Reflective Bible Study

Continuing forward in Mark’s gospel, Mark describes how Jesus starts His ministry off strong by teaching, healing, and calling some people to follow Him. In the next verses we will focus in on, we see both an overview for the message of Jesus’ ministry, and the impact this message has on the people listening.

Our passage is found in Mark, chapter 1, and we will read from the New International Reader’s Version. Starting in verse 14, Mark tells us that:

¹⁴ After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee. He preached the good news of God. ¹⁵ “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Turn away from your sins and believe the good news!”

Pausing briefly, whenever I read these two verses, I am impressed that Jesus’ message about God’s kingdom being near is both amazing because Jesus Himself said this, and it is amazing because I believe this is a message for every time and every generation since Jesus shared it. With every day that passes, we come one day closer to Jesus returning, and we are called to get ready for Jesus’ return by turning away from our sins and believing the good news.

Looking at this one verse gives us a good overview of Jesus’ message – especially Jesus’ message at the start of His ministry. But our passage isn’t finished yet. Continuing in verse 16, Mark tells us:

¹⁶ One day Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee. There he saw Simon and his brother Andrew. They were throwing a net into the lake. They were fishermen. ¹⁷ “Come and follow me,” Jesus said. “I will send you out to fish for people.” ¹⁸ At once they left their nets and followed him.

¹⁹ Then Jesus walked a little farther. As he did, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat preparing their nets. ²⁰ Right away he called out to them. They left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men. Then they followed Jesus.

Pausing briefly again, when reading Matthew or Mark’s gospel, we might get the impression that Simon, Andrew, James, and John abandoned everything to follow a complete stranger. While this isn’t too far from the truth, Luke and John describe a little more details around how these first disciples were a little more familiar with Jesus’ message and ministry before Jesus calls them specifically, and Luke specifically includes a miracle that prompts these men to pay attention.

But Mark doesn’t include any of the back-story for these disciples. Instead, Mark emphasizes how these men dropped everything and followed Jesus when they were invited. When God calls us, we might not be called to drop everything and everyone, but it is possible we will be called to leave something we have been focusing energy and attention on. Depending on where we are in life, we might be called to end friendships that aren’t positive, or distance ourselves from toxic people, or we may be challenged to give up something that had been important in our lives before the point God invited us to follow. However, as Mark will share later in his gospel, when we leave something for Jesus because He has called us to, Jesus has much better things in our future and we will be blessed with significantly more than what we have given up. And above all of that, the blessings God gives us are positive things in our lives, and not negatives like the things God has called us to give up.

Continuing our passage, after summarizing Jesus’ early messages and introducing us to the early small group of disciples, Mark then tells us in verse 21 that:

²¹ Jesus and those with him went to Capernaum. When the Sabbath day came, he went into the synagogue. There he began to teach. ²² The people were amazed at his teaching. That’s because he taught them like one who had authority. He did not talk like the teachers of the law. ²³ Just then a man in their synagogue cried out. He was controlled by an evil spirit. He said, ²⁴ “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are. You are the Holy One of God!”

²⁵ “Be quiet!” said Jesus firmly. “Come out of him!” ²⁶ The evil spirit shook the man wildly. Then it came out of him with a scream.

²⁷ All the people were amazed. So they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching! And with so much authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits, and they obey him.” ²⁸ News about Jesus spread quickly all over Galilee.

During one of the first Sabbath’s Jesus spoke at the synagogue in Capernaum, we discover that Jesus had a different way of teaching God’s Word. Mark describes Jesus’ method of teaching in verse 22 when he tells us Jesus “taught them like one who had authority. He did not talk like the teachers of the law.”

I’m not sure if you caught that little distinction or not, but Jesus did not talk like the teachers of the law and Jesus taught the people like One who had authority. With these two details present, this prompts me to conclude that prior to this point, the teachers and synagogue leaders all spoke in ways that did not sound authoritative or perhaps even confident. At the very least, the people had not heard an authoritative message in their synagogue for a very long time.

However, what happened after Jesus’ preaching amazed the people helped solidify Jesus’ authority. Whether Satan was trying to derail Jesus or whether God held Satan back until this point, a man controlled by an evil spirit shouts out in the synagogue and oddly enough identifies Jesus as the Holy One of God.

