Reflective Bible Study

Moving further into Mark’s gospel, we come to two events that at first seem to be unrelated, but as we will soon discover, these events begin the transition from Jesus being looked up to by the religious leaders to being looked down on and disliked by these same leaders. While these two events have questions included in them, within Jesus’ response to both of these events, we discover the foundation being laid for the religious leaders’ rejection of God’s Messiah.

Our passage is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 2, and we will read from the New Century Version. Starting in verse 18, Mark tells us that:

¹⁸ Now the followers of John and the Pharisees often fasted for a certain time. Some people came to Jesus and said, “Why do John’s followers and the followers of the Pharisees often fast, but your followers don’t?”

¹⁹ Jesus answered, “The friends of the bridegroom do not fast while the bridegroom is still with them. As long as the bridegroom is with them, they cannot fast. ²⁰ But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and then they will fast.

²¹ “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth over a hole in an old coat. Otherwise, the patch will shrink and pull away—the new patch will pull away from the old coat. Then the hole will be worse. ²² Also, no one ever pours new wine into old leather bags. Otherwise, the new wine will break the bags, and the wine will be ruined along with the bags. But new wine should be put into new leather bags.”

Let’s pause reading briefly because I want to draw our attention onto this first event. When Jesus is asked about why His disciples don’t fast like John’s disciples and the Pharisees did, Jesus draws their attention onto the perspective that while He is present, it is a time for celebrating. When Jesus is present, there is no reason to fast. However, after Jesus has returned to heaven, then fasting becomes appropriate. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, we see Jesus subtly foreshadow His death on the cross, and His return to heaven.

However, also worth noting is that Jesus then follows up with a statement that seems disconnected from the previous topic. After talking about His disciples eventually fasting, Jesus then talks about sewing unshrunk cloth over a hole in an old coat and pouring new wine into old leader bags. At first glance, this doesn’t make much sense, but I wonder if Jesus is subtly telling us why He picked the disciples He did. Instead of choosing disciples from the religious schools, or from even John’s disciples, Jesus chooses regular people who may have believed themselves to be unworthy of a chance.

Jesus chooses a group of young men to start a new understanding of the scriptures, because this group of young men had less to unlearn than if they were older or more religiously educated.

While these disciples had plenty that they needed to unlearn, we get the picture that it might have been harder for Jesus if He had picked a different group of people to be disciples. It is also possible that someone trained at the religious schools of the day would have been more closed off to new ways of understanding the Old Testament prophecies, or that someone trained at these schools would be less willing to ask questions or think about spirituality differently.

Because of this, Jesus shares an illustration suggesting that He intentionally chose a new group of disciples unlike anything typically seen up to this point, and this decision likely stood out in the minds of the religious leaders.

However, in the next event, we have the foundation for the biggest issue the religious leaders had with Jesus in His entire ministry. Continuing reading from verse 23, Mark tells us:

²³ One Sabbath day, as Jesus was walking through some fields of grain, his followers began to pick some grain to eat. ²⁴ The Pharisees said to Jesus, “Why are your followers doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath day?”

²⁵ Jesus answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and those with him were hungry and needed food? ²⁶ During the time of Abiathar the high priest, David went into God’s house and ate the holy bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And David also gave some of the bread to those who were with him.”

²⁷ Then Jesus said to the Pharisees, “The Sabbath day was made to help people; they were not made to be ruled by the Sabbath day. ²⁸ So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day.”

In this event, we discover that how Jesus treated the Sabbath angered the religious leaders. When we understand a little bit of Jewish history, we can begin to understand why this was the case. Several centuries prior to Jesus walking on the earth, we see God punishing the nations of Israel and Judah and exiling them from the land He had promised them. While there were numerous prophets sent in an attempt to call the people to return to God, God’s messages and warnings fell on spiritually deaf ears.

One particular issue God had with Israel and Judah was how they had disregarded and rejected the Sabbath included in the Ten Commandments. There is evidence that the Jews rejection of the Sabbath was a key piece of God exiling them from their land.

