Reflective Bible Study

As we’ve moved through this year focusing in on Mark’s gospel, we’ve sped through Jesus’ life and through many of the most significant events so far in Jesus’ ministry. In our passage for this event, Jesus is challenged again because of something His disciples don’t do, and in Jesus’ response, we get the picture He was perhaps a little irritated at these religious leaders, but also that Jesus had a higher opinion of God’s law than these religious leaders.

Let’s read this event and see what we can learn. Our passage is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will read it from the Contemporary English Version. Starting in verse 1, Mark tells us:

¹ Some Pharisees and several teachers of the Law of Moses from Jerusalem came and gathered around Jesus. ² They noticed that some of his disciples ate without first washing their hands.

³ The Pharisees and many other Jewish people obey the teachings of their ancestors. They always wash their hands in the proper way before eating. ⁴ None of them will eat anything they buy in the market until it is washed. They also follow a lot of other teachings, such as washing cups, pitchers, and bowls.

⁵ The Pharisees and teachers asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples obey what our ancestors taught us to do? Why do they eat without washing their hands?”

Before continuing to discover what Jesus says in response to this, I want to draw our attention onto this question being a spiritual question more than a health question. While the laws given through Moses encompass not only spirituality, but health, legalities, and more, at this point in the Jews history, everything was being given a disproportionate level of spiritual significance.

I will be among the first to say that there is likely spiritual significance in more parts of my life and habits that I even begin to realize. However, with that said, some instructions have less to do with spiritual health directly and more to do with physical health. I don’t know if these disciples did not ever wash their hands, or if these disciples didn’t wash their hands in whatever way was spiritually significant in the minds of these legalistic Jews.

However, Jesus’ answer draws our attention not only on His heart, but also onto a pretty significant spiritual truth as well. Continuing in verse 6:

⁶ Jesus replied:

You are nothing but show-offs! The prophet Isaiah was right when he wrote that God had said,

“All of you praise me
    with your words,
but you never really
    think about me.
⁷ It is useless for you
    to worship me,
when you teach rules
    made up by humans.”

⁸ You disobey God’s commands in order to obey what humans have taught. ⁹ You are good at rejecting God’s commands so that you can follow your own teachings! ¹⁰ Didn’t Moses command you to respect your father and mother? Didn’t he tell you to put to death all who curse their parents? ¹¹ But you let people get by without helping their parents when they should. You let them say that what they own has been offered to God. ¹² You won’t let those people help their parents. ¹³ And you ignore God’s commands in order to follow your own teaching. You do a lot of other things that are just as bad.

¹⁴ Jesus called the crowd together again and said, “Pay attention and try to understand what I mean. ^15-16 The food that you put into your mouth doesn’t make you unclean and unfit to worship God. The bad words that come out of your mouth are what make you unclean.”

¹⁷ After Jesus and his disciples had left the crowd and had gone into the house, they asked him what these sayings meant. ¹⁸ He answered, “Don’t you know what I am talking about by now? You surely know that the food you put into your mouth cannot make you unclean. ¹⁹ It doesn’t go into your heart, but into your stomach, and then out of your body.” By saying this, Jesus meant that all foods were fit to eat.

²⁰ Then Jesus said:

What comes from your heart is what makes you unclean. ²¹ Out of your heart come evil thoughts, vulgar deeds, stealing, murder, ²² unfaithfulness in marriage, greed, meanness, deceit, indecency, envy, insults, pride, and foolishness. ²³ All of these come from your heart, and they are what make you unfit to worship God.

In this lengthy response to this challenge, Jesus calls out the Pharisees and other religious leaders for placing their own rules above God’s direct instructions. While I’m confident that the religious leaders believed both sets of rules were important, in any place where these rules conflicted, they minimized God’s law in place of their customs. While some of what God has said could be seen as unpopular and potentially illegal in our world today, God didn’t share His laws as optional from an eternal perspective.

However, the biggest portion of Jesus’ response comes in contrasting what makes you fit for worship from what is simply a smart thing to do for your health. However, one phrase in this passage stood out to me as we read it. This phrase is found at the end of verse 19: “By saying this, Jesus meant that all foods were fit to eat.”

Reading this translation makes me think that all foods are equal, but some of the other translations we regularly pull from frame this phrase better in my mind. Both the New American Standard Bible translation and the New International Version emphasize Jesus’ declaration here that all foods are clean. I can understand why these translators may have chosen to frame this idea as being fit to eat, but it might have been better to say that Jesus simply reframes all foods as spiritually clean.

