Friday, September 09, 2022
Mark 13:1-5
Thursday, September 08, 2022
Mark 12:41-44
Today, we conclude our study of Mark 12 where the Lord Jesus and His disciples are in Jerusalem and it was the last week of His life on earth. In context, we have read about the contrast between the life defined by the flesh or religion and the life lived by faith in the God of the Bible.
The difference in this poor widow was she was being defined by the God who embraced her through her misery which enabled her to see as He does. This is one of those times when less is more. This widow is a clear example of the teaching that the Lord Jesus had previously given: "Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength." This "poor" woman "gave out of her poverty, she put in all that she had, her whole livelihood." The rich didn't miss a cent of what they gave that day, but, this poor woman didn't either! She didn't miss it because she was defined as complete or whole through the grace of God.
Earlier, the Lord Jesus taught "whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it." It may look to some as if she had thrown away her "whole" life, but the Lord Jesus saw in her surrender what His call requires of us if we are to go deep with Him. She "lost" her whole life to gain intimacy and dependency upon the God of all creation. Giving our "all" means giving in ways that we will find discomforting. Perhaps the time to give more is when we feel least comfortable about giving more.
"The Lord Jesus Christ, though He was rich, became poor so that we through his poverty might become rich." The greatness of Christ is most profoundly understood in His willingness to stoop to take notice of the insignificant. Because the Son of God emptied Himself, therefore, we can say with Paul, "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us and gave Himself for us."
Wednesday, September 07, 2022
Mark 12:38-40
Click here for the Mark 12:38-40 PODCAST
38 Then He said to them in His teaching, “Beware of the scribes, who desire to go around in long robes, love greetings in the marketplaces, 39 the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts, 40 who devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation. ~ Mark 12:38-40
Today, we return to our study of Mark 12 where the Lord Jesus has been highlighting why the religious leaders of Israel were so close to the kingdom of God, yet they lacked what was essential: a personal relationship with God.
In context, the religious leaders had unsuccessfully pummeled the Lord Jesus with question after question in order to get Him to say something that they could have used against Him. At this point in the narrative, they had concluded that they needed a different approach. As it turned out, they bribed Judas Iscariot to betray Him. It was clear that the religious leaders of Israel were corrupt.
When the Lord Jesus wiped out their corrupt business in the temple just the day before, many of the regular people were attracted to Him because they knew the corruption of the religious leaders. They knew they were paying ten times the price they should pay for a sacrificial animal. They knew they were being over-charged in the exchange of coins when they brought their temple tax offering. And, the Lord Jesus even said, "This is My Father’s house, it’s to be a house of prayer, but you turned it into a den of thieves."
In today's passage the Lord Jesus was, yet again, in the outer court of the temple, teaching in the court of the Gentiles which was a gathering place for all ethnic people, Jews and Gentiles. Closer toward the temple itself was a covered porch known as the court of the women where the people would linger after the sacrifices were made just to worship or to spend time in God's presence. One of the chambers was called the chamber of the silent. Around the chamber of the silent were thirteen trumpet-shaped boxes where people would pay their tithes.
It was into one of those boxes that most of the worshippers gave anonymously without fanfare. It was also a place where the poor received financial help without being embarrassed. But, as always, there were those who loved to give lots of coins so others could hear the coins drop one after another. They did so that others would notice their generosity. They gave for the effect of notoriety, and, the Lord Jesus was there watching.
It was at that point that the Lord Jesus said, "Beware of the scribes." In saying those words He was warning against religion which is rules without reason. It is a system without substance. It's belief without Bible. Those most at odds with the Lord Jesus were the religious. They sought to put Him to death. This explains why the harshest words of the Lord Jesus were designated for the religious, especially the religious leaders.
It was religion that motivated the Crusades, two hundred years of history from 1095 AD to 1291 AD that pitted belief system against belief system at the point of the sword. It was religion that brought civil conflict to Ireland between Catholic and Protestant for years. It was religion that brought airplanes into New York's Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. It was religion that motivated ISIS to take Christians and behead them on the beaches of Northern Africa, and also, it was religion that motivated them to put other Muslims in cages who didn't agree with their religious beliefs and burned them to death.
Described in the remainder of this passage is the endless road that religion or false godliness leads. The problem is, like the proud, we know the lure of religion which leads us into the wicked den of self-worship. Pride and arrogance are tangled up in self-worship and it is the very essence of sin.
The robes that the religious leaders wore went all the way to the ground. They were fancy, unique and expensive. These robes had tassels on them, little reminders that they belonged to God and were accountable to His Word. As the centuries passed by, the religious leaders of Israel decided that these were the symbols of their glory, not God's glory. This caused people to inaccurately conclude they the religious leaders were holy.
