of translation. Also, we must bear in mind the
different audiences. Mark speaks of the four watches of the night which would
have been familiar to Romans (Mk. 13:35 cp. 6:48), whereas Lk. 12:38 speaks of
the Jewish division of the night into three watches (cp. Jud. 7:19). See on Lk.
6:47.
13:37 The “porter" was commanded to watch (Mk. 13:34); and he represents us all (Mk. 13:37). Yet the Lord was the porter (s.w. Jn. 10:1); we who are in Him are likewise. All that is true of Him is in some way true of us. Watching over God's household is an idea taken from Ez. 3:17; as the prophets were the watchmen of the house of Israel, so each of us are. When the Lord had earlier told this parable, Peter (like us) asked the obvious question: "Speakest thou this parable unto us (the twelve in the first century), or even to all?" (Lk. 12:41). The Lord's basic reply was "To all", although he didn't say so explicitly. Instead he said that if the Lord of the servant was away and came back unexpectedly, late at night, what a joy it would be to him if he found the lights on and the servant working diligently in caring for the others; any servant doing that is going to give his Lord joy; 'So, Pete, don't think about whether others are called to do the job, this is the ideal servant, you're all servants, so you get on and try to be like this ideal servant!'. The porter's job was to keep out wolves; the Greek for "porter" literally means 'the watcher' (s.w. Jn. 10:1, another example of how the parables fit together). An apathy in looking out for false teachers means we aren't doing the porter's job well, we are sleeping rather than looking after the household. Mt. 24:43-45 define watching for Christ's return as tending to the needs of our brethren; this is what will lead our hearts towards preparedness for the second coming, this is the result of our awareness of the imminence of the Lord's return.
“Watching" is not only a guarding of one's own
spirituality; the idea of guarding a house and the people and goods inside it
suggests that our watching is of our brethren and sisters too. Elders
"watch for your souls" (Heb. 13:17) in this sense. Christ's parable
about the gate-keeper might at first suggest that the duty of watching is only
with the elders; it is for them
to watch and feed the flock, in the same way as it was the duty of the house
manager to guard the house and feed the other servants (Mt. 24:43-51; Mk.
13:33-37). But that parable is intended for all
of us; "Watch ye
therefore (as intensely as that manager)... and what I say unto you, I say unto
all, Watch"
(Mk. 13:37). In other words, we are all elders, the
command to watch for each other extends to each of us. And yet how really
concerned are most of us about each other’s salvation?
14:3 Mary’s
lavish anointing of the Lord may well have been what inspired Nicodemus to so
lavishly prepare the Lord’s body for burial. The vast quantities of spices he
used was more than that used in the burials of some of
the Caesars. He too must have bankrupted himself to anoint the Lord’s body.
That two people did this within a week of each other is too close a similarity
to be co-incidental. Surely Mary inspired him.
14:7 We find an example of Paul holding up Mary Magdalene as our
example in 2 Cor. 8:12, where he speaks of how the Lord although He was rich
became poor for our sakes, and we ought to be inspired by this to generosity
towards our poorer brethren. The connection with Mary Magdalene goes back to
Mk. 14:7, where Jesus said that Mary had
in fact given her wealth to the poor, by anointing Him, the poor one, the one who made Himself poor for our sakes.
14:8- see on 2
Cor. 8:11,12.
Whether the woman of Mk. 14:8 really understood that she was
anointing His body for burial is open to question. But the Lord's positivism graciously
imputed this motive to her. See on Mk. 16:3.
14:9- see on
Acts 10:4.
memorial Mk. 14:9 could mean that when the
Gospel message is proclaimed in all the world at Messiah’s return, then what
Mary had done would be told [before God] that He may mercifully remember her
for good at the judgment. This may sound a forced interpretation to Western
ears and eyes, but we must remember that the idea of ‘for a memorial’ denoted
being spoken of for good before someone, in this case, the judge of all. What
follows from this is that there will be a direct link between our deeds today,
and the judgment process of tomorrow [or later today]. What we have done will
be told before God, and He will remember us for good. On one hand, works are
irrelevant. We are saved by grace. On the other hand, there will be a certain
‘going through’ of our deeds before Him. Quite simply, there is a direct link
between our behaviour and our future judgment. Nothing will in that sense be forgotten.
The early preachers would have gone around telling the good
news about Jesus Christ, and in so doing would have
recited time and again His teaching and life story. Mark records how the Lord
commanded the Gospel to be preached world-wide (Mark 16:15); but he surely
intends this to be linked with his record of how the generosity of the sinful
woman would be told "wheresoever this gospel
shall be preached throughout the whole world" (Mk. 14:9). 'The Gospel' was
therefore not just the basic doctrines; it was the whole record of the life and
works of Christ. This is why each of the Gospels is somehow personalized to the
writer. And the comment that wherever the Gospel was preached, her example
would be preached (Mk. 14:9) is tantamount to saying that her action was to be
the pattern for all who would afterward believe the Gospel. Note in passing
that the Gospel was not intended by the Lord to be a mere set of doctrinal
propositions; it was to be a message which included practical patterns of
response to it, of which Mary’s was to be always mentioned.
14:12 We feel we must do
something before we can expect anything from God. And yet in condescension to
this, the Father sometimes almost goes along with us in this. Reflect how the
disciples, with all the petty pride of the practical man wishing to do
something practical for the leader he adores, earnestly asked the Lord:
"Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou (singular) mayest eat the
Passover?" (Mk. 14:12). He told them to find a certain man, and ask him
where the Master would eat Passover with
His disciples. He would show them an upper room furnished and
already prepared. 'There',
the Lord added with His gentle irony, 'prepare for us, not just me but you as well, to eat.
Even though I've already arranged it all, and I'm inviting you to eat with me, well, I understand
you must feel you do your little human bit, so there you prepare; although
I've already prepared it all'. 'What love through all his actions ran'. This was grace and understanding and accommodation of
men par excellence.
14:19 Mark 14:19 reads: “And they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto him one by one, Is it I? and another said, Is it I?”. It is easy to assume that this “another” was Judas. But it has been suggested that in spoken Aramaic, “and another said...” would be a device for saying ‘And I, I said...’. If Mark’s Gospel is a verbatim account of Peter’s preaching of the Gospel, this would be so appropriate. Peter would be saying: ‘All the disciples couldn’t imagine it was them who would betray Jesus; and I, yes I also asked if it was me who would betray Him. I was so sure I wouldn’t’. The record in Mark 14 then goes on to describe how Peter did effectively betray / deny the Lord.
14:20 He lamented that His betrayer was one who had dipped in the dish with Him at the last supper (Mk. 14:20). There was no way that this was meant to be an indication to the disciples that Judas was the betrayer- for they all ate the supper and dipped in the same dish. Hence His point was surely to foreground the awful fact that it was a brother who had broken bread with Him who would now betray Him. Ps. 41:9 laments that it was one who "ate of my bread" who betrayed Him. This is why the challenge "Lord, is it I?" echoes down to every communion service.
