Today's Reading: Mark 2:6-7
Mark 2:6–7 (ESV)6 Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7 “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Comment: See part 1 for a full outline of observations and questions.
Prayer: Lord please teach me in this text what you would have me apply to my life and let me know you better. May the Holy Spirit illuminate this text and make it alive to me, that I would have ears to hear. I thank you in Jesus name, amen.
Observation: The scribes sat and questioned in their hearts about Jesus' authority to forgive sins and how they thought Him to be blaspheming and claiming himself to possess authority belonging only to God.
Questions:
Q- What does this teach about how we tend to put God in our box of reasoning and limit Him?
A- Lord these scribes should have recognized who you were and what you were doing here but even I, who by your grace have come to a saving faith in you still struggle with limiting you and with not understanding what you are up to. Please continue to develop in me a hunger for your Word and an affection for you that would drive me to study and to seek to know your heart. To share in your passion. To love what you love and hate what you hate. Let me know limit you or subject you to my sense of reasoning when your Word makes plain something difficult to square with. May I trust you and your Word over me and my sense of reason or logic or my emotions. Lord this hard heartedness that the scribes show can develop in me and I pray against it that you would give me a heart of flesh that beats for you and that listens carefully to what you have to say. Let me not be deceived by my heart due to any sin that would blind me father but let me surround myself with faithful friends that would guard my heart with me…
Hebrews 3:12–14 (ESV)12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.
Romans 12:2 (ESV)2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Q- What does this teach about the importance of seeing Jesus for who He really is?
A- Jesus, it seems that if I were to not see you as the creator, redeemer, lamb that was slain, king if kings and Lord of Lords, the alpha and the omega, the one who sustains the existence of all that is…if I do not see you as these things and more then I risk failing to trust you appropriately. I risk misunderstanding your gospel. I risk trusting in my own understanding. I risk accepting a false gospel that is not truth. I risk not understanding the depth of what was sacrificed on my behalf. I risk a shallow understanding of the great distance that was once between us. I risk not having an appropriate appreciation of your amazing grace. I risk an attitude of accepting sin that I should be repenting of. I risk wasting my life. Lord please let me understand who you are and what your purpose is that I might not waste my life and that I might not make any of these errors mentioned above.
John 10:14–15 (ESV)14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.
Q- What does this teach about the difference in hearing the Word and doing what it says as we consider the contrasting actions of the other men? That is, the scribes sit and question the authority, identity, and purpose of Jesus while the faithful friends climb the house and break through the roof in fullness of faith that Jesus is the Son of God and has all authority to rescue sinners.
A- Lord let me not sit and listen to you as an academic activity but let me be transformed by the renewing of my mind. Let me put to action the precepts you give me and let me listen to the calling of your Holy Spirit. Let me not sit paralyzed just because your message is hard or your call would take me out of my comfort zone or would require me to be humbled. Let me not become hardened by deceit and let me not forget what you said.
James 1:22–25 (ESV)22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
Lord I see that you are this perfect law, the law of liberty…
1 Corinthians 13:9–10 (ESV)9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
Matthew 5:17 (ESV)17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Jeremiah 31:33 (ESV)33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
John 8:34–36 (ESV)34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Lord let me look clearly at your face and persevere even when the waves roar and the storm rages. Let me not move my eyes from your calm and loving face and let me not forget what you have said but rather focus on your Word and trust who you are and that you are able to deliver what you promise…and thus I trust that you will bless me in my doing as you promise in James 1:22-25. I see the men in the boat that forgot your word that the group was to "go across to the other side" and yet their faith failed as they turned their eyes to the storm and their faith was in a deliverance, which seemed clearly threatened, rather than in the deliverer who already told them they were to arrive at the other side…
Mark 4:35–41 (ESV)35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
Let me step out and be a doer who evidences his faith in action like these men coming through the roof Lord. Lord, by your grace, please give me faith to bust in some roofs in service of the King!…
James 2:18–19 (ESV)18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
Soli Deo Gloria!
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Thanks for commenting- I will probably post it if you dont seem to be a crazy person!