Luke tells us that the religious leaders loved the symbols of their glory. In fact, they were so exalted in their own minds that it was more punishable to act against the words of a scribe than the words of Scripture. They had exalted themselves over the Word of God.
Like the religious leaders of Israel, when we base our relationship with God on our ability to perform spiritual duties, we deny the power of God's grace in and through our lives. God does not love us because we dress a certain way, pray, read our Bibles, attend church or witness, yet, millions think God is mad if they don’t perform these and other duties perfectly. As a result, for those who yield to religion, they struggle to find true intimacy with the God who created them.
Like the religious leaders of Israel, when we are religious we deceive ourselves into believing that we can win God’s approval through a religious dress code, certain spiritual disciplines, particular music styles and even doctrinal positions. And, religious people rarely interact with nonbelievers because they don’t want their own superior morals to be tainted by them. When we ingest this poison, we typically struggle with sinful habits ourselves, sinful habits that we cannot admit to anyone else.
When we get to the point that we hate religion that we know to be in us, we can be assured that this a step in the right direction. This is what separates the authentic from the religious. This disposition that is in all of us is a mere reminder that we desperately need the Lord Jesus, the Lord of Grace, to be the only One whom we worship. And, when we get to this point in life, we become increasingly aware that it is He who puts all of our enemies under His control, even the sinful desires within us which clamor for the notoriety from others that we know to be still in us.
Tuesday, September 06, 2022
Mark 12:35-37
Monday, September 05, 2022
Mark 12:28-34
We return to our study of Mark 12 where another religious inquirer comes to the Lord Jesus with another question. Much of life is made up of the pursuit of the answers to our questions. And, although often frustrating, our questions are some of our greatest friends because they push us to pursue the Lord.
You will remember one of the last quotes made by the late Robin Williams, "I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone." Our love needs are ultimately only met by God Himself and that is why we have to start with God.
Friday, September 02, 2022
Mark 12:18-27
18 Then some Sadducees came to Jesus and asked him a question. (Sadducees believed that people would not rise from the dead.) 19 They said, “Teacher, Moses wrote that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, then that man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. 20 Once there were seven brothers. The first brother married and died, leaving no children. 21 So the second brother married the widow, but he also died and had no children. The same thing happened with the third brother. 22 All seven brothers married her and died, and none of the brothers had any children. Finally the woman died too. 23 Since all seven brothers had married her, when people rise from the dead, whose wife will she be?” 24 Jesus answered, “Why don’t you understand? Don’t you know what the Scriptures say, and don’t you know about the power of God? 25 When people rise from the dead, they will not marry, nor will they be given to someone to marry. They will be like the angels in heaven. 26 Surely you have read what God said about people rising from the dead. In the book in which Moses wrote about the burning bush, it says that God told Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 27 God is the God of the living, not the dead. You Sadducees are wrong!” ~ Mark 12:18-27
In today's passage, we are told the Lord Jesus received a visit from the Sadducees. The word "Sadducee" literally means "the righteous ones." This group of "quasi religious leaders" did not believe in the resurrection. Like the Pharisees, they wanted to minimize the Lord Jesus, because His popularity was a threat to their comfortable and affluent lives.
There is a great principle being given here which I have found to be an encouragement down through the years, especially when it seemed that all hope was lost. The principle comes in the form of a quote which is: "God’s most striking victories come out of graves of apparent defeat."
According to v.27, the Sadducees understood neither the Scriptures, which teaches the resurrection of the dead, nor did they know the power of God, who can and will raise the dead to life. This was their problem, they were not accustomed to being defined by the God of the Bible. In 1 Corinthians 15 the Apostle Paul established this very important point: if we do not have the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, we do not have hope.
I find it striking that group after group was trying to trip the Lord Jesus up, yet He spoke the truth to them and in so doing He held out hope to each group. His has always been self-giving love which is a product of such hope. The Lord Jesus is the same with us. He knows the quickest way to our hearts is through our wounds. And, it is these wounds which create our skepticism or they can assist our ability to see Him with our hearts. We are to some degree hard-hearted like these religious leaders, at times. And, yet, He keeps offering us hope. And, He rarely blesses us with only us in mind.
Hope must be garnered by us through the thicks and thins of life. We must admit that we, at times, struggle seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. This honest struggle is necessary for us to be develop an authentic walk with the Lord and to be found anchored to His hope. Amid all of the negativity that we will face out in the world today, let's be poised to hold out this hope which is based on the truth of the resurrection from the dead for all those, who like us, are struggling, too. Like him or not, Napoleon brilliantly once said, "Leaders are dealers in hope."