14:23 The Lord held the memorial meeting as a keeping of a Passover, and yet He changed some elements of it. Joachim Jeremias cites evidence that “By the time of Jesus, individual cups were used at the Passover meal", and yet Mk. 14:23 implies that He used only one cup, which was passed around amongst those at the last supper: “He took the cup [RV “a cup"]… he gave it to them: and they all drank of it [singular]". They didn’t take up their own cups and drink- the Lord gave them His cup, just as He passes on to all in Him a participation in His “cup" of suffering and final joy. Reflect how deftly and determinedly the Lord must have “received the cup" (Lk. 22:17 RV), knowing what it represented; imagine His body language. Paul’s references to “the cup" imply the same. This change was surely to indicate the unity that His death, His blood, His life, was to inspire amongst those who share in it. This, in passing, is behind my undoubted preference for not using individual cups at the memorial meeting. It would seem to be a returning to the Jewish legalistic tradition, however unintentionally. I have elsewhere commented upon the clear link between the death of Jesus and our unity. The memorial meeting is the supreme celebration of that unity between us. To deny a brother or sister participation in it is something serious indeed. Tragically, and it is a tragedy, we have tended to use the memorial meeting as a weapon for exclusion rather than as a celebration of our unity. Yet this was the intention, without doubt. Comparing Lk. 22:20 and Mk. 14:24 we find the Lord saying that the cup of wine was “for you poured out, poured out for many"- as if He wanted them to be aware at the memorial meeting that it was not only they who had been redeemed in Him. Likewise the Passover was essentially a remembering of the deliverance of a community, through which the individual worshipper found his or her personal salvation. This is why it is just not good enough to insist on breaking bread alone, or with no thought to the fact that all of us were redeemed together, as one man, as one nation, in Him. Remember that the Hebrew word for covenant, berith, is "derived from a verb meaning 'to eat'". That covenant was made with a community, the Israel of God; by eating the covenant meal we recall that collective covenant, that salvation of a community of which we are part- and it is appropriate therefore that it becomes a symbol of our unity within that community. The Old Testament idea of covenant is associated with words like hesed (kindness, love, devotion, grace), emeth (truth, integrity), emunah (faithfulness, allegiance). These are the characteristics associated with being in covenant relationship; and we are to show them to all others who are in covenant relationship, not just some of them.
14:24 Moses bound the people into covenant relationship with the words: “Behold the blood of the covenant" (Ex. 24:8). These very words were used by the Lord in introducing the emblems of the breaking of bread (Mk. 14:24). This is how important it is. We are showing that we are the covenant, special Israel of God amidst a Gentile world. Indeed, “the blood of the covenant" in later Judaism came to refer to the blood of circumcision (cp. Gen. 17:10) and it could be that the Lord was seeking to draw a comparison between circumcision and the breaking of bread. For this is how His words would have sounded in the ears of His initial hearers(2). This is how vital and defining it is to partake of it.
14:25 The Lord Jesus clearly saw a link between the breaking of bread and His return. He not only told His people to perform it “until he come", but He said both before and after the last supper [putting together the Gospel records] that He would not keep this feast until He returned. Our breakings of bread are therefore a foretaste of the final sitting down with Him in His Kingdom- for He had elsewhere used the idea of feasting with Him as a symbol of our fellowship with Him at His return. The Rabbis had repeatedly taught that Messiah would come at Passover; the first century Rabbi Joshua said that “In that night they were redeemed and in that night they will be redeemed by Messiah". Much evidence could be given of this. For this reason Josephus records how the Jewish revolts against Rome repeatedly occurred around Passover time. Yet all the Jewish feasts have some reference to the breaking of bread. The Hebrew writer picks up the image of the High Priest appearing to pronounce the blessing on the people as a type of the Lord’s second coming from Heaven bearing our blessing. And yet they also all prefigure judgment in some way. Thus the Mishnah taught: “At four times in the year is the world judged". Because the breaking of bread involves a serious concentration upon the cross, and the cross was in a sense the judgment of this world, it is apparent that the breaking of bread is in some ways a preview of the judgment seat.
The Lord's promise that He would not break bread again until He did it with us in the Kingdom (Mk. 14:25) seems to require a literal fulfillment. In a non-literal sense He breaks bread with His people even now. Therefore His statement that He would not do it again until the Kingdom seems to refer to His literal taking of bread and wine. Likewise His promise that He would literally gird Himself and come forth and serve us at a future banquet has to be linked in with this (Lk. 12:37). If all the faithful are to be gathered together to a meal, and literally eat bread and drink wine with the Lord, this suggests all sorts of logistical and practical 'problems'. It is easier to understand that space and time will have different meanings at the judgment and after.
14:26- see
on Jn. 17:1.
14:27- see
on Mk. 4:17.
14:28
Christ's promise that "I will go before you into Galilee" (Mk. 14:28)
sounds very much like a conscious allusion to the Angel going ahead of Israel;
as if Christ felt that He (through the Comforter Angel?) had taken over the
role of the Angel that represented Him previously?
14:29 The
RV brings out a significant nuance of the Greek text at Mk. 14:29: "When
the fruit allows, immediately he sends forth the sickle, because the harvest is
come". The 'sending forth' of the sickle is to be connected with the
sending forth of the Angels at the Lord's return (Mt. 13:41). But this moment
depends upon 'when the fruit allows'.
The timing of Christ's coming is dependent upon the harvest being brought
forth- both in personal spiritual development of the last generation of
believers, and in the harvest of converts in literally all the earth. This same
principle of fruit 'allowing' events in God's program is reflected in how Paul
perceived his missionary work. He says that if he "satisfied" by the
fruit of the converts in Rome, then he could move on to preach in Spain, if he
could seal the spiritual fruit of unity between Jewish and Gentile converts in
Jerusalem (Rom. 15:24 RV).
4:31 Mark's
record goes on to include the parable of the birds living in the big mustard
tree, soon after that of the sower. The tiny grain of mustard seed "is
sown in the earth", connecting with the sowing of
the word/ seed. If it is in the right ground, it develops into a huge tree
"so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it" (Mk.
4:31,32). The connection with the wicked "fowls
of the air" in the sower parable is evidently intentional. Surely the
message is that if we will only let the word/ seed develop in our lives, those
things which threaten to take away our faith (i.e. the devil/ fowls) will then
be completely subordinate to us. Yet that tiny seed of the word is so easy to
despise, its potential power so heard to imagine and
believe.
14:32- see
on Mk. 5:1.
We
shouldn't be unduly phased by the idea of the early
Christians memorizing the Gospels. Even today in the Islamic world, students in
religious schools are expected to memorize the entire Koran, which is roughly
the same size as the entire New Testament. There are reports of this even being
achieved by a seven year old. The whole structure of Mark's Gospel seems
designed for memorization- the material is arranged in triplets, and the
sections have chiastic structures [e.g. material arranged in the form ABA,
ABCBA, ABCDCBA]. Even within the triplets, themes
often occur in triplets- e,g,
the three experiences in Gethsemane (Mk. 14:32-42), Peter's three denials (Mk.
14:66-72), three wrong answers about the identity of Jesus (Mk. 6:14-16; 8:28).
The use of triplets and tripilisms is common in folk
stories- to aid memorization.
14:35- see
on Lk. 22:46.
The Lord had foreseen how He must be like the grain of the
wheat (note the articles in the Greek) which must fall to the ground and die,
and then arise in a glorious harvest (Jn. 12:24). But soon after saying that,
the Lord fell to the ground (same Greek words) in prayer and asked the Father
if the cup might pass from Him (Mk. 14:35). It seems to me that He fell to the
ground in full reference to His earlier words, and asked desperately if this
might be accepted as the falling to the earth of the grain of the wheat, i.e.
Himself, which was vital for the harvest of the world. Don’t under-estimate the
amount of internal debate which the Lord would have had about these matters.
The spirit of Christ in the prophets testified Messiah’s sufferings “unto
Christ" (1 Pet. 1:11 RVmg.), but He still had to figure it all out. And
this enabled an element of doubt, even though in the end He knew “all the
things that were coming upon him" (Jn. 18:4). To doubt is not to sin.
Another Messianic Psalm had foretold: “In the multitude of my doubts within me,
thy comforts delight my soul" (Ps. 94:19 RVmg.). This aspect heightens the
agony of His final crisis, when He unexpectedly felt forsaken.
14:36
"We cry Abba, Father" (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6), as our Lord did then
(Mk. 14:36). We can, we really can, it is possible, to enter into our Lord's
intensity then. Paul saw his beloved brother Epaphroditus
as "heavy" in spirit (Phil. 2:26), using a word only used elsewhere
about Christ in Gethsemane (Mt. 26:37; Mk. 14:33). Luke and other early
brethren seemed to have had the Gethsemane record in mind in their sufferings,
as we can also do (Acts 21:14 = Mk. 14:36).
14:37- see
on Mk. 14:72.
There are good reasons for thinking that Mark’s Gospel
record is actually Peter’s; and in his preaching of the Gospel he makes ample
reference to his own failures [he contains the most detailed account of the
denials of all the Gospels] and to the misunderstanding of his fellows. Both
Matthew and Luke record that the Lord asked the three disciples ‘Why are you
[plural] sleeping?’ (Mt. 26:40). It is only Mark who says that the Lord asked
this of Peter personally, in the singular (Mk. 14:37). And compare Matthew’s
“Could ye [plural] not watch with me?” with Mk. 14:37 to Peter: “Couldest not thou [singular] watch?”.