However, Mark’s gospel is attributing a meaning to Jesus message that I don’t see. Perhaps the original language has a better connection, but Jesus is focused more on spiritual cleanness and fitness for worship and how our food doesn’t change our status or our fitness in God’s eyes. I don’t see Jesus telling us that all foods are now permissible to eat, because history, logic, and any reasonable dietician will tell you that different foods have different health benefits. Some foods are simply better than others, and some types of food should be avoided.

Jesus’ message is that our food doesn’t affect God’s response to our worship. Jesus does not hint or state that all things that go into our mouths are equal from a health perspective.

Instead, Jesus emphasizes that what comes out of our mouths comes from our hearts, and what comes out of our mouths makes us unclean. The things that come out of our mouths reveal our hearts. We could also say that the things we share on social media reveal our hearts as well. In today’s era, our “voice” extends to both what we say and what we write and share. What we choose to communicate to others reveals our heart.

God doesn’t view our online lives and our offline lives as different. God sees everything we do and Jesus tells us here that what we do is an extension of our hearts.

After leaving the crowd and entering the house with the disciples, Jesus reemphasizes the truth that our hearts affect how fit we are to worship God. This also strongly suggests that our worship to God might not be accepted based on the state of our heart.

While it is true that our food affects our health, and our health will ultimately affect our life, which includes our ability to worship, our food does not affect the spiritual state of our heart or God’s love for each of us when we come to Him in worship.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, continue intentionally seeking God first in your life. Don’t let this passage be a license to ignore what you put into your mouth, but let it be a challenge to be extra aware of what comes out of your mouth, and to be extra aware of what you communicate to others, whether this communication uses your vocal cords, your pen, or even your computer, tablet, or phone. What you say and share with others reveals the state of your heart, and the state of your heart reveals how fit you are to worship God.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself. I don’t know of any better way to help clean and restore your heart than through heartfelt prayer, and studying God’s truth in the pages of the Bible. These spiritual habits have given men and women a solid spiritual foundation for centuries, these spiritual habits can strengthen our spiritual lives, and these spiritual habits have the power clean our hearts as well. Don’t simply assume the Bible says something because you heard it from a friend or read it on the internet. Choose to study it out for yourself because if for no other reason than your eternity depends on it!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Part of me wonders if Jesus had fun pushing and challenging the disciples’ faith. Up to this point in the miracles we have looked at, Jesus has healed people, cast evil spirits out of people, and in our last episode, we discovered that Jesus raised a dead boy back to life. With all these miraculous events, I believe the disciples were getting more and more confident in Jesus’ God-given ability to help those who were hurting.

However, having a firm grasp of healing and health is one thing. But in our event for this episode, the disciples’ faith is tested on an entirely new level. Also, following this event, the disciples had at least one more reason to be amazed and in awe regarding Jesus.

Let’s read about what happened. Our passage is found in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 8, and we will be reading from the God’s Word translation. Starting in verse 23, Matthew tells us that:

²³ Jesus’ disciples went with him as he left in a boat. ²⁴ Suddenly, a severe storm came across the sea. The waves were covering the boat. Yet, Jesus was sleeping.

Let’s pause briefly because what we just read is amazing to me. The last two statements we just read were that waves were covering the boat, and that Jesus was sleeping through it. This wasn’t just a rocky storm, this was a severe storm that could easily end a sailor’s life. While we don’t know if there was any rain with the wind and waves, reading that the waves were covering the boat makes me amazed that Jesus was able to sleep through this.

It would be illogical to think that in this entire event, Jesus didn’t get wet. In my mind’s eye, this passage describes Jesus sleeping through wave after wave as it covers the boat and drenches Him with water. I doubt I could sleep through that, but this is likely what happened. I don’t think there is evidence for boats in that day being like what we have today with a cabin below deck that is shielded from the elements. It is much more likely that Jesus and the disciples were exposed to the wind, waves, and rain if rain was also present.

The first thing in this passage that amazes me is the level of trust and faith Jesus displays in God. Through one of the worst flash storms the lake experiences, Jesus sleeps through it. This could only happen because Jesus had complete trust and faith in God. Jesus knew His live was not going to end at the bottom of the lake, so He knew God would keep Him safe. It’s also likely that Satan was behind this storm in an attempt to stop Jesus from reaching the cross.