When the Jewish people were allowed to move back, they were reminded of God’s laws, including the Sabbath law, and they determined to keep the Sabbath of God holy and set apart. Moving to the opposite extreme as their ancestors, by the time Jesus came to earth in the first century, the Jews has set the Sabbath so far apart from the rest of the week that it was a day of avoiding anything that could even be considered close to work. This was in part because these Jews wanted to avoid any potential reason for God to reject them as a people and exile them again.

However, it is interesting that Jesus does not counter-challenge the Pharisees in this event by defending His disciples’ actions. Instead, Jesus points out that a highly respected person from Israel’s history did something significantly worse. From my memory, I don’t recall king David being punished by God or anyone else for taking and eating the holy bread that was set apart for the priests.

Jesus’ defense regarding His disciples’ actions wasn’t a rejection of the Sabbath. Jesus didn’t even defend their actions as not being work. Jesus instead elevated the Sabbath as a day for helping people and a day we should look forward to rather than a day we should fear.

From Jesus’ perspective, the Sabbath was important, significant, and a day of rest and blessings. The Jews in the first century had turned the Sabbath into a legalistic nightmare, while the Jews many centuries earlier resemble the broad culture today of completely rejecting the Sabbath, ultimately bringing God’s judgment on themselves.

Jesus saw the Sabbath day as a special day that God set apart. In Jesus’ eyes, the Sabbath is a specific day of the week, it is a day of the week that doesn’t change with times or cultures, and it is a day set aside for resting, helping and/or blessing others, and remembering what God has done for each of us!

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 and choose to take each Sabbath day to rest and remember what He has blessed you with and spend time helping others. Helping each other is the best way to honor God and to say thank You to Him for everything He has done for us.

Also, be sure to pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God. While the Bible has a lot to say about the Sabbath, choose to study this significant subject for yourself because it is too important to let your beliefs about God’s day be based on traditions or other people’s opinions.

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 walk away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Last week, we focused in on the miracle of Jesus healing an official’s son, but we didn’t cover one other big idea we can learn from this event. While this miracle demonstrates huge levels of faith with the officer asking Jesus to do something that there was no track record for Him doing, we can learn through Jesus’ response and their conversation something that we should apply to our requests to Jesus.

All too often, when we pray, we want God to answer us in a specific, expected way and anything less than our expectations makes us think that our prayers are going unanswered. However, is this expectation present in this miraculous event? Let’s read it and find out.

Our passage is found in the gospel of John, chapter 4, and like in our last episode, we will be reading from the New Century Version. Starting in verse 46, John tells us that:

⁴⁶ Jesus went again to visit Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. One of the king’s important officers lived in the city of Capernaum, and his son was sick. ⁴⁷ When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to Jesus and begged him to come to Capernaum and heal his son, because his son was almost dead.

Let’s pause here for a moment to look closely at this official’s request. Jesus had just returned to Cana in Galilee and we can conclude that Cana probably wasn’t too far from Capernaum. When the officer comes to ask Jesus for help, his request is for Jesus to come to Capernaum to heal his son. We can call this request the official’s prayer request. Similar to the times when we ask Jesus for help with something, this official was asking Jesus for help with something.

Let’s continue reading to learn Jesus’ response. Picking back up in verse 48:

⁴⁸ Jesus said to him, “You people must see signs and miracles before you will believe in me.”

⁴⁹ The officer said, “Sir, come before my child dies.”

⁵⁰ Jesus answered, “Go. Your son will live.”

The man believed what Jesus told him and went home. ⁵¹ On the way the man’s servants came and met him and told him, “Your son is alive.”

⁵² The man asked, “What time did my son begin to get well?”

They answered, “Yesterday at one o’clock the fever left him.”

⁵³ The father knew that one o’clock was the exact time that Jesus had said, “Your son will live.” So the man and all the people who lived in his house believed in Jesus.

⁵⁴ That was the second miracle Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

In our passage and in this miracle, we see the official restating his original request for Jesus to come, to hurry before his child dies. In response, Jesus challenges the man to believe and trust Jesus’ promise that this man’s son will live. John tells us that the man believed Jesus’ words and left to return home.

It is at this point that we look at the prayer request and the answer to prayer being two completely different things. The man asked Jesus to come, and Jesus basically said “No”. However, under the surface, the man wants Jesus to help, specifically to heal his son, and for this request, Jesus was happy to answer “Yes” to the man’s request and His belief.