14:38- see
on Acts 20:29,30.
The Lord
took a very positive view of his struggling, stuttering followers, especially
in the run up to His death. His teaching had throughout emphasized the
importance of the heart, and how thought and action are linked. Yet He appears
to have made a temporary exception when He generously excused His disciples’
sleeping in Gethsemane: “The spirit [mind] truly is ready, but the flesh is
weak” (Mk. 14:38). The theoretical willingness of the mind does not usually
excuse fleshly weakness, according to the Lord’s teaching. It seems to me that
this statement of His, which for me gets harder to interpret the more one
ponders it, is simply the Lord’s generous, justifying impulse towards His weak
followers. And He was feeling like this towards them at the very time when, in
symbol and in essence, they had condemned themselves. For He ‘comes’ to them,
finds them asleep, like the sleepy virgins in His recent parable, they were
dumbfounded and unable to answer Him, just as the rejected will be at judgment
day, and then they fled, as the rejected likewise will (Mk. 14:40,41,51). If
these were His generous feelings for them, then… what comfort it is to know we
follow the same Lord.
14:40 The disciples’ sleepiness is excused in the statement “for their eyes were heavy" (Mk. 14:40), even though their falling asleep at that time was utterly shameful. Luke’s record excuses them by saying they slept for sorrow- which isn’t really possible. It’s the grace of inspiration covering up for them. Yet He kindly says that their spirit is willing but their flesh was weak (Mk. 14:38); although elsewhere, the Lord rigorously demonstrates that mental attitudes are inevitably reflected in external behaviour, and therefore the difference between flesh and spirit in this sense is minimal.
Not only did Jesus 'answer' to the needs of others, but He
Himself was a silent, insistent question that had to be responded to. He came
and found the disciples sleeping, and they didn't know what to answer Him (Mk. 14:40).
His look, the fact that when facing super exhaustion and sleep deprivation He
endured in prayer... this was something that demanded, and demands, an answer- even if we can't give it.
He responds / 'answers' to us, and we have to respond / answer to Him. This is
how His piercing sensitivity, coupled with the height of His devotion, compels
the building of real relationship between ourselves
and this invisible Man.
14:49 There is a sense of compulsion associated with the cross. The Greek word dei, translated “must" or “ought", is repeatedly used by the Lord in reference to His death. He spoke of that death as the coming of His hour, as if always and in all things He felt a compulsion that He must die as He was to. Listing the references chronologically gives an impressive list:
“I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and ye took me not: but the scriptures must be fulfilled" (Mark 14:49). Three times in say 30 minutes, the Lord has stressed the compulsion of the cross.
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up" (John 3:14)
“From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders" (Mt. 16:21).
“And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing; Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and [must] be slain, and be raised the third day" (Luke 9:21-22).
“And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought" (Mark 9:12). These last three references all occurred within a day of each other, if not a few hours. The Lord at least three times was emphasizing how He must die the death of the cross.
“Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem" (Luke 13:33)
“But first [i.e. most importantly, not just chronologically] must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation" (Luke 17:25).
“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die. The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man?" (John 12:32-34). When the Lord spoke of “If I be lifted up", there was no doubt about it. The idiom was correctly understood by the people as meaning: “I absolutely must". And for them this was a contradiction in terms: a “son of man" Messiah who must be crucified.
“Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the Passover must be killed" (Luke 22:7).
“As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again" (John 10:15-17). Embedded in the context of prediction of the cross, the Lord described that act as being how He must bring His sheep unto Himself.
“But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?... For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end" (Matt 26:54; Luke 22:37). See on Lk. 24:6.
14:51 It is possible to argue that the young man who followed Jesus and then ran away was in fact Peter. Mk. 14:54 RV tells us after this incident that “Peter had followed him afar off”. Peter describes himself in the third person a few verses previously: “A certain one of them that stood by drew a sword…” (Mk. 14:47 RV). And then we go on to read in v. 51 of “a certain young man” (RV). But when speaking of his denials, Peter records them in the first person- he totally owns up to them. All of Mk. 14:27-52 concerns Peter’s part in the story, and then vv. 54-72 likewise. So it is likely that the record of the young man following disguised in a linen cloth is in fact referring to Peter too. So Peter followed, ran back, followed again, then ran away to Galilee, and then followed again. This was how hard it was for him to pick up the cross of identification with Jesus and follow Him. And for us too.
14:53 Mary's devotion to the Lord, based on the understanding she had, is truly inspirational. The original word translated "nard" is a foreign [non Greek] word, and appears to have originated far away from Palestine. The suggestion has been made that this bottle of nard belonged to some foreign royalty. The price of "more than three hundred pence" (Mk. 14:53) must be understood in terms of a penny-a-day employment rate for labourers (Mt. 20:2). This bottle would typically only be used at the burial of a king. Yet Mary dearly loved her brother Lazarus, and had only recently buried him. But she hadn't used the nard for him; hence perhaps the information is added that his body would be stinking after four days- implying such expensive nard had not been used in embalming his body (Jn. 11:39- the fact it's Martha who observes this may suggest she resented Mary for not using her nard for Lazarus, just as she resented how Mary didn't help her in the kitchen but instead sat at the Lord's feet). And the Lord Jesus perceived all this; for He commented to the disciples that Mary had "kept the nard for my burial" (Jn. 12:7). The Lord's reference to her 'keeping' the nard can be powerfully understood in the context of Mary not using it for her brother's burial, but rather deciding to keep it for His burial. This not only shows the clarity of Mary's understanding of the Lord's upcoming death. It also reflects how she would give her most treasured possession in an apparently senseless act of devotion to Him. She annointed Him because she understood Him to be Christ, the anointed one. But this is what we expect of a woman who won the accolade from the Lord that she sought after the "one thing" that really matters- which is Him and His word (Lk. 10:42). Our eyes have been opened to that same "one thing", and we too claim to have accepted Jesus of Nazareth as Christ; and so to place devotion to Christ above family, above retention of personal wealth and value... is the intended issue of all this for us too.
14:61- see on Mk. 8:29.
14:62- see on Mt. 24:28.
14:64 The spiritual culture of Almighty God is shown by the way in which although all the Council (Mk. 14:64), including Joseph, condemned Christ to death by crucifixion, God overlooks Joseph's lack of boldness in not contesting this, and speaks of him in such glowing spiritual terms. His 'not consenting unto' Christ's death was deep within him. I would be inclined to say: 'The least you could have done was to have abstained from the vote'. But the record is far more positive than that.
14:65 Men smote “the judge of Israel with a rod upon the
cheek" (Mic. 5:1). The RVmg. of Mk. 14:65 says that the Lord was hit with
“strokes of rods". Perhaps it was in this sense that the rod comforted
Messiah (Ps. 23:4) in that He saw immediately that prophecy was being fulfilled
in Him. Our darkest moments likewise can be our greatest encouragement if only
we perceive them as we should. As men mocked Him and smote Him, thus they were
treating their judge at the time of judgment. In His time of dying, the Lord
Jesus was the judge of Israel. This explains why when we come before the cross,
not only at the breaking of bread but whenever
we come into contact with Him, or reflect upon Him and His death,
we are in some sense coming before Him in judgment.