Let’s continue reading to discover what happens next. While the wind is raging and the waves continue crashing into the boat, filling it with water, and Jesus continues sleeping, we pick back up in verse 25 where Matthew tells us:

²⁵ So they woke him up, saying, “Lord! Save us! We’re going to die!”

²⁶ Jesus said to them, “Why do you cowards have so little faith?” Then he got up, gave an order to the wind and the sea, and the sea became very calm.

²⁷ The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!”

As I read this event, I wonder what Jesus is actually challenging the disciples’ faith on. Many of these disciples were experts on the water, and this storm had them scared for their lives. On one hand, Jesus could be challenging them regarding their faith in God’s protection. I’m not sure if the disciples remembered or understood that they had protection because they were with Jesus, and that the Old Testament extended protection to Jesus’ followers that none, except the one who would betray Jesus, would be lost.  

But Jesus could have challenged the disciples’ faith from a different angle. This other angle challenges the disciples’ faith regarding the idea that they could challenge the wind and waves in Jesus’ name to be still. While Jesus had not sent them out in pairs to preach and heal others yet, the disciples did have enough evidence to have at least tried to ask God to help them.

I wonder what would have happened if one of the disciples had tried to challenge the wind and waves in Jesus’ name. Would that have displayed enough faith for a miracle? Or I wonder what would have happened if the disciples had cried out to God to calm the storm for them. Would God have answered the disciples’ prayer while Jesus was sleeping?

While we can only speculate about what these alternate outcomes might have been in the disciples’ case, we can learn from these alternate paths when we face challenges and problems in our own lives. When faced with something challenging or impossible, we can lose heart and give up, or we can cry out to God for help!

However, in this event, we discover how the disciples fall into a trap that we are capable of falling into, even if their situation is a little different from ours. The disciples fall into the trap in this event believing someone else has a better connection to God than they did, and more specifically, that God is more willing to answer this other person’s request than He would be if they asked it.

While in the disciples’ case, this Someone is Jesus, and Jesus does have an excellent connection with the Father. However, I don’t believe for an instant that God the Father would only answer Jesus’ prayers while Jesus’ best friends on earth were in trouble. Jesus did have a better connection with God than the disciples did, but that does not mean that God would be less willing to answer their prayers or cries for help.

In our own lives, we might not have as great of a relationship with Jesus as we see other people having. We might even look back and wish we lived during the first century and could have walked and talked with Jesus personally. However, while there is always the temptation to think that someone else is better connected with God than we are, we should never let this fear affect our faith that God loves us and that He really does want to answer our prayers.

It is easy to be tempted that someone else’s prayers are more valuable than your own, but this temptation is a lie from Satan. God loves you and He wants to help you when you ask for help. While God answers prayers from a different perspective than we are in, God’s goal is saving us for eternity; even if that means that the answer He gives us in this instant doesn’t appear to be helpful.

We can trust that God has our best, eternal interests in mind, and that He is more than willing to help us when we pray to Him!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

Always seek God first and place your hope, faith, trust, and belief in Him. Know that God loves you and that He is more than willing to listen and answer your prayers. Never doubt God’s love or believe Satan’s lie than another person’s prayers are more valuable than yours are. God loves you and He wants a close relationship with you personally!

Also, always pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow personally closer to God and to learn what He wants to teach you. While a pastor, author, speaker, or even a podcaster can give you ideas to think about, be sure to filter everything through what you read in the pages of God’s Word.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we move through our year focusing on Mark’s gospel, let’s jump over one of Jesus’ most famous miracles and focus in on a miracle that happened on a much smaller scale, but a miracle that may have stood out in the minds of the disciples a little more. Part way through Mark, chapter 6, we find Mark sharing the only miracle that all four gospel writers include. This is the miracle of the feeding a crowd of over 5,000 people.

After this miracle has taken place, we jump into our event that we’ll be focusing in on for our time together this episode. This means that our passage for this episode will come from Mark’s gospel (which is no surprise there), chapter 6, and we will read from the God’s Word translation. Starting in verse 45, Mark wraps up the miracle of feeding the 5,000 by telling us:

⁴⁵ Jesus quickly made his disciples get into a boat and cross to Bethsaida ahead of him while he sent the people away. ⁴⁶ After saying goodbye to them, he went up a mountain to pray. ⁴⁷ When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and he was alone on the land.

⁴⁸ Jesus saw that they were in a lot of trouble as they rowed, because they were going against the wind. Between three and six o’clock in the morning, he came to them. He was walking on the sea. He wanted to pass by them. ⁴⁹ When they saw him walking on the sea, they thought, “It’s a ghost!” and they began to scream. ⁵⁰ All of them saw him and were terrified.