Thursday, September 01, 2022
Mark 12:13-17
"13 Later, the Jewish leaders sent some Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to trap him in saying something wrong. 14 They came to him and said, 'Teacher, we know that you are an honest man. You are not afraid of what other people think about you, because you pay no attention to who they are. And you teach the truth about God’s way. Tell us: Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them, or not?' 15 But knowing what these men were really trying to do, Jesus said to them, 'Why are you trying to trap me? Bring me a coin to look at.' 16 They gave Jesus a coin, and he asked, 'Whose image and name are on the coin?' They answered, 'Caesar’s.' 17 Then Jesus said to them, 'Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and give to God the things that are God’s.' The men were amazed at what Jesus said." ~ Mark 12:13-17
Today, we continue our study of Mark 12 where the religious leaders were running out of ways to stump the Lord Jesus. In this passage the Jewish religious leaders sent a group of politicians, the Pharisees and Herodians, to try and make the Lord Jesus look bad by getting Him to comment on the politics of the day.
The Pharisees and the Herodians teamed up in their attempt to nullify the Lord Jesus. But, the Pharisees were Jews who were against the rule of Rome in their land. And, on the other hand, the Herodians supported the rule of Rome in Israel. These two opposing groups, were unlikely allies who decided to lock arms in order to render the Lord Jesus powerless. The Pharisees hated having to pay taxes to Rome, whereas, the Herodians, enjoyed the opulence that the Roman taxes brought them.
The Lord Jesus asked these power hungry groups of "leaders" to give Him a Roman coin which bore the image of Tiberius Caesar and an inscription proclaiming him to be the "son of God". This coin, which had the image of Caesar on it, was a denarius which was equal to a day's wage for a Roman soldier or a day laborer. It was a small silver coin which was minted by the Caesar. Only the Caesar had the authority to mint gold or silver coins in those days.
The resounding answer the Lord Jesus gave to these politically-minded groups was worship. Render to Caesar taxes and to God worship. We all have causes and we all seek to worship God. Our cause must be fueled by our worship, and our worship must never come from our cause. We are not to be defined by our cause but by our God. If we worship our cause, we will, like the Pharisees and Herodians, make the non-essentials our essentials.
The answer to all of our lives is worship, worship of the God of the Bible. Worshipers of God do not need power, like the Herodians, nor do we need to destroy power, like the Pharisees. Worshipers of God allow themselves to be embraced and defined by the culture of God.
With that, I think of a story that Max Lucado shares in His book, The Applause of Heaven. "It is a story about a man named Daniel. Daniel is big. He used to make his living by lifting weights and teaching others to do the same. His scrapbook is colorful with ribbons and photos of him in his prime, striking the muscle-man pose and flexing the bulging arms.
The only thing bigger than Daniel's biceps is his heart. Let me tell you about a time his heart became tender. Daniel was living in the southern city of Porto Alegre. He worked at a gym and dreamed of owning his own. The bank agreed to finance the purchase if he could find someone to co-sign the note. His brother agreed.
They filled out all the applications and awaited the approval. Everything went smoothly, and Daniel soon received a call from the bank telling him he could come and pick up the check. As soon as he got off work, he went to the bank.
When the loan officer saw Daniel, he looked surprised and asked Daniel why he had come. 'To pick up the check,' Daniel explained. 'That's funny,' responded the banker. 'Your brother was in here earlier. He picked up the money and used it to retire the mortgage on his house.'
Daniel was incensed. He never dreamed his own brother would trick him like that. He stormed over to his brother's house and pounded on the door. The brother answered the door with his daughter in his arms. He knew Daniel wouldn't hit him if he was holding a child. He was right. Daniel didn't hit him. But he promised his brother that if he ever saw him again he would break his neck.
Daniel went home, his big heart bruised and ravaged by the trickery of his brother. He had no other choice but to go back to the gym and work to pay off the debt.
A few months later, Daniel met a young American missionary named Allen Dutton. Allen befriended Daniel and taught him about Jesus Christ. Daniel and his wife soon became Christians and devoted disciples.
But though Daniel had been forgiven so much, he still found it impossible to forgive his brother. The wound was deep. The pot of revenge still simmered. He didn't see his brother for two years. Daniel couldn't bring himself to look into the face of the one who had betrayed him. And his brother liked his own face too much to let Daniel see it.
But an encounter was inevitable. Both knew they would eventually run into each other. And neither knew what would happen then.