14:68 Bible minded Peter
must surely have later reflected that he had said those very words: 'I know not
this man'. He "went out" from the Lord (Mk. 14:68) and then some
minutes later further "went out and wept bitterly" (Lk. 22:62),
living out the very figure of condemnation- and yet he was able to repent and
come back. Peter's self condemnation is brought out in yet finer detail by
considering what he meant when he thrice denied that he either knew nor
understood about Jesus (Mk. 14:68). By that time, everyone had heard about Jesus- after all, the trial of
Jesus was going on, and all Jerusalem were waiting with bated breath for the
outcome. And there was Peter, standing by the fire in the High Priest's house,
with everyone talking about the Jesus affair. Peter hardly would've meant
'Jesus? 'Jesus' who? Never heard of him. Dunno who you're talking about'. What he therefore meant,
or wished to be understood as meaning, was that he didn't 'know' Jesus in a
close sense, he wasn't a disciple of Jesus, he didn't know nor understand
Jesus, i.e., he wasn't a follower of Jesus. When Peter tells the maid: "I
know not, neither understand what you say [about this Jesus]" (Mk. 14:68),
the other records interpret this as meaning that Peter said that he didn't know
Jesus. So we may have to interpret the form of speech being used here; for
Semitic speakers don't answer questions in the same way and form as we may be
accustomed to. The "what you say" was about Jesus; and therefore
Peter is saying that he neither knows [closely] nor understands this Jesus. And
yet time and again, Peter's Lord had taught that those who did not or would not
'know and understand' Him were those who were "outside", unknown by
Him, rejected. And Peter was saying, to save his skin, 'Yes, that's me'. And yet... Peter repented, and changed that verdict. Mark’s
record of the Lord’s trial is not merely a historical account. It’s framed in
terms of our need to testify for our faith too. The Lord’s example in His time
of suffering was and is intended to be our example and inspiration, in that we
are to in a very practical sense enter into His sufferings. Mark records the
Lord’s prediction that His people would have to witness before both Jewish and
Gentile authorities (Mk. 13:9-13)- and then Mark goes
on in the next chapter to describe Jesus doing just this. The Lord asked His
suffering followers not to prepare speeches of self-defence- perhaps
exemplified and patterned for us in the way that He remained silent before His
accusers. Peter is recorded as denying Christ three times- just as the Romans
interrogated Christians and asked them to three times deny Christ. The
Christians were also asked to curse, or anathematizein,
Jesus. And when we read of Peter’s cursing, the same word is used. We’re left
with the impression that Peter actually cursed Christ. And so Mark, who was
likely writing the Gospel on Peter’s behalf, is showing that Peter, the leader
of the church, actually pathetically failed to follow his Lord at this time.
And yet the Gospel of Mark was being distributed to Christians who were being
dragged before Jewish and Roman courts. The idea was surely to give them an
example and encouragement from Peter’s failure, rather than portray a positive
example of a man overcoming the temptation to curse and deny Christ. But this
was how the Lord used Peter- as an example from failure for all of us.
"Went out" is the language of Judas going out (Jn. 13:30), Cain
'"went out" (Gen. 4:16), as did Zedekiah in the judgment of Jerusalem
(Jer. 39:4; 52:7). Esau went out from the land of Canaan into Edom, slinking
away from the face of his brother Jacob, sensing his righteousness and his own
carnality (Gen. 36:2-8). Even in this life, those who leave the ecclesia 'go
out' after the pattern of Judas, condemning themselves in advance of the
judgment by their attitude to the ecclesia (1 Jn. 2:19 cp. Acts 15:24). The
unrighteous flee from God now, as they will then (Hos. 7:13). The ungrateful
servant "went out" and condemned his brother- thus condemning himself
(Mt. 18:28). Yet Peter in this life "went out" from the Lord (Mk.
14:68) and then some minutes later further "went out and wept
bitterly" (Lk. 22:62), living out the very figure of rejection at the
judgment- and yet was able to repent and come back. In this life we can
be judged, condemned, weep...but still repent of it and thereby change our
eternal destiny. But at the final judgment: it will be just too late. That
'judgment' will be a detailed statement of the outcome of the ongoing
investigative judgment which is going on right now.
Mark’s [Peter’s] Gospel omits many incidents, but also uses the device of repetition to stress what the writer considers significant. In Mk. 14:68 he records himself as having said: “I know , neither understand I what thou sayest”. He stresses the nature of his own rejection of knowledge of the Lord. A similar awareness of the weakness of the flesh is found in 7:21: “From within, out of the heart of man...”.
14:70 From the larynx of a Palestinian Jew there came the words of Almighty God. And yet He spoke them in the accent of a rural Galilean. We know this because Peter was identified as being one of the Lord's close disciples because of His accent (Mt. 26:73; Mk. 14:70). The dialect of Aramaic used in Galilee was a permanent topic of sarcasm in Jerusalem circles. There is a story in the Mishnah (bErubin 53b) which mocks how the Galileans pronounced words which began with a guttural [deep-throat] consonant. It ridicules how a Galilean in Jerusalem tries to buy something in a market but is mocked by the merchant: "You stupid Galilean, do you need something to ride on [hamair- a donkey], or something to drink [hamar- wine], or something to make a dress with ['amar- wool], or something for a sacrifice [immar- lamb]". What an essay in God's preference for using the things which man despises- that He should arrange for His Son to speak His words in the most humanly despised dialect of the ecclesia. In this context, it is interesting to note the debate over the original text of Mk. 5:41, where the Lord is recorded as saying the Aramaic words Talitha kum in the oldest manuscripts, but it seems this has been changed to the more grammatically correct Talitha kumi in later codices. Kum would apparently have been the slovenly Galilean way of speaking, whereby the masculine form of the imperative is joined to a feminine subject. It could be that the Lord spoke in the Galilean way, technically incorrect grammatically- as a Londoner might say 'We was waiting for a bus' rather than 'we were waiting...'; or an Ulsterman 'how are yous all?' rather than using the more correct 'you' for 'you' plural. If this is so, we have another window into the person of Jesus. There was a naturalness about Him, an expression of the ultimate image of God in totally human form, which was so attractive.
14:71 Mk. 14:71 can be read as meaning that Peter actually cursed Christ, as well as
taking an oath that he didn't know Him. Commenting on the verb form of anathematizein there,
Raymond Brown comments: "[it] should be taken transitively with 'Jesus'
understood as the object: Peter cursed Jesus and took an oath that he had no
personal acquaintance with him" - R.E. Brown, The Death Of The Messiah
(Garden City: Doubleday, 1994) p. 605. I find it significant that the most
awful detail about Peter's denials is provided in Mark's record, which I have
suggested elsewhere is in fact Peter's record of the
Gospel, written up by Mark.
14:72 It is only Mark who records the two cock crowings at the time of Peter’s denial. Peter wished to quietly emphasize the exactness of fulfilment of the Lord’s words about his denial. Mark / Peter likewise record Peter’s words as: “I neither know nor understand what you mean”. The ‘what’ can apply to both Jesus personally as well as the general ‘being with’ Jesus. Peter is admitting that He had denied having any understanding at all of the Lord- the Lord whose knowledge he now preached. One can imagine Peter’s voice quivering as he recounted his Gospel story. Note how Luke says that all the disciples slept in Gethsemane (Lk. 22:45); but Mark [Peter] records how only Peter, James and John slept (Mk. 14:37).