Jesus tells the spirit to be quiet and to leave the man.

If Jesus’ message and words did not sound authoritative to some of those present before this point, they definitely sounded authoritative after seeing the evil spirit leave this man. With just a few words, Jesus’ command is obeyed by evil spirits, even if these commands were obeyed unwillingly.

However, why would Jesus command the evil spirit to be silent, especially if the evil spirit actually was speaking the truth?

I believe there are two reasons. First, while the evil spirit technically was speaking truth, evil spirits have a way of twisting truth and lies and it is never safe or wise to even listen to the arguments of evil spirits. One fraction of a lie in a whole set of truth is just as dangerous as a drop of poison in a cup of clean water. The best way to discern whether a message is worth listening to, or even paying attention to, is whether it is approved or condemned by the clear message of the Bible. The Bible is clear there are some messages that are never okay to entertain, and listening to evil spirits is one of these messages we should always avoid and reject.

The other big reason is that while the evil spirit was technically speaking the truth, the message that the evil spirit shared did not mean the same thing to the people present as it did to Jesus’ understanding of scripture. The people were expecting a military leader messiah to overthrow the Romans, Jesus came as a suffering Messiah to take the sin of the world to the cross. If the people rallied together believing Jesus to be the Messiah they expected Him to be, it had the power to derail the Messiah Jesus came to be, and it would have stopped the cross from happening in the way God had planned for it to happen.

This misunderstanding of the role of the Messiah was one of the biggest challenges Jesus faced in His ministry, and it was something that even His own disciples didn’t fully understand until after the cross and the resurrection. Jesus was tempted and challenged on every angle imaginable, and Jesus pushed back the temptation and avoided the challenges throughout His ministry leading to the cross.

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

As always, intentionally seek God first and place Jesus first in your life. Choose to place your faith, your hope, your belief, and your trust in Jesus and lean on Him for your salvation. Understand that Jesus came to take our sins and our punishment on Himself and He did this to make the way available for us to accept His life and His reward for a perfect life. This is the great news of the gospel message, and it is a gift we are called to accept.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself, to learn and grow closer to God each day. Through prayer and studying the Bible, fall in love with the God who loves you enough to give up Himself for you on the cross, and the God who was willing to take your punishment on Himself to redeem you from the sins and mistakes you made.

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 continue forward in our year of podcasts looking at Jesus’ miracles, we actually step back slightly in the timeline of the gospels to the first miracle Jesus did. If you are wondering how we know this, the gospel of John records this miracle, and John also clearly states after this miracle that this was Jesus’ first miracle, or the first of Jesus’ signs.

With this as a backdrop for our episode, let’s read what happened and discover one big thing we can learn from this event. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 2, and we will be reading from the New American Standard Bible translation. Starting in verse 1, John tells us:

¹ On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; ² and both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. ³ When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.” ⁴ And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come.” ⁵ His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”

Let’s stop reading here, because what John has just told us about Mary is amazing. Next week, we’ll finish looking at the rest of this miracle, but with what has just happened, I don’t want us to miss this powerful theme that we can see in what Mary just said. But before we get to why this is powerful and amazing, let’s read verse 11, which I alluded to at the start of this episode to give us a little additional context for what we will discover. In verse 11, after the miracle had happened, John tells us that:

¹¹ This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.

In this event, and especially in Mary’s declaration, we see an amazing level of faith in Jesus’ ability even though no prior miracle has taken place to make Mary certain of Jesus’ ability to perform miracles. While no previous miracle had taken place, we can look at Mary’s bold statement to both Jesus and to the servants and see faith present in at least two different angles.

The first angle we can see is Mary simply asking Jesus to help, but not necessarily asking for Him to perform a miracle. Mary knows that Jesus is more than physically capable to take the servants out and find a place where they can get wine, but we also don’t know what time of day this is. If it was at night, the shops would be closed and the shop owners would be sleeping. While Jesus chose to perform a miracle, the setup for the miracle doesn’t really emphasize a miracle being necessary, only that help is being asked for and expected.

The second angle we can see in this event is Mary asking Jesus for miraculous help. While there may have been plenty of non-miracle options for Jesus to choose from to help, from Jesus’ response when He says that His hour has not yet come, we can conclude that Mary is asking for help from Jesus’ divine nature more than His human nature. And Mary is unwilling to accept “no” for an answer.

