FEBRUARY 11 READING…Mark 2
As you have noticed the Gospel of Mark begins with the start of Jesus’ three-year ministry…primarily in the region of the Galilee, but also in Jerusalem. In our reading today, we see the continuation of Jesus’, “The Servant” ministry to the sick. Jesus serves a paralytic man by healing him. What is also interesting is to see how this man’s friends wanted to serve him by getting him to Jesus…at all cost. When they saw that the crowd was so large that they would not be able to get through and get him to Jesus…these friends knocked a hole in the roof and lowered this man down to Jesus. What lengths would we go through to get our friends, our families, and our neighbors to Jesus? It is also interesting that this event was the catalyst for the beginning of the strong opposition to Jesus by the religious leaders. It was because of the verbiage that Jesus used when He healed this man. Because of this man’s faith…Jesus chose to not only heal him, but to say that his sins were forgiven. This sent the religious leaders into a tizzy…for who could forgive sin other than God…certainly not this lowly servant. In their rage and opposition, they missed that their own declaration about who could forgive sin was prophetic words about who this “servant” was before them. At the end of this chapter we see the opposition from the religious leaders grow about Jesus and His disciples doing “work” on the Sabbath. Jesus fans the flame of their opposition by the “servant” clarifying the meaning of the Sabbath…it was given as a gift from God, and the Son of Man (Jesus), is the Lord of the Sabbath.
Mark records for us Jesus calling Matthew to be one of His disciples. This act certainly made the religious leaders mad, for Matthew was a tax collector. He was despised, and seen as a traitor to his people, by the religious leaders. They saw him as an un-redeemable sinner…and what was Jesus doing calling him, and then sitting down to eat with such sinners? Once again, we see that Jesus is a genuine servant…meeting the needs of not only the high and mighty…but of those most in need of being served. Jesus uses a parable to try to help them understand who He was, and that things were changing, because the Messiah has come. Though the form in which He came, and that which He did, was nothing like what they expected with the Messiah. Jesus told them when they questioned Him about fasting, that in this world there is no fasting when the “bridegroom” is present. He also wanted them to know that He had come to do a new thing…and you don’t put new wine into old wineskins…they cannot hold it. God is doing something new and wonderful in our lives every day…or should I say He desires to do something new and wonderful in our lives. I wonder if He finds in us new “wineskins” ready to receive what He is doing, or old “wineskins” that are unable to contain what He is doing?
Please share your thoughts from today’s reading.
MONDAY'S READING…Mark 3
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