15:3 Is. 53:7 speaks of the Lord at this time as being uncannily silent: " as a sheep before her shearers is silent" . The LXX has: “Because of his affliction he opens not his mouth", as if the silence was from pure fear as well as a reflection of an internal pain that was unspeakable. Job’s experience had foretold that the cross would be what the Lord had always “greatly feared". The Passover Lamb, so evidently typical of the Lord as He approached death, was to be male. And yet Is. 53:7 conspicuously speaks of a female sheep. Why such an obvious contradiction? Was it not because the prophet foresaw that in the extraordinary breadth of experience the Lord was passing through, He was made to empathize with both men and women? He felt then, as He as the seed of the woman stood silent before those abusive men, as a woman would feel. This is not the only place where both the Father and Son are described in feminine terms. It doesn't mean, of course, that the Father is a woman; what it means is that He has the ability to appreciate and manifest feelings which a male would not normally be able to. Through His experience and zeal for our redemption, the Lord Jesus came to the same ability as His Father in these areas. Those who have suffered most are the most able to empathize. And yet somehow the Lord exceeded this principle; it was true of Him, but such were His sufferings and such His final empathy that this isn't a fully adequate explanation as to how He got to that point of supreme empathy and identity with us that He did. Exactly how He did it must surely remain a mystery; for God was in Him, reconciling the world unto Himself by that fully and totally representative sacrifice. The female element in Old Testament sacrifice pointed forward to the Lord’s sacrifice, as a sheep before her shearers. His identity with both male and female, as the ultimate representative of all humanity, meant that He took upon Himself things that were perceived as specifically feminine. The mother was the story teller of the family; when people heard the Lord tell parables and teach wisdom, it would have struck them that He was doing the work of the matriarch of a family. “Typical female behaviour included taking the last place at the table, serving others, forgiving wrongs, having compassion, and attempting to heal wounds", strife and arguments. And yet the woman was to be silent... as Christ was. All this was done by the Lord Jesus- especially in His time of dying and the lead up to it. He was in many ways the idealized mother / matriarch. His sacrifice for us was very much seen as woman’s work. And this is why the example of his mother Mary would have been a particular inspiration for Him in going through the final process of self-surrender and sacrifice for others, to bring about forgiveness and healing of strife between God and men. In a fascinating study, Diane Jacobs-Malina develops the thesis that a psychological analysis of the Gospels shows that the Lord Jesus played his roles like “the wife of the absent husband". And assuming that Joseph disappeared from the scene early in life, His own mother would have been His role model here- for she was indeed the wife of an absent husband. You’d have to read Jacobs-Malina’s study to be able to judge whether or not you think it’s all valid. But if she’s right, then it would be yet another tribute to the abiding influence of Mary upon the character of the Son of God.
15:4 A theme of the whole record is that Christ gave His life of His own volition. This must be remembered as we reflect upon the background to the crucifixion. His refusal to answer Pilate meant that Pilate had to pronounce Him guilty (Mk. 15:4)- hence his marvel at the Lord's silence, as if the Lord was willingly allowing Himself to be condemned.
15:5 Do we feel that our conscience is so dysfunctional and our heart so hardened in some places that nothing much can touch us and motivate us like it used to? The cross can touch and transform the hardest and most damaged heart. Apart from many real life examples around of this, consider the Biblical case of Pilate. Jewish and Roman historians paint a very different picture of Pilate than what we see in the Biblical record. Philo describes him as “ruthless, stubborn and of cruel disposition", famed for “frequent executions without trial". Josephus speaks of him as totally despising the Jews, stealing money from the temple treasury and brutally suppressing unruly crowds. Why then does he come over in the Gospels as a man desperately struggling with his conscience, to the extent that the Jewish crowds manipulate him to order the crucifixion of a man whom he genuinely believed to be innocent? Surely because the person of the Lord Jesus and the awfulness of putting the Son of God to death touched a conscience which appeared not to even exist. If the whole drama of the death of Jesus could touch the conscience and personality of even Pilate, it can touch each of us. Just compare the words of Philo and Josephus with how Mark records that Pilate was “amazed" at the self-control of Jesus under trial (Mk. 15:5); how he almost pleads with his Jewish subjects for justice to be done: “Why, what evil has he done?" (Mk. 15:14). Compare this with how Philo speaks of Pilate as a man of “inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition", famous for “abusive behaviour… and endless savage ferocity". Mt. 27:25 describes how Pilate washes his hands, alluding to the Jewish rite based in Deuteronomy, to declare that he is innocent of the blood of a just man. But Josephus records how Pilate totally despised Jewish religious customs and sensibilities, and appeared to love to commit sacrilege against Jewish things. And in Luke’s record, Pilate is recorded as pronouncing Jesus innocent no less than three times. I so admire the way the Lord attempted even as He faced death in the face, to appeal to Pilate's conscience. I'd paraphrase Mk. 15:2 like this: 'Pilate: 'You are King of Israel?'. Jesus: 'You're saying it''. Why did the Lord put it like that? Surely because He knew that Pilate, in his conscience, did actually know that Jesus was King of Israel, and the very words [in the original] 'You are King of Israel' came out of his lips, as a kind of psychological slip. This small incident not only indicates how the suffering Jesus could touch even Pilate's conscience; but that the Lord was eagerly seeking the response of men, even the toughest and unspiritual, right to His very end. And He is the same today. May our feeble responses give Him pleasure and glory.
15:20
The record
that they put the Lord's own clothes on Him and then led Him to crucifixion
conflicts with contemporary records of the victim being led out naked, or
certainly without his own outer clothes. Christ was revealed, or 'revealed
himself' (Gk.) on the cross, when He took away our sins (1 Jn. 3:5). This may
be John referring to how he had witnessed Christ crucified naked. Yet we know
that the Lord wore His outer robe right up to the impaling. It may be that the
whipping and abuse He had suffered was far beyond what the soldiers had the
right to minister. There were special directives concerning the need for the
victim to die by crucifixion, not at the hands of the soldiers. It may be that
they wanted to cover up the illegal marks on the body by making the Lord go to
the cross fully dressed. In which case, again we see how He suffered the very worst
of man's machinations. The Lord having His own clothes put back on Him meant
that He would have been dressed in blood sprinkled garments for the walk to
Golgotha. Again His holy mind would have been on the Messianic prophecies of
Is. 63 about a Messiah with blood sprinkled garments lifted up in glorious
victory. Or perhaps He saw the connection to Lev. 8:30, where the priests had
to have blood sprinkled garments in order to begin their priestly work. This
would have sent His mind to us, for whom He was interceding. Likewise when He
perceived that His garment would not be rent, He would have joyfully perceived
that He was indeed as the High Priest whose garment was not to be rent (Ex.
39:23).
15:22- see on Jn. 19:25.
15:29 The Christian life, as crucified with Christ, cannot be kept secret from the world. This is why the place of crucifixion was so public- it was near a road, for passers by spoke to the crucified Jesus (Mk. 15:29), and Simon was a passerby coming in from the field (Gk. agros, Lk. 23:26). The cross confronted people in their daily living, just as it should us today. Quintillian (Declamationes 274) records how crucifixions were always held in the most public places where crowds would gather. For us, if we are living the crucified life with Jesus, it cannot be done in a corner. See on Rom. 4:25.
15:33 Darkness is often associated in the OT with mourning. Am. 8:9,10 speaks of earthquake and darkness at noon because "I will make it as the mourning for an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day", i.e. a funeral. The darkness was a sign of Almighty God mourning for His Son.
Mark’s account of the crucifixion has 5 component parts. The third part, the centrepiece as it were, is the account of the actual death of the Lord; but it is surrounded by cameos of human response to it (consider Mk. 15:22-27; 28-32; the actual death of Jesus, 15:33-37; then 15:38-41; 15:42-47). See on Lk. 23:48; Jn. 19:25.
15:36 When we read that “someone” offered him a sponge with wine mixed with myrrh (Mk. 15:36; Mt. 27:48), we recall the use of myrrh in preparing bodies for burial (Mk. 14:3; Lk. 23:56; Jn. 12:3; 19:39). Pliny (Natural History 14.15.92,107) records: “The finest wine in early days was that spiced with the scent of myrrh…I also find that aromatic wine is constantly made from almost the same ingredient as perfumes, from myrrh”. This alerts me to the real possibility that the unnamed bystander who did this was Mary Magdalene. Earlier she had anointed the Lord’s body with myrrh “to the burial”. And now she has prepared the most expensive form of wine as some sort of pain killer. Perhaps the Lord was so touched by this that He accepted it, but didn’t drink it. His doing this is otherwise very hard to understand. Her love was on one hand inappropriate, and yet the Lord still accepted it, even though He couldn’t use it. He could have felt angry with her for tempting Him to the easier way. But He didn’t. And in so doing He showed her that the essence of the cross is that there is no easy way. The principles of all this are to be reflected in our cross carrying.
15:39 He said it twice: "This was a righteous man (Lk.), truly this man was the son of God" (Mk.). And he might well have added in his own thoughts: “And I’ve crucified him".