Immediately, he said, “Calm down! It’s me. Don’t be afraid!” ⁵¹ He got into the boat with them, and the wind stopped blowing. The disciples were astounded. ⁵² (They didn’t understand what had happened with the loaves of bread. Instead, their minds were closed.)

Let’s pause reading here briefly because I want to point out what Mark has just told us. While Mark mentions that the disciples were astounded at Jesus and that the wind stopped blowing at the instant Jesus stepped into the boat with them, Mark also includes an interesting side note. Verse 52 tells us that the disciples didn’t understand what had happened with the loaves of bread because their minds were closed.

As I think about this side-note Mark included in his gospel, part of me wanted this verse to read that the disciples’ minds were closed because God wasn’t ready for them to fully understand the significance of what Jesus had done. However, nothing like this is suggested in this passage or in this context.

Instead, the context is the disciples fighting the storm and Jesus walking to them on the water. At the end of what had occurred that night, it wouldn’t surprise many people that the events of the miraculous feeding of a huge crowd was diminished in the minds of these disciples who were likely very sleep deprived while also making very little progress crossing the lake.

Part of me wonders if the disciples had closed off their own minds to Jesus and to the significance of this earlier miracle because they were simply overwhelmed with what they had just been through.

This detail reminds me of the truth that our current problems will always appear to be bigger than our past problems, and the further in the past a problem is, the less significant it appears. It is the same when we look at something that is far away. It always appears smaller than when we are right next to it. When we have a lot of distance between a problem we once faced and where we are today, that problem will always appear less significant than the challenges in our lives today.

While it is crazy to think about, someone who had been homeless for several months a decade or more ago might be more stressed out tomorrow morning about what they will wear from a closet of clean clothes then about their homelessness, even though their homeless state was significantly more stressful at that time of their lives.

With the disciples, while their stomachs had been satisfied through the miracle of food multiplication, they had moved on to the most immediate challenge and their minds were closed to the significance of this miracle.

If the disciples missed the significance of the miracle where Jesus fed the huge crowd, is it possible we too can miss what God is doing in our lives today?

Are our lives so full of distractions that we miss seeing all the amazing miracles that God is doing in the world around us?

Are our lives so focused on screens that we miss the beauty of creation?

While I cannot answer these questions for you, I can certainly say that God has been challenging me at this point in my life with busyness and intentionally staying connected with Him. I will be the first to say that I probably miss more than I should with regards to what God is doing in the world around me.

However, I know that passages like this and specifically challenges like this help me refocus my life onto Jesus.

Before ending this episode, I want to draw our attention onto what happened after Jesus and the disciples reach the far shore. Picking back up in verse 53, Mark tells us that:

⁵³ They crossed the sea, came to shore at Gennesaret, and anchored there.

⁵⁴ As soon as they stepped out of the boat, the people recognized Jesus. ⁵⁵ They ran all over the countryside and began to carry the sick on cots to any place where they heard he was. ⁵⁶ Whenever he would go into villages, cities, or farms, people would put their sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch the edge of his clothes. Everyone who touched his clothes was made well.

In these few summary verses, I get a clear reminder that even simple faith in Jesus is enough to work miracles in our lives. Those people living in that area had the faith that simply touching Jesus’ clothing would be enough to make them well. This is amazing faith, and it is also simple faith. I see this passage challenging me to step out of the busyness of my life and back into being better connected with God! Perhaps it can be the same sort of challenge for you too!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to place your hope, faith, trust, and belief in Jesus. Intentionally make time to step out of the busyness we all face and intentionally take the time to rest with God. God promised us regular rest in His daily and weekly cycle for our lives, and following His pattern for our lives is what ultimately works the best for our health and wellbeing.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. A strong relationship with God will help us face the trials that come into our lives, and a strong relationship with God helps our minds be open to seeing and understanding what He is doing in the world today.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or deviate away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Up to this point in Jesus’ ministry, we have seen Him heal those who were sick, those who were disabled, and those who were possessed by evil spirits. However, as we come to the miracle we will focus in on in this episode, Jesus enters a completely new area for miracle working, and this all begins with Jesus feeling sorry for a widow who needed help.