The encounter occurred one day on a busy avenue. Let Daniel tell you in his own words what happened: 'I saw him, but he didn't see me. I felt my fists clench and my face got hot. My initial impulse was to grab him around the throat and choke the life out of him.
But as I looked into his face, my anger began to melt. For as I saw him, I saw the image of my father. I saw my father's eyes. I saw my father's look. I saw my father's expression. And as I saw my father in his face, my enemy once again became my brother.'
Daniel walked toward him. The brother stopped, turned, and started to run, but he was too slow. Daniel reached out and grabbed his shoulder. The brother winced, expecting the worst. But rather than have his throat squeezed by Daniel's hands, he found himself hugged by Daniel's big arms. And the two brothers stood in the middle of the river of people and wept.
Daniel's words are worth repeating: 'When I saw the image of my father in his face, my enemy became my brother.'"
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Mark 12:1-12
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
Mark 11:27-33
Monday, August 29, 2022
Mark 11:24-26
Click here for the Mark 11:24-26 PODCAST
24 So I tell you to believe that you have received the things you ask for in prayer, and God will give them to you. 25 When you are praying, if you are angry with someone, forgive him so that your Father in heaven will also forgive your sins. 26 But if you don’t forgive other people, then your Father in heaven will not forgive your sins. ~ Mark 11:24-26
Today, we come back to our study of Mark 11 where the Lord Jesus has been instructing His disciples on what it looks like to have a personal relationship with God. In order to experience a personal relationship with God, it is a must to have conversations with Him.
We were created to worship and what we worship defines us. With that said, our prayers are essential to our worship. Martin Luther once said, “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.” If we are to have a deeper and more intimate relationship with the Lord, we must be biblical in our prayers.
In v.24 of today's passage we read, "So I tell you to believe that you have received the things you ask for in prayer, and God will give them to you."
We must approach God with a believing heart if we are to realize the life we truly want. In fact, in James 4:3 we read, "When you ask, you do not receive because the reason you ask is wrong. You want things so you can use them for your own pleasures." The assumption is that we are praying in accordance with God's will, and, if we are not, then, what is the point?
In v.25 of today's passage we read, "When you are praying, if you are angry with someone, forgive him so that your Father in heaven will also forgive your sins."
Anger clouds our judgment and distorts truth. On a biological level, the difference is easily understood in the way the human body responds to stress and to factors that cause anxiety, fear, rage, and defensiveness. Once triggered, the limbic system of the body kicks in and our biological defense kicks in. Of course, the real issue is the choice to forgive.
There is always a relationship between vertical forgiveness and horizontal forgiveness. If we have been forgiven of the greatest debt that would keep us out of heaven forever, we unwise to hold onto our grudges towards others. Having experienced the grace of God for ourselves postures us to recognize the utter futility of choosing to not forgive another.
The greatest hindrance to having faith in God is our pride. The type of which refuses to forgive others. Pride is like a tsunami that consumes our whole life. All we can see is that big storm before us, blocking the way of God in our lives. In Psalm 66:18 David wrote: "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” As believers in the Lord Jesus, we have been forgiven of our sin in total. However, when we choose not to forgive others, we will lack the power to remove the mountain of unforgiveness.
In v.26 of today's passage we read, "But if you don’t forgive other people, then your Father in heaven will not forgive your sins."
Holding onto a grudge and choosing not to forgive someone will impede our prayer life. But, when we forgive, it doesn't take long to recognize the real life that flows from God into our grace defined lives. Someone once said, "Bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die." The one thing that blocks the flow of the life of God in our lives is this unwillingness to forgive. Israel missed out on this life because it would not forgive the Romans.
Instead of humbling themselves, Israel gathered its robes of self-righteousness about it and looked with pride up to God and said, "I thank God I am not like these other people." God says that is what ends life. And, not just a nation, this is what ends the spiritual life of an individual.
The evidence that we know our sins are forgiven us is that we are quick to forgive others. When the Lord Jesus said if we do not forgive others we will not be forgiven by God, He did not mean we will lose or forfeit our salvation if we do not fully forgive every single person who wronged us. In fact, the "forgiveness" mentioned here is not about eternal salvation, at all. Rather, this is relational forgiveness. The parallel for this would be offending or sinning against one's spouse, without asking for forgiveness. That would hurt a marriage relationship, and result in distance or separation, but not an utter end to that commitment.
Our salvation is dependent solely on the work of the Lord Jesus, on the cross, not our ability to remember every single sin and repent of them. God designed us for community, honesty, and humility. If we sin against someone else without asking for their forgiveness, we sin against God. If we stubbornly refuse to forgive others, we're not reflecting appreciation for the forgiveness we, ourselves, have received.