15:40 Perhaps when He crossed Kidron He would have thought back to how Asa had to separate himself from his mother in the very same place (1 Kings 15:13). The crucifixion record describes Mary the mother of Jesus as Mary the mother of James and Joses (Mk. 15:40 cp. Mt. 13:55)- not Mary the mother of Jesus. It’s as if the record itself seeks to show that separation between mother and Son which occurred there. Both Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James- i.e. the mother of Jesus too (Mk. 16:1 = Mk. 15:40 = Mt. 13:55) came to the sepulchre, but Jesus chose to appear to Mary Magdalene first (Mk. 15:9), and not His own dear mother. Mt. 27:61 almost cruelly rubs the point in: “There was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre”, but the Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene first. Indeed, there is no record that He ever appeared to His mother. This would presumably have been to help her in realizing that she must relate to Him as her Lord and Saviour now, like any other woman had to, and not as a woman with special maternal privileges in her relationship with her now Almighty Son. It must have so pained the Lord to do this- to not appear to his dear mother first. But as He oftentimes acts with us, so He did with her- doing something which even in Divine nature must have been so painful for Him, in order to help her in her growth.
We read in Mk. 15:40 that “Mary the mother of James the little one and of Joses” stood by the cross (RVmg.). I take this Mary to be Mary the mother of Jesus, for Mt. 13:55 records that James and Joses were brothers of Jesus and thus children of Mary. Remember that Mark is writing under inspiration a transcript of the preaching of the Gospel by the apostles, as they recounted the message of Jesus time and again. Could it not be that in the preaching of that Gospel, when it came to the cross, James asked to be surnamed “the little one”, remembering his earlier rejection of Jesus his brother? Now it is not at all surprising that Saul of Tarsus too decides to call himself ‘the little one’, through sustained meditation upon the cross. See on Jn. 19:25.
15:40,41- see on Rev. 14:4.
15:44 Josephus records that victims usually lingered for two days or so before death. The Lord died so quickly. And the legs were broken so that the victims would die quickly (not, as has sometimes been supposed, to stop them running away). These things are harmonized by realizing that there was a support on which the victim could seek temporal relief in order to keep himself alive. Werner Keller (The Bible As History p. 356) explains: "There was often a small support attached called a "sedile" (seat). if the victim hanging there eased his misery from time to time by supporting himself on this, the blood returned to the upper half of his body... when the torture of the crucified man was finally to be brought to an end, the "crucifragrum" was proceeded with: his legs were broken. That meant that he could no longer ease his weight in the footrests and heart failure quickly followed". It seems to me that in keeping with His refusal of the pain killer, His not requesting a drink until the very end, His willing giving of His life... that the Lord didn't press down on the seat, so that effectively He tortured Himself to death. If the victim did not press down on the sedile, the dead weight of the body would cause the intercostals muscles that facilitate inhaling to become too weakened to function. The lungs, unable to empty, would become full of carbon dioxide and death would result from asphyxia. The fact the Lord was making the effort to talk to people and yet, it seems, not pressing down on the sedile… is simply an essay in His self control, in His love, to bother to talk to others… which should inspire us to rise out of our introspection and make the effort likewise to connect with others. Seneca (Dialogue 3) writes: “Is it worth to weigh down on one’s own wound and hand impaled on a gibbet to postpone something which is... the end of punishment [i.e. death]?". In practice, the victim was only prolonging his own agony by pressing down on the rest. If the Lord didn't do this, He must have been extremely faint. Keller also comments: "In the case of a person suspended by his two hands the blood sinks very quickly into the lower half of the body. After six to twelve minutes blood pressure has dropped by 50% and the pulse rate has doubled". The Lord must have felt His every heartbeat, and therefore been able to sense when He was approaching death. Yet amidst the faintness, the knowledge that His heart was about to give out, the Lord remained, I am convinced, completely intellectually consciousness. Deep within Him, that perfect mind was centred on the Father and His word. Several Psalms take on a literal reference to the Lord's final agony: "My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me... my flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever" (38:10; 73:26).
16:3 The women who came to the garden tomb weren't looking for the risen Lord; they came to anoint the body (Mk. 16:3). But their love of the Lord was counted to them as seeking Him (Mt. 28:5).
Here's an example of our prayers and needs being answered
whilst we are yet speaking. They worried about what had already been sorted!
16:7 Angelic
unity with the risen Lord Jesus is brought out by a
comparison of the words spoken to the women after the resurrection. Mk. 16:7
has the Angels telling the women: “He is going before you to Galilee; they you
will see him, as he told you”. But Mt. 28:7 has the Angel saying: “He is going
before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I [the Angel] have told
you”. Perhaps what the Angel said was: “… as he told you… Lo, I have told you”,
thus bringing out the new unity between the risen
Christ and the Angel.
16:8 There has always been opposition to spreading the Gospel outside our own environment. Jonah was unwilling to take it to Nineveh, Israel failed miserably in their intended role as a missionary nation, and the apostles showed remarkable reluctance to obey the command to take Christ into all the world in the first century. The women were told to go tell the disciples of the resurrection, but they went away and told nobody, Mark records (Mk. 16:7,8). The other records say that they did tell the disciples. There is no contradiction here; Mark’s point is surely that they were reluctant to obey the great commission initially.
After initially saying nothing, they did eventually tell the
disciples. Matthew and Luke omit this disobedience to the Lord's command to
witness. The record in a beautiful way both covers their weakness, and yet also
brings it out. In fact resistance to the command to tell others, or being slow
to fulfil it, is another theme of the resurrection accounts.
16:9
Not without some hesitation do I add to the various chronologies that have been worked out. I only do so because some important- in my view- devotional lessons arise from reflection upon what actually happened. And further, there are some simple Biblical facts which I find stubbornly refuse to fit into the existing chronologies which have been suggested:
- Mary Magdalene was the first person to see the risen Jesus (Mk. 16:9)
- Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, didn’t find the body of Jesus, went to tell Peter, and then returned to the tomb and saw Jesus (Jn. 21)
Without wishing to expose the further difficulties of other chronologies, here is what I suggest:
|
The Women |
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Mary Magdalene |
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Bought spices to annoint the body of Jesus (Mk. 16:1) |
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Bought spices to annoint the body of Jesus (Mk. 16:1) |
|
1. There is an earthquake and the Lord resurrects |
||
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2. Mary Magdalene is alerted by the earthquake and goes to the tomb alone “when it was yet dark” (Jn. 20:1), and finds the stone rolled away and the body missing. |
||
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3. The women go to the grave as the day breaks; they find there is no body there (Lk. 24:3) |
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3. Mary then goes to tell Peter and John (Jn. 20:2) |
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4. They are confused (Lk. 24:4) |
||
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5. Love’s intuition leads them to go and have another look in the sepulchre; they then see Angels (Mt. 28:5; Mk. 16:5; Lk. 24:4) |
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4. Mary, Peter and John rush to the tomb (Jn. 20:3) |
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6. The Angels tell them that Jesus has risen, and they are told to quickly go away and tell the disciples (Mt. 28:7) |
||
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7. They run away, very fearful |
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Peter and John go into the tomb but see only the empty tomb; they return home (Jn. 20:10) |
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8. They leave, in obedience to the Angelic command to go and tell others. But they do not, initially, go and tell the disciples; they say nothing to anybody (Mk. 16:8). Presumably they stood or sat down somewhere along the way, overcome with fear. |
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Mary remains, meets two Angels, and then meets Jesus (Jn. 20:11-17) |
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9. Jesus meets them (Mt. 28:9) |
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10. They tell everything to the elevn “and all the rest” (Lk. 24:9) |
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Mary returns to Jerusalem and tells the apostles what had happened (Lk. 24:10; Jn. 20:18) |
The only ‘problem’ with this chronology of the resurrection is that whilst it satisfactorily solves all the problems which the other chronologies leave outstanding, the resurrection records are introduced by passages which appear to state that all the women, including Mary Magdalene, came to the tomb and had their experiences together. I submit that this ‘problem’ arises because we are not reading the records with Semitic eyes, nor with consideration as to how God’s word records and presents facts and chronologies. The European linear view of time is simply not something which we find in Scripture. We expect to be given a clear timeline, with it made clear as to who did what. In both sciences and the written arts, this is how we Europeans (and our diaspora) have been trained to think, read literature and perceive life. But it’s just not there in Scripture. Many of the difficulties Europeans face in interpreting the Biblical record are rooted in this fact. This is why, e.g., the Old Testament prophecies appear to ‘jump around all over the place’; one moment they are speaking of events just before the Lord’s return, then back to their own contemporary situation, then on to events after His return. And likewise, characters aren’t clearly defined and introduced to us at the start of a narrative, in the way that we are accustomed to. The problem is we read in a linear fashion and process in a logical fashion, whereas the inspired authors tend to write in a chiastic fashion, with the main point in the middle or X / ‘chi’. The Gospel records in Matthew, Mark and John each speak as if only certain women were involved- John implies only Mary Magdalene, Matthew speaks of “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary”, Mark speaks of Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome. But Luke tells us that “the women” were those “which came with him from Galilee”. There’s no absolute reason to think that “the women” all had their experience at the same time. Indeed, John’s Gospel, written after the other three, appears to be perhaps correcting this impression by explaining in detail the unique experience of Mary Magdalene.