This miracle gives us a model for when we ask God for help. While we won’t always see what goes on behind the scenes in God answering our prayers, we should make our prayer requests fully expecting God to help us in the best way for us to be helped. This might mean that our prayers are answered exactly like how we requested them, but it might also mean that our prayers are answered in ways that we didn’t expect them to be answered. We might not even recognize what God has done as an answer to a prayer.

Whenever I talk about prayer and answers to prayer with people, I like to share that God has four answers that He gives to our prayers. The first way God response to prayer is with a “Yes”. With what we asked for, God is willing to give us the answer.

The second way is with a “No”. While people might think this answer is the least desirable, in my own life, I actually like seeing closed doors, because it tells me that God has something better in mind for me.

The third way God answers prayers is with a “wait” response. Perhaps our request is something God knows that we need, and He is more than happy to help us with it, but the timing isn’t right. I could ask God for a million dollars, and He might know that at some point in my life, a million dollars would be a great thing for me to have. However, He might also know that at this point in my life, I am not ready for that level of wealth, so the answer is a wait, because I need to learn, grow, and mature into being the person capable of handling that wealth. If He were to answer the request before I am ready to handle it, God’s answer to my request would do more harm than good.

The fourth way God answers prayer is with a “No, but here is something else”. This is the trickiest response God can give because it might feel like He is rejecting our prayers, when in reality, He is simply blessing us in ways that are different from our expectation.

These are the four primary ways I see God answer prayers. However, from our passage and this miracle, God may have a fifth way that is distinct from the other four. This fifth way is a Yes, but trust me to do what is needed behind the scenes before you will visibly see my response. While this is similar to the “wait” response, we learn that the answer to the official’s request was not delayed, but the official’s knowledge of the prayer request being answered was delayed briefly.

When we pray to God, know that He does not delay answering our prayers. Like the official did, we should trust that God has answered our prayers at the exact moment we pray them. However, we should also move forward with the faith that we might not always see God’s answers to prayers at the moment we pray them, or in the way we expect them to be answered.

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

Always seek God first and don’t be afraid of asking God your difficult requests. Know that God is willing to tackle your most difficult challenges, but He will only answer your requests in ways that are beneficial to you from an eternity’s perspective. God wants you and I in heaven with Him, and this filters all the answers He gives to the prayers we pray. I believe that God won’t answer a prayer we pray in a way that will cause us to forfeit our salvation.

Also, always pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow your personal relationship with God. Growing closer to God through prayer and study will help align our requests with God’s will, and when we are praying within God’s will, nothing will stop God from freely answering every request we ask.

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

Continuing moving forward in Mark’s gospel, we come to a miracle Mark includes that probably was the only one like it ever in Jesus’ ministry. One thing I find fascinating about this event is that it didn’t appear as though Jesus was actively healing people, and it is interesting who happens to be inside the home near Jesus when this event takes place.

Let’s continue reading and discover what happened. Our passage is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 2, and we will read it from the Contemporary English Version. Starting in verse 1, Mark tells us that:

¹ Jesus went back to Capernaum, and a few days later people heard that he was at home. ² Then so many of them came to the house that there wasn’t even standing room left in front of the door.

Jesus was still teaching ³ when four people came up, carrying a crippled man on a mat. ⁴ But because of the crowd, they could not get him to Jesus. So they made a hole in the roof above him and let the man down in front of everyone.

⁵ When Jesus saw how much faith they had, he said to the crippled man, “My friend, your sins are forgiven.”

⁶ Some of the teachers of the Law of Moses were sitting there. They started wondering, ⁷ “Why would he say such a thing? He must think he is God! Only God can forgive sins.”

⁸ Right away, Jesus knew what they were thinking, and he said, “Why are you thinking such things? ⁹ Is it easier for me to tell this crippled man that his sins are forgiven or to tell him to get up and pick up his mat and go on home? ¹⁰ I will show you that the Son of Man has the right to forgive sins here on earth.” So Jesus said to the man, ¹¹ “Get up! Pick up your mat and go on home.”