In Mary’s persistence and her unwavering confidence in Jesus’ ability to solve the problem, we discover a model for us to use with our faith, persistence, and confidence. While it isn’t always smart to blaze forward ahead of God’s will, through Mary’s example, we see that when we move forward confidently and fully trusting in God’s help, we discover that He is willing to step in to help us even if it isn’t part of His original plan.

In contrast to Mary’s faith being present before having a miracle to back up her faith, verse 11 finishes by saying that following this miracle, “His disciples believed in Him”. The disciples didn’t have the same history with Jesus that Mary had, but that didn’t stop them from believing in Jesus when they were given a reason to believe.

While we don’t have the same privilege that these early followers had to witness this miracle, they demonstrate faith based on what they saw Jesus doing, and we can base our faith on what we see Jesus doing in our own lives. While culture and Satan tempting make it easy to be skeptical of the truly miraculous, when we ask God to open our eyes to what He is doing in the world today, expect to see the world in a different way. God wants us to see the world as He sees it, and He wants to help us love the world as He loves it!

From the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, we discover a miracle that confirmed the faith of Jesus’ mother, and it gave the first disciples a reason to place their faith and belief in Jesus as God’s Messiah.

While there is more we could focus in on in this miracle, we’ll save it for the next episode. I can think of no better focus for Jesus’ first officially recorded miracle than to bring out the faith that this event included in it: both the faith of Mary who prompts this miracle, and of the disciples who believe in Jesus because of this miracle.

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

Always seek God first and let Him lead you forward through life. Ask God to teach you how to see the world through His eyes, and be willing to live, love, and help in a compassionate, Christ-like way.

Also, as I always challenge you to do, be sure to intentionally and regularly pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow your personal relationship with God. Through a personal relationship with God, we are able to have faith in Him and the closer we draw to God, the easier it will be to live how He wants us to live, and see the world as He sees 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 deviate away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we dive into Mark’s gospel, we discover that Mark does not start slowly. Within the first 13 verses, we discover how this gospel points to several big events at the start of Jesus’ ministry, gives us a picture of John the Baptist, and points to a fulfilled prophecy. In Mark’s introduction, we get a quick, but brief look at how the stage was set for Jesus’ ministry to begin.

Let’s read how Mark opens his gospel and discover what we can learn from this introduction. Our passage is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 1, and we will read from the New American Standard Bible translation. Starting in verse 1, Mark tells us that:

¹ The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

² As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: 
     “Behold, I send My messenger ahead of You, 
          Who will prepare Your way; 
     ³ The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
          ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, 
        Make His paths straight.’” 

⁴ John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵ And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. ⁶ John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey. ⁷ And he was preaching, and saying, “After me One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals. ⁸ I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

⁹ In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰ Immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; ¹¹ and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”

¹² Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness. ¹³ And He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to Him.

In these 13 verses, Mark opens his gospel sharing about how the prophet Isaiah prophesied the appearing of John the Baptist. Isaiah describes the messenger God would send ahead of Jesus as a voice of one crying in the wilderness, and the first description Mark uses to describe John the Baptist is that he appeared in the wilderness preaching about repentance and baptism being important pieces for ultimately receiving forgiveness from sins.

Mark’s gospel frames John’s ministry as a successful one, because the verse describing John’s ministry said, “And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.” Regardless of how strange John the Baptist was, a ministry that taught repentance and baptism would be called successful when people were being baptized and confessing their sins.

While some people might think repentance is simply confessing sins, repentance is actually something much more significant. Repentance is more internal, more long-term, and more like a direction change in one’s life and focus. Repentance is harder to measure in a single event. Confessing sins is the first step to turning away from them because confessing sins acknowledges the sin and it identifies it as being what God doesn’t want for our lives. In order to repent and turn away from sin, we must first be able to identify what is sin and what God doesn’t want in our lives.

Mark tells us that John’s message also pointed people forward to Someone coming after him, and how everything in John’s ministry foreshadowed Jesus. Without skipping a beat or writing any unnecessary words, in eight short verses, we have a clear overview of John the Baptist’s ministry pointing people towards Jesus.