When you read some of the records, it would appear that the risen Lord appeared first to Peter (Lk. 24:34; 1 Cor. 15:5). Indeed, the record in 1 Corinthians 15 doesn’t even mention the crucial appearances to the women. The appearances are listed there as firstly to Peter, then to the “twelve” [although there were only eleven- another example of a different use of language], then to 500 brethren, then James, then “the apostles”, and finally to Paul (1 Cor. 15:5-8). Quite simply, we have to put all the records together, and realize that each of them gives only an aspect of the historical picture. But we believe that the records don’t contradict each other, they were all inspired and are infallible. The structure of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection are similar, in that they all begin with some definition of the women involved, upon whom the writer wishes to place the spotlight. But there is no ipse facto reason to think that all the women had the same experiences together, at the same time- even though this is how a Western reader might read the records.
If the above chronology is in fact correct, we find a number of inspirational insights arising from what happened. Firstly, after a “great earthquake”, most people are distraught, frightened, worried, fixated on the immediacy of what’s happened, and tend to remain where they are or with others whom they know. But love of the Lord Jesus and an incipient belief and hope, however tiny, in His resurrection, led Mary to do what was counter-instinctive. In the night, in the darkest hours before Dawn, she ran through the rubble of houses and cracked streets to a tomb guarded by aggressive soldiers. This is what love of the Lord Jesus, even when we have such little understanding of Him, inspires us to do. No wonder she was rewarded with the priceless honour of being the first human being to see the risen Lord. The woman who sought the Lord early, at night, picking her way through the rubble of an earthquake, breaking the Sabbath, casting away all her legalism, the worldview with which she’d grown up…found Him.
Mary comes over as not being anywhere near as fearful as the other women. Not once do we read of fear being her dominant emotion. Instead, we read of her love, her weeping, her eager, desperate clinging hold of the risen Lord. The other women and the disciples are characterized by fear; fear of the Angelic appearance, fear at the appearance of Jesus, fear stifling their sharing the good news with others. And it is fear, in all its multiple forms, which is the very antithesis of faith and love; it is fear which stifles our love for the Lord, the expression of joyful, uninhibited service. Fear of our own unworthiness, fear He may not accept us, fear we might say and do the wrong thing, fear we may look foolish or get ourselves in trouble in the eyes of others... But let Mary be our heroine, an example of how love in its maturity, in its ultimate end, casts out fear. For we, with all our fears, misunderstandings, doubts, uncertainties, confusions… have been given the very same commission to go tell others which those early men and women were. For the great witnessing commission given to us all follows on seamlessly from the command of both Angels and the Lord Himself to those early witnesses of the resurrection to spread the news to others. And it can only be fear that holds us back, locks us up within the complexes which are so easily part of our personhood, and stifles our witness to others.
We’ve given reasons elsewhere for thinking that Mark’s Gospel record was actually the words of Peter transcribed by Mark. Significantly, it is Peter who makes the point that the Lord appeared first to Mary (Mk. 16:9). And yet according to Lk. 24:34 and 1 Cor. 15:5, Peter is framed as the first to see the Lord. Yet with characteristic humility, his version of the Gospel makes the point that actually, it was Mary. And he goes straight on in Mk. 16:14 to record how the Lord “upbraided” [a strong Greek word] the male disciples for not believing the women. The Lord was mad about this. They had failed to believe the women, probably because they were in the first century mindset of not accepting the legal testimony of a woman. And so Peter tries to make that good by pointing out en passant that it was actually Mary, not him, who first saw the risen Lord. Like John in his Gospel, Peter is drawing out the supremacy of Mary over himself. And we should likewise respect her. And it is apparent from the chronology presented above that the other women didn’t immediately fulfil the commission to go tell others about the Lord’s resurrection. They initially don’t tell anyone (Mk. 16:8); even though they were told to go and inform others “quickly”. Indeed, the above chronology of events means that in order for Mary to have met the Lord alone, the women can’t have stayed long at the grave. They went away quickly, but they delayed in telling others what had happened. In contrast, Mary doesn’t delay. She goes straight away, according to John’s account, and tells the others.
16:9 One would have expected that Jesus would have first of all appeared to His dear mother, after resurrecting. Indeed there was a time when I assumed that this happened, although inspiration has more spiritual culture than to record such a personal event in the Lord’s life. But I have to face up to Mk. 16:9: “Now when he was risen… he appeared first to Mary Magdalene”. His mother could so easily have taken this as yet another snub, similar to the way in which He had rebuked her for not knowing He must be in His Father’s house, how He addressed her at Cana as “Woman” and asked her what He had to do with her; how He told those who informed Him that His mother was outside that all those who heard God’s word were His mothers; how He said that His mother wasn’t blessed for suckling Him, but rather, blessed were all those who heard God’s word. And the way He chose to appear to the other Mary rather than His own mother could have been taken by her as yet another snub. Yet these incidents weren’t snubs. The Lord loved His mother, with a depth of passion and emotion that maybe we [and she] will never know. Yet He wanted the best for her spiritually. He wanted her to relate to Him for who He really was, not for who she perceived Him to be. It must have so hurt the Lord to work with her in this way. And so it is with His workings with us, as He seeks to bring us to know Him in truth. It must be hard for Him to bring distress into our lives. Yet with His dear mother, it worked. For the next we read of her, she is meeting with the rest of the ecclesia in Jerusalem (Acts 1:14), and, according to how we read Revelation 12, the Lord Himself saw her as clothed with the sun in glory, responsible for the birth of Himself as the man child, who would bring the Kingdom of God on earth. She made it in the end.
16:10 The account of the disciples' response to the realisation of the resurrection shows perfectly how men will rise above every barrier, both within them and without, to speak the good news of what they now realise to be absolute truth. Mary, bashful ex-hooker that she was, "went and told them that had been with him", the broken-down women "with great joy... did run to bring his disciples word" , those on the Emmaus road "went and told it unto the residue", "the other disciples therefore "told Thomas, John told Peter "It is the Lord", and finally they all "went forth, and preached everywhere" the news of the resurrection (Mt. 28:8; Mk. 16:10,13,20; Jn. 20:25; 21:7). The speed and spirit of the narrative pounds away at a major theme: The natural desire to tell others the Gospel of the Lord's resurrection. This same spirit of urgently passing on good news pervades the preaching recorded in Acts.
Note that the disciples are described as "weeping" for the loss of Jesus, the Greek word meaning specifically to weep aloud (Mk. 16:10). And yet the Lord appears to them in that state and upbraids them for not believing His words and for having hard hearts (Mk. 16:14). Faith is so crucial- and for all their love of Him, they didn't have much faith in Jesus. Are there similarities with ourselves? Do we on one hand love Him, and yet remain hard hearted to His words?
16:13 Although the disciples
accepted that Jesus had appeared to Simon, they didn't believe the account of Cleopas and his friend. The record emphasizes their refusal
to believe.
16:14 The Lord “upbraided” the disciples for their immaturity and
unbelief concerning His cross and resurrection (Mk. 16:14). The Greek word is always used in a
very severe context of ‘reviling’ (Mt. 5:11; 11:20; 27:44; Rom. 15:3; 1 Tim.