¹² The man got right up. He picked up his mat and went out while everyone watched in amazement. They praised God and said, “We have never seen anything like this!”

In this passage and event, we find something amazing. While those present watch in amazement as the crippled man gets up and walks out of the house, this detail did not stand out to me when reading this event this time. While this healing was amazing, a different detail in this passage stands out as being very significant.

Also significant in this passage is the faith and determination of this man’s friends. When the friends cannot get the man into the home using normal methods, they resort to something very abnormal, which ultimately was successful. But while this was amazing, it did not stand out to me when reading the passage this time.

In this passage, another detail I notice is that the crowd would not let the man’s friends carry him to Jesus. This is interesting, since the crowd would have probably liked to see Jesus perform a miracle, but they were too preoccupied with what Jesus was saying to realize the opportunity they were turning away. While this is also significant, this isn’t the big detail that stood out to me while reading this passage.

Instead, when reading this passage, I was amazed that those in the home next to Jesus were the religious leaders and teachers of the Law. While these religious teachers criticize Jesus claiming to have the power to forgive sins, the only reason they could have done this is if they were present, within earshot, and within conversational distance from Jesus. This means that some of the first people to come see Jesus when He had returned to Capernaum were the religious leaders living in this city.

While we stereotypically think the religious leaders were opposed to Jesus from the very beginning of His ministry, I think this stereotype is not entirely true. While some of the religious leaders simply disliked Jesus for His popularity because it stole from their own popularity, I believe that early on in Jesus’ ministry, everyone from the most religious and spiritual to the least religious and spiritual person took note of Jesus. With the Holy Spirit filling Jesus’ life, which happened at Jesus’ baptism, Jesus showed God’s love in powerful, miraculous ways.

Stepping back to one of the earlier details we skipped over, while the crowd did not let the crippled man’s friends enter the home with him, this was likely a God directed obstacle because it demonstrated to everyone present that these friends had so much faith in Jesus that they would stop at nothing to get their friend to Him.

I imagine the man’s friends stayed behind to fix the hole they made, but even if they didn’t, a hole in a home is less significant in God’s eyes than a healed person giving God thanks, praise, and glory, and a hole in a home is less significant than a person being forgiven of their sins.

In this event, I am amazed at the faith of the man’s friends. However, nowhere do we see any indication of the crippled man’s faith. Instead, all we see is Jesus proclaiming that the crippled man’s sins are forgiven. While Jesus might have said this because it tied into what He was already speaking about, or because He knew that it would get the religious leaders’ attention, I wonder if Jesus actually said this to the crippled man because that is what this man needed to hear.

Nothing in this event indicates the crippled man had faith in Jesus. Instead, I wonder if the crippled man believed God’s punishment was on him and that his disability was a punishment from God because of something that he had done, because of a sin he had committed, or because of something that had happened. While being healed is nice, I wonder if the real miracle in this event was the proof that this man’s sins were forgiven, and the healing solidified this truth in this man’s mind.

In this healing, Jesus not only healed this man’s disability, He also gave peace to this man’s soul that God was not angry with him, God was not mad at him, and God was not judging him. While sometimes we have to face the consequences of our own actions and our own sins, God is not mad at us or eagerly waiting to judge and condemn us. Instead, God loves us so much that He let Jesus come and take the punishment we deserved for our sins so that we can have a restored relationship with Him!

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 understand that when we come to God asking for forgiveness, God has already forgiven us. While we might have to live with the natural consequences of our actions, God isn’t interested in punishing us more than our actions require. Instead, God is more interested in saving us for eternity, and bringing us home to a recreated world without sin, pain, or death.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Don’t take my word or any pastor, speaker, author, or podcaster’s word for what the Bible teaches. Instead, study the Bible for yourself to grow your personal relationship with God and to discover God’s truth for yourself.

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 choose to ignore where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Moving forward through Jesus’ miracles, we come to another miracle, which is tagged as Jesus’ second miracle at the conclusion of it. But when we read how John introduces us to this miracle, I wonder if Jesus would rather not have done any miracles.