Talking about John’s message about baptism and about One coming after him leads into the transition Mark uses to describe Jesus. Jesus first steps into the public spotlight by coming to John to be baptized. While other gospel writers include more details about this event, Mark doesn’t get bogged down describing details. Mark simply tells us exactly what we need to know: Jesus was baptized by John, and in that moment, John’s baptism of water and God the Father’s baptism of the Spirit launched Jesus’ ministry. Mark focuses on the big truth that in Jesus’ baptism, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son are present together at the start of the Son’s ministry on earth.

Mark then describes the first event Jesus does following being baptized and beginning His ministry as being called out into the wilderness to be tempted for forty days. Again, while Matthew and Luke give more details about Jesus’ temptation, Mark wants us to be aware of the big picture of what happened, because all this is setting the stage for Jesus’ ministry teaching, preaching, healing, and helping people.

In Mark’s summary-introduction to Jesus’ ministry, we discover something about Jesus and about how Mark will likely be writing this gospel. While Mark might not include all the details we might see in Matthew or Luke, Mark’s gospel gives us a no-nonsense picture of Jesus that keeps moving forward. If Mark decides to slow down and give more details of an event, then these details are significant in Jesus’ ministry and they are significant in our lives as well.

Within this quick, summary introduction, we see a big truth and a big theme about receiving the Holy Spirit. When Mark describes Jesus’ baptism, in the context immediately before this Mark has just predicted that the One who comes after Him would baptize with the Holy Spirit. When Mark then describes Jesus’ baptism, we see an amazing picture that this baptism wasn’t just with water like John’s previous baptisms. Instead, Jesus’ baptism was with both water and with the Holy Spirit at the start of His ministry, and when Jesus received the Holy Spirit at the beginning of His ministry, this sets the stage for Jesus to be able to baptize others with the Spirit.

The other big challenge I see in Mark’s introduction to Jesus’ ministry is that after Jesus received the Holy Spirit at His baptism, Jesus lets the Holy Spirit take the lead and direct Him where to go from that point forward. While the next stop for Jesus was temptations in the wilderness, Mark describes for us how this was a Holy Spirit directed stop. This means that when we are letting God’s Holy Spirit lead us, we may be led to places that are not comfortable, and when we are in the places God’s Spirit leads us, we can expect to be tempted. It was this way with Jesus and it is foolish to believe that it won’t be this way for Jesus’ followers.

However, like Jesus, we are called to let the Holy Spirit lead in our lives and to resist temptation like Jesus resisted it. While Mark doesn’t describe Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness like Matthew or Luke, Mark draws our attention onto the big truth that even while Jesus was being tempted, God was still with Him and God had not forgotten Him. When we are tempted, God isn’t ignoring us. Instead, when we are tempted, God is paying attention to us and standing by ready to help us stand firm resisting the temptation.

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

As I consistently challenge you to do, remember to seek God first in your life and to let God’s Holy Spirit lead and guide you moving through life. Remember that when we are tempted, God is standing by ready and willing to help us resist the temptation, and being tempted is not a sign of God’s neglect. Instead, being tempted may give us a hint that we are right where God Holy Spirit wants us!

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God in your life. Don’t let someone else step between you and God. While devotionals are nice things to have, they only can take your faith so far. Resolve today and for this year that you will actually open your Bible and study it with God and not through the lens of another author, speaker, or writer.

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 be tempted into leaving where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we get ready to begin another year of podcasting in the gospels, first off I want to wish you a happy new year. I hope that you were able to have a great time with friends and family over this past Christmas season, and that you were able to spend a little time reflecting on what Jesus’ entrance into this world really means for you.

Like I hinted at last week as we were finishing wrapping up last year’s focus on the cross, for this year, I thought it would be neat to focus in on the miracles that we see Jesus doing throughout the gospels. However, with this as our theme, we have a slight dilemma.

When looking at the list of miracles, most lists count 37 miracles. While this is awesome, it doesn’t work as smoothly in our 50 week long podcasting years. While we could end the year with more parts to our grand finale, I thought we could take several of the more detailed miracles, and focus on them for multiple weeks. By doing this, my hope and prayer is that we see even more than if we blazed through these passages and events using only one episode.

Also, most lists don’t include some passages that at least deserve a little recognition for being miraculous, so periodically, expect us to focus on an event where the miracle isn’t as easily seen.