Let’s read our passage to discover what happened. Our passage is found in the gospel of Luke, chapter 7, and we will be reading from the New International Reader’s Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 11, Luke tells us that:

¹¹ Some time later, Jesus went to a town called Nain. His disciples and a large crowd went along with him. ¹² He approached the town gate. Just then, a dead person was being carried out. He was the only son of his mother. She was a widow. A large crowd from the town was with her. ¹³ When the Lord saw her, he felt sorry for her. So he said, “Don’t cry.”

Let’s pause reading here for a moment, because what Jesus feels and what He does appear to conflict with each other. In about the same breath, Luke tells us Jesus felt sorry for the widow, and He tells her to not cry. Crying when one has experienced loss is about the most natural thing that we can do.

However, I believe Jesus wants to teach us something about God and about loss that we don’t often think of. Regardless of what Jesus is about to do in this passage, the perspective Jesus has is one that focuses on eternity. While Jesus is about to raise the dead boy back to life, even if Jesus had not done so, we can trust and know that when we believe in Jesus, we are guaranteed a future life at the resurrection. Death in this life is not the end, even if death in this life feels like a huge loss.

After telling the widow to stop crying, Jesus then does the truly amazing miracle. While Jesus had healed people of any and every sort of illness or disability, what comes next takes His ministry to a new level. Continuing in verse 14:

¹⁴ Then he went up and touched the coffin. Those carrying it stood still. Jesus said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” ¹⁵ The dead man sat up and began to talk. Then Jesus gave him back to his mother.

¹⁶ The people were all filled with wonder and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.” ¹⁷ This news about Jesus spread all through Judea and the whole country.

In our passage, not only does Jesus raise this young man back to life, we discover in this miracle a revelation that those present make that is truly profound.

While one might begin to put the focus on Jesus as the source of this resurrection miracle, the crowd present has a slightly different response. On realizing what had just taken place, Luke describes the people present as being “filled with wonder” and praising God. In this miracle, God received the glory and the credit, not Jesus. Luke quotes the people present saying, “A great prophet has appeared among us. God has come to help his people.”

Those present for this miracle describe Jesus as a prophet, which is another way of saying a messenger for God, and they even push past this idea by saying that God has come to help His people. In a subtle way, these people give Jesus honor by recognizing God working in His life. These people recognized that with the arrival of Jesus, God had come to help His people.

This truth extends much further than these first-century Jews realized. Jesus’ arrival in history marked God coming into History to save all His people. God’s people in the context of our discussion include both those who were faithful, loving Jews, as well as God’s people who were not Jewish.

With the arrival of Jesus, we now have a picture of God that we can place our faith on. Prior to this, the sacrifice of an innocent animal as a sin offering foreshadowed what Jesus would do. Those who lived before the cross looked forward to the sacrifice God would make on their behalf through the sacrifice of the lamb. Even if the first-century Jewish culture had misinterpreted the Messiah’s role for His first coming, they had kept the sacrifices intact, and through all the legalism present in that era, we still can see the theme that something else would take the punishment for our sins.

I don’t believe these witnesses of Jesus’ first resurrection miracle could have responded the way they did without the Holy Spirit’s help. Since this was the first time a resurrection miracle had happened in Jesus’ ministry, it is rational for us not to see anything about faith in Jesus displayed through this event. However, faith in Jesus isn’t the only source of Jesus’ miracles.

In this passage, we can see Jesus raise this dead boy to life not just for the benefit of his widowed mother, but that through this event, God would receive the glory. In a similar way, I wonder if we would see more miracles in our lives if we intentionally pushed for the glory to go to God and not to ourselves. While it is easy to take credit for our part in something amazing, God should be the recipient of the majority of our praise, if not all of it.

Jesus healed people as a way to show people God’s love for us, and Jesus healed people in miraculous ways that changed peoples’ lives for the better. In our own lives, we should live seeking to give God the glory and to show people God’s love through how we live, act, and help others. Christians should not be known for their political pursuits, but for their prayerful, personal love for others.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, be sure to keep seeking God first in your life and be sure to give Him the credit and the glory for the things He has blessed you with. God has blessed all of us in so many more ways than we even can realize, and it isn’t too much to stop and acknowledge the blessings we recognize. Also, intentionally show your thanks to God by loving others. God loved the worst member’s of humanity, and as His followers, we are called to do the same.

Also, be sure to always pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn more about God and to personally grow closer to Him each and every day. While a pastor or podcaster can give you ideas to think about, filter everything through the truth you find in God’s word and let Him take and transform not only your heart, but your life as well.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or drift away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!