Let’s dive into our passage and discover some things it can teach us about faith, about Jesus, and about how Jesus went about His ministry. Our passage is found in the gospel of John, chapter 4, and we will be reading it from the New Century Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 46, John tells us that:

⁴⁶ Jesus went again to visit Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. One of the king’s important officers lived in the city of Capernaum, and his son was sick. ⁴⁷ When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to Jesus and begged him to come to Capernaum and heal his son, because his son was almost dead. ⁴⁸ Jesus said to him, “You people must see signs and miracles before you will believe in me.”

Let’s pause reading here for a moment because what Jesus has just said is powerful for us to pay attention to. In a short, quick statement, Jesus calls out everyone present, which would include the disciples, this officer making the request, and everyone around on the idea that miracles make one worthy of faith and belief. The idea then is implied that if a greater miracle worker came around, we should switch our allegiance over to the new miracle worker.

When saying it like this, the idea sounds crazy, but it isn’t a stretch to imagine people thinking this way. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn of people living today who believe that they should follow someone working miracles.

However, also tucked within Jesus’ challenge is something we could call a cry to not base our faith on signs or miracles. I imagine the way Jesus said these words was challenging and confrontational with emotion, possibly a hint of sadness, in His words.

While John tells us that Jesus replied to the king’s officer with this statement, Jesus starts His response by saying “You people…” which implies that Jesus was speaking to a larger group of people or segment of the population.

Jesus replied by saying, “You people must see signs and miracles before you will believe in me,” and let’s pick back up in verse 49 to learn what happened next:

⁴⁹ The officer said, “Sir, come before my child dies.”

⁵⁰ Jesus answered, “Go. Your son will live.”

The man believed what Jesus told him and went home. ⁵¹ On the way the man’s servants came and met him and told him, “Your son is alive.”

⁵² The man asked, “What time did my son begin to get well?”

They answered, “Yesterday at one o’clock the fever left him.”

⁵³ The father knew that one o’clock was the exact time that Jesus had said, “Your son will live.” So the man and all the people who lived in his house believed in Jesus.

⁵⁴ That was the second miracle Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

In this passage, and specifically in how this passage ends, we discover something amazing. John tells us in verse 54 that this miracle “was the second miracle Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee”.

The implication is that Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine. In the timeline of the gospels, this event likely happened right before Jesus is run out of the Nazareth synagogue that we began this year by looking at.

When we frame this miracle with the detail that the only miraculous thing Jesus had done up to this point was turning water into wine, this officer’s belief is amazing. John described the miracle turning water into wine as something that the servants and early disciples knew, but it wasn’t something that was known beyond those two groups – that is, unless word spread because people had been talking about it.

However, while turning water into wine is amazing in itself, healing someone of a deathly illness is something much greater. A cleaver magician might be able to replicate the first miracle, but this second miracle would require divine intervention, because Jesus didn’t come to heal the man’s son personally, and he didn’t give any medical advice for how to turn the son’s condition around.

By asking Someone who had only turned water into wine up to this point for a miracle, this official is displaying an incredible amount of faith when there hasn’t been a track record for this type of miracle yet. Later on, Jesus will be known for healing people, but at this point, He was only the carpenter’s Son who could turn water into wine.

The official had faith in Jesus’ ability to perform a miraculous healing, and even though Jesus challenges the whole group, and possibly the entire generation of people, on the idea that they must see miracles before they will believe, the simple act of this official coming to ask Jesus for help is a powerful demonstration of faith. This official models faith like we should have faith. The official took Jesus at His word and returned home to find His request answered.

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

Always intentionally seek God first and place your hope, faith, trust, and belief in Him. We should be willing to ask God for help even if we don’t have any evidence of God helping in the specific way we are asking. This official only knew Jesus could help with drinks that had run out, but that was enough to ask Jesus to do the impossible. While we know Jesus is able to do the impossible, we shouldn’t discount our own requests thinking He is either above them or unwilling to help. God wants to help us in our own situation, and it is up to us to simply ask.

Also, always pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow your personal relationship with Jesus. A pastor, author, speaker, or even a blogger or podcaster can give you things to think about, but always take what you learn and match it up with what you read and discover in the Bible. God is not going to randomly choose to contradict His Word, and because of this, we can use the Bible as a guide for our spiritual lives 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!