Our passage to open up this Year of Miracles is one that works great as an introduction to this year of podcasts, and it includes an event that most lists of miracles don’t include, but a subtle miracle is present. Let’s read about what happened and discover some things we can learn from this event.

This event is found in the gospel of Luke, chapter 4, and we will be reading from the New International Reader’s Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 16, Luke tells us that:

¹⁶ Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. On the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue as he usually did. He stood up to read. ¹⁷ And the scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. Jesus unrolled it and found the right place. There it is written,

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is on me.
    He has anointed me
    to announce the good news to poor people.
He has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners.
    He has sent me so that the blind will see again.
He wants me to set free those who are treated badly.
¹⁹     And he has sent me to announce the year when he will set his people free.”

²⁰ Then Jesus rolled up the scroll. He gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were staring at him. ²¹ He began by saying to them, “Today this passage of Scripture is coming true as you listen.”

²² Everyone said good things about him. They were amazed at the gracious words they heard from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

²³ Jesus said, “Here is a saying you will certainly apply to me. ‘Doctor, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me this. ‘Do the things here in your hometown that we heard you did in Capernaum.’ ”

²⁴ “What I’m about to tell you is true,” he continued. “A prophet is not accepted in his hometown. ²⁵ I tell you for sure that there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah. And there had been no rain for three and a half years. There wasn’t enough food to eat anywhere in the land. ²⁶ But Elijah was not sent to any of those widows. Instead, he was sent to a widow in Zarephath near Sidon. ²⁷ And there were many in Israel who had skin diseases in the days of Elisha the prophet. But not one of them was healed except Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸ All the people in the synagogue were very angry when they heard that. ²⁹ They got up and ran Jesus out of town. They took him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They planned to throw him off the cliff. ³⁰ But Jesus walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

In our passage, Jesus reads His life mission prophesied in Isaiah’s scroll, and in this summary of Jesus’ mission, we discover that His to-do list includes giving sight to the blind. While this could be strictly a symbolic reference, as we will discover moving through this year that not only were Isaiah’s words symbolic, but they were also very literal. Multiple times Jesus gives the blind sight, and this is directly fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy.

However, also included in this event is Jesus pressing those present a little past what they may have wanted to hear, and we discover that those in the Nazareth synagogue ran Jesus out of town and off towards a nearby cliff. But our passage ends in verse 30 by simply telling us that “Jesus walked right through the crowd and went on his way”.

In this unattributed miracle, we see a group of angry, emotional people set on killing Jesus before He had really fully stepped into His ministry, and Jesus essentially disappears, walks through the crowd, and goes on His way. The only way this verse makes sense is if something miraculous happened. Jesus might have disappeared, or He might have briefly displayed a level of divinity which would have pushed those present away, or God may have sent angels to pull people back and keep them from touching Jesus. Any or all of these things might have happened. What happened is less relevant than the huge truth that something miraculous took place. God miraculously protected Jesus from dying before the cross.

In our own lives, we discover this same truth as well. While none of us knows exactly when we will die, we can trust that God will keep us safe through everything that comes our way as we move through fulfilling the mission He has for our lives. While God didn’t protect Jesus from the cross three years later, we see God’s divine hand protecting Jesus in this event, and we can know that while we will ultimately face death at some point, death will not come a moment sooner for us than God allows it to happen. Our lives and our deaths can bring glory to God when we let them, and the bigger thing for us to remember when living life and facing death is simply that this life is not the end.

It would be tragic for God to indefinitely allow sin to reign, and there will be a time when He steps in to end history. God’s goal for all His people is to live with Him in the recreated new heaven and new earth that will be free from sin, pain, death, and the curse that our current earth is experiencing.

As we start out in this new year, regardless of whether our lives are going well, or whether we are facing hard times, and regardless of whether things are calm or chaotic, we can trust that God is in control and that He is moving history towards the end of sin and the salvation of His people.

As we end the first podcast episode of the New Year, here are the challenges I want to leave you with:

Always seek God first and intentionally place Him first in your life. Trust that He is both willing and able to keep you safe for eternity, regardless of what this world throws our way.

Also, always pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow your personal relationship with God each and every day. Through a personal relationship with God, we can know Him better and can trust Him through the chaos of this world.

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!