Tuesday Morning Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 9:30-
31
In this season of Easter may Christ's Grace and Blessings surround you.
A found adult child in critical care recovery, a new baby born, a car accident whose driver was injured but is home in recovery, prayers answered, HS graduates celebrating a new time in their lives, finding summer jobs, a successful yard sale and fund raiser to assist our sisters in Christ (circa $2525 donated and made at the yard sale), successful recovery from knee replacement, all from the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the abundance of blessings from our Father in Heaven. Thank you, God, we love Jesus, and His Spirit. so that we might know in our hearts of the in-breaking of Your Love.
OK, you have caught me. There are a few verses which I covered without naming them in my last Bible Study, so today we are on to Mark 9:30,31. You and I have been busy celebrating Easter and the glory of the Lord's Resurrection, so it is a little hard for us to get back into Mark to speak about these two verses in which our Savior speaks directly to His disciples about what is now coming for Him and for them. Typically, as we might expect in the Gospel of Mark, what seems to us to be perfectly clear about the Lord's death and Resurrection, are a confusing teaching for the disciples. After all, you and I have lived for nearly 2000 years with the knowledge of the Resurrection event, but for Christ's closest followers, this information is really new, amazing, and brings a broad lack of comprehension. The amazing thing in this passage is that Jesus, unlike other times when He has explained His teaching in parables, now chooses to let this information He has offered sink in gradually, no direct explanation right now. Now we really see Jesus reach that turning point after his conversations with ancient prophets on the Mount of Transfiguration, and His purity which shows in the view of three disciples who have gone with Him and seen Him brighter than the sun in the sky. Yet another clue exists here. As He speaks about His coming death and rising from the dead, Jesus also says that He is being delivered into the hands of His enemies. The disciples may not have noticed this, and perhaps in a casual reading of these verses in Mark we have not picked up on it either. There is no doubt that the disciples were prepared to go with Jesus to His death at the hands of those who should have known better, but what they don't get is that Jesus will do something that no one else has ever done. He will rise from the dead on the third day! One commentator tells us that the disciples were like men who knew so much already that they were unable to understand this one more thing that was so crucial to coming into the fullness of God's Grace in Christ. And the life, forgiveness, and salvation which Christ's death and rising would bring for us and for all of God's creation. Did you ever not hear something which was so offensive to your senses that your mind closed it out? Perhaps this is what happened to Christ's disciples when he spoke to then of dying and rising on the third day. This was something so new, so different, so much God's miracle for us, and for His Son, that at this time the disciples would have to wait until they actually watched it unfold before them before they could really understand it all. There are too many "Christians" today who only hear and accept what they like, and the rest of Christ's truth they set aside. God does not always, and maybe we can say never, gives us things the way we like them, (except for Christ's saving Grace, but even that takes allowing the Spirit to move our hearts and minds to believe in the Savior), but we don't always want to love our neighbors as ourselves! Such a commandment is really hard for us to fulfill every moment of every day. You mean I have to love the ones who are willing to reject me and do me harm?! After all, isn't that what Jesus did for the ones who moved to destroy Him? Being fully immersed in our faith and belief in Christ is our aim. Succeeding at it some of the time is what we always need Christ's forgiveness for! Thank God for the Love of Christ for our lives.
In Christ's Love, Pastor Kim
Next Monday I will try to remember to talk about why Jesus was in the North and why that was so safe for Him.