4:10); it’s a tough and abusive word. It appears out of place when applied to
the Lord. Yet what it indicates is that the Lord was so angry with them for not
believing the witness of the women. Discounting people’s experience of Jesus
merely on account of their gender or background was so angering to the Lord. And He’s the same
today.
A read through the Gospels reveals the deep frustration and anger of the Lord Jesus because of the blindness of the disciples. Mark's record brings this out especially. The following comments by the Lord, almost under His breath, were all made within a matter of days of each other: "Peter said, Declare unto us this parable. And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding? Do not ye yet understand?... do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand? Perceive ye not yet... having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not?... how is it that ye do not understand?... O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? (with reference to the disciples' faithlessness)... the disciples were astonished at His words. But Jesus answereth (i.e. responded) again, and saith unto them, Children ...and they were astonished out of measure... Jesus went before them: and they were amazed... and he took again the twelve, and began to tell them what things should happen... Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask" (Mt. 15:17; 16:9; Mk. 8:18,21; 9:19; 10:1,24-32). Notice the stress on "how long" and "yet". The Lord clearly was disappointed at the slow rate of development. Their blindness was an agony to Him. Especially does this come out in His attitude to the disciples after His resurrection. The exalted Son of God, the Son of God, poured out His anger on those eleven men. You get the sense of them cowering before the presence of a super-human intellect, beneath a force of personality that could concuss men when turned against them. He upbraided them for their lack of perception, their lack of understanding (Mk. 16:14; Lk. 24:25). As I read the record of this, there's part of me that feels so sorry for them. Thoughts of sympathy skate through my mind: they weren't a bad crowd... only ordinary men... just poor little human beings down here on earth... only men... only human beings... limited by their own nature. But this wasn't how the Lord saw it at all. He was angry with them. The picture of the Son of God, the exalted Son of man with eyes as a flame of fire, upbraiding His friends, those he had died for... because they hadn't understood something which he knew and they knew had been within their power to. The picture is awesome.
The experience of emotion on reflection at the Lord's
sufferings can be yet another area where our spirituality isn't genuine. The
scene of those 11 grown men mourning and weeping at the loss of their Lord
makes me think 'They were a soft hearted lot
really, behold how they loved him...'. But then the Lord appears to them and
upbraids them for being hard
hearted and indifferent to His words (Mk. 16:10,14).
His upbraiding of them must have really hurt- for they must have been sure that
they were anything but hard hearted towards Him.
The even greater commission to go into all the world with
the Gospel followed straight on from Christ upbraiding the eleven "with
their unbelief and hardness of heart" (Mk. 16:14,15).
That 'upbraiding' must have left them wallowing in their weakness. It would
have been quite something. The Son of God upbraiding His
friends. But straight on from that: "Go ye... go ye
into all the world" (Mt. cp. Mk. shows “go ye” was said twice). And He
told them to preach that those who believed not would be damned- after having
just told them that they were men who believed not. Mark’s record stresses
three times in the lead up to this that they “believed not”; and then, he
records how they were told to go and preach condemnation on those who believed
not (Mk. 16:11,13,14,16). They were humbled men who did that. The idea of
taking the Gospel world-wide was in fact alluding to Is. 66:17-20. Here those
who are spared the ‘Gehenna’ of the last day judgment will have a sign placed
on them, as upon Cain, and they will then be sent “unto the nations…and they
shall declare my glory among the gentiles”. The rejection process glorifies
God’s righteous Name, and this world-wide exhibition of the rejected will
actually bring men “out of all nations” (:20) to God, just as Israel’s
condemnation was an “instruction” unto the surrounding nations. The connection
shows that in our obedience to the great commission, we go forth as condemned
men who in our case, like the disciples, have known
the wonder of grace.
16:15- see
on Mk. 14:9.
The essential spirit of the great commission was “Go!”, following on as it does from the repeated commands to “go” and share the glorious news that Christ had risen. And yet so many congregations of believers seem to stress instead “Come in to us!”. And every manner of carrot is dangled before the public to entice them to ‘come in’ to some church event. But the emphasis was clearly, and should still be, upon ‘going’ to people. Our turning of ‘Go!’ into ‘Come to us’ is all part of a wider picture, whereby the group of hard core, desperate men who first followed Jesus, the whores, the gamblers, the mentally ill, the marginalized women… have all been diluted into a religion of conformists, a spiritual bubble in which we risk nothing, sacrifice nothing, and comfortably continue in the way of our fathers who were also members of the same church as we are.
The Lord twice told the disciples: "Go ye... go ye" (Mk. 16:15 cp. Mt. 28:19 and contexts). He was encouraging them to do the natural corollary of what they had experienced. We are to preach to “all the world” (16:15)- the kosmos. In the last days, the Gospel will go to “all nations”- every ethnos (Mk. 13:10). The parallel record in Mt. 24:14 has Jesus saying that it must go to the whole world- oikoumene. What did He actually say? I suggest He used both words, in an emphasis of just how universal the witness would be: ‘The Gospel will be preached in the whole oikoumene, yes, to every ethnos…’. This is all some emphasis- every creature (individual), in the whole world system, every part of society (kosmos), of every nation (ethnos), on the whole planet (oikoumene) was to have the message. And this is our unmistakable mandate. The number of different words used by the Lord was surely intentional.
As so often with reading the Gospels, it is profitable to imagine the tone of voice in which the Lord spoke the words which are recorded. "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature". If only we could sense the intensity of desire, the deepness of spiritual meaning, which His voice would have conveyed. We must have the spiritual ambition to take the Gospel to the whole world- no matter how small our world may be. The world of our street, of our town, nation- and as far as we are able, the whole planet. Paul had this ambition, quite apart from any personal commission he received.
The great commission is framed in language which picks up on the descriptions of the Lord’s own preaching earlier in His ministry. His idea clearly enough is that He will no longer be on earth; therefore His people must be ‘Him’ to the whole earth:
The great commission to us |
The personal preaching of Jesus |
|
Make disciples (Mt. 28:19) |
Made disciples (Mt. 4:18-22; Mk. 1:16-20; Lk. 5:1-11) |
|
Preach the Gospel, teach people (Mk. 16:15) |
Proclaimed the Gospel (Lk. 4:18), taught people (Mk. 6:30) |
|
Proclaim repentance (Lk. 24:47) |
Proclaimed repentance (Mk. 1:15) |
|
Forgive and retain sins (Jn. 20:23) |
Forgave sins (Mt. 9:1-9; Mk. 2:1-12) |
|
Retained sins (Jn. 8:21-24; 9:41) |
|
|
Witnessed to others in obedience to the great commission (Acts 1:8) |
Witnessed what he had seen and heard (Jn. 3:11) |
|
Cast out demons, heal (Mk. 16:16) |
Cast out demons (Mk. 3:15; 6:7,13), healed (Mk. 6:13) |
16:15,16 In the very context of the
Lord upbraiding them for their slowness to believe the Gospel of His death and resurrection,
they were asked to go and teach others that he who didn’t believe this same
message would be damned (Mk. 16:15,16). Their witness, as it is recorded in the
Gospel records, is therefore shot through with recognition of their own
weakness. They record how Peter their leader was described by the Lord as a
“satan” (Mk. 8:33). They were good fishermen- yet their records show that never
do they record themselves as catching a fish without their Lord’s help. In this
they set a model for our witness; it must be shot through with a full
recognition of our weakness, our own struggles to believe that which we invite
others to believe. And the more real, the more credible. Not only did the
Gospel writers portray their own weakness and slowness to believe; they write
in such a way as to minimize their own personalities and presence. They don’t
continually harp on about the fact they were really present.
16:18 In
Old Testament times, God described His whole people as His anointed one, His
Christ: “The Lord is a strength unto his people, and he is the saving strength
of his anointed” (Ps. 28:8 RVmg.). The whole people were His anointed King, His
Messiah, the anointed one. And so it is for all those today who are “in
Christ”. Thus the prophecy about Christ personally that He would tread upon
snakes and wild animals (Ps. 91:13) is quoted as being fulfilled in the
disciples, who ‘were’ Christ on their preaching mission (Lk. 10:19; Mk. 16:18).