This is a devotional with my thoughts added to verses from the Bible. I highly encourage you to dig into the word with your own thoughts. The Daily Devotion series is one way to do this. However, I know that sometimes we want to read other people’s ideas about Bible passages, so I am starting the Everyday series. I hope and pray that these posts will draw you nearer to Jesus.
DAY 4–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 2:18-22 Don’t Fast When the Bridegroom is Here!
Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees would fast regularly. Some people came and asked Jesus, “Why do John’s disciples and the Pharisees’ disciples fast, but your disciples don’t fast?” Jesus replied, “The wedding guests can’t fast while the groom is with them, can they? As long as they have the groom with them, they can’t fast. But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.” “No one patches an old garment with a piece of unshrunk cloth. If he does, the patch pulls away from it—the new from the old—and a worse tear is made. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will make the skins burst, and both the wine and the skins will be ruined. Instead, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.”
John was popular, yet he was the doom and gloom type of preacher, telling people to repent because they were sinful and having his disciples frequently fast. He dressed strangely, publicly condemned a leader for adultery, and called the scribes and Pharisees vipers. He was not soft and cuddly, yet people flocked to him. On the other hand, Jesus’ message was about loving God and our neighbors. He healed people. He performed miracles like feeding the 5,000. He ate with sinners and forgave them, yet many people were uncomfortable around Him, perhaps more so than with John. Why? Could it be that it is easier to accept that we are terrible sinners than it is to accept that God loves us and wants us to return to Him? Is it easier to say, “I’m rotten and that’s just the way I am,” than to say, “God loves me and wants me to be more than I am?”
When people looked at John, they saw a strange funny man who told them specific actions to accomplish in order to gain success. He dressed and spoke in the way that they would expect from a prophet of God. When people looked at Jesus, they saw more than they expected and could not come to terms with it. They saw a carpenter who was also a teacher. They saw a dirty sweaty man who was also the Son of God. He was a contradiction of every stereotype and expectation that they had, and His very existence forced them to rethink everything they had taken for granted in their lives. In addition, His message turned upside down all the scriptures that they thought they understood. His representation of God collided with their understanding of who God was. They just could not come to terms with the fact that He was right, and they were wrong. They had grown so comfortable with their old imperfect flawed ways of thinking and acting that they resisted Jesus’ healing, which could have made them whole. They would rather be sick than be healed if good health meant overturning the pattern of their lives.
The fasting that the Pharisees and John the Baptist advised was not because of any Biblical commandment. The only fasting commanded by the scriptures was on the Day of Atonement. This does not mean that their fasting was wrong, but it was wrong to condemn the disciples’ lack of fasting. We can be just as confused today. For instance, we often think of fasting and prayer together, but Jesus separated the two. While he was with His disciples, He never exhorted them to fast, but He always pushed them to pray to the Father. Prayer is communication that should be done whether we are happy or sad or any condition in between. On the other hand, fasting is a technique to make us physically more open to and aware of God, but it is not the actual communication itself. Fasting prepares us, but prayer sustains and strengthens us.
Some of our wrong ideas associated with fasting come from traditions of the past. Historically, fasting was a way of punishing oneself before God did. Somehow, people got the idea that if they treated themselves badly enough, God would forgive them. Sometimes, we are sinful and feel shame, so we fast to punish ourselves until God will accept us again. That is a misuse of fasting and misrepresentation of the gospel. It is sort of like a little boy holding his breath to make the parent sorry. Another misunderstanding of fasting is that fasting is necessary to ensure that God hears us. God will hear us equally well whether we fast or not when we pray. Fasting is not a way to bribe God into granting our wishes. The proper use of fasting is as a method to help us focus more completely as we pray. Fasting is not a method to change God’s mind; it is a way to change our hearts and prepare us to come before God.
Jesus did not oppose fasting. He said that there would come a time when His followers would need to fast. However, He also showed that there are times when fasting would be wrong. Then Jesus gave several parables to illustrate the problems with using fasting and other ideas of worship inappropriately. Jesus compared applying old, outdated ideas or the wrong solution for the situation to using a new patch on an old garment. The solution would end up making a bad problem even worse. For example, when there is conflict with a person or in the church, we may aggravate the trouble with our solution instead of bringing resolution to the conflict . Jesus also compared putting new wine in old wineskins to acting inappropriately for the situation. The new wine is great, but if we package it in old, flawed ideas and theories, we will ruin it. Just as the new wine will break out of the old wineskin, fresh, bubbly, exciting ways of connecting with Jesus, will not mix with tired old messages. There will be an explosion.
Another way of looking at these parables is that we have to be renewed when we connect to Jesus. If we try to remain the same old person, the message and our old self will come into conflict, and the message will be ruined by our inability to be flexible and transformed. We must be open to God’s transformation. We need to be a new wineskin ready to hold the new wine of the gospel.
DAY 5–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 2:23-28 Lord of the Sabbath
Jesus happened to be going through the grain fields on a Sabbath. As they made their way, his disciples began picking the heads of grain. The Pharisees asked him, “Look! Why are they doing what is not lawful on Sabbath days?” He asked them, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? How was it that he went into the House of God during the lifetime of Abiathar the high priest and ate the Bread of the Presence, which was not lawful for anyone but the priests to eat, and gave some of it to his companions?” Then he told them, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Before the Jewish exile in Babylon, the people of Judah had played fast and loose with the Sabbath. After the exile, the Jews were once again faced with the issue of Sabbath breaking (Nehemiah 13:15-22). At that time, they made the right choice in protecting the Sabbath. However, if Satan cannot get us to sin one way, he is just as happy to push us too far in the opposite direction. In their zeal for God and their fear of falling back into the Sabbath breakers that they had been before the exile, the Jewish religious thinkers tried to protect the Sabbath by defining Sabbath breaking in every situation that they could imagine. However, in their industrious attempts to define sin, they forgot that God had created the time of the Sabbath for the benefit of humans. God had restricted work on that day so that humans could rest and have time to simply be with Him. Sabbath was meant to be a time without outside distractions from God. It was not meant to be a burden to humans.
Over the centuries, the religious leaders, who would eventually evolve into the Pharisees, had used their intellect and reason without God’s inspiration and had come up with perfectly logical, detailed rules that made no sense in real life. Their rigid traditions were a burden to the people because the religious leaders were trying to force their logic onto every circumstance regardless of the different factors that contributed to a situation. In the process of trying to protect the Sabbath, their one-size-fits-all rules negated the very principle and spirit that the Sabbath was created to develop in mankind—a love for God. This is a cautionary tale for us today. When we focus too much on the little don’ts and do’s, we can lose sight of the bigger, more important principles. Just as the priest and Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan passed by an injured man so that they would still be able to perform their important duties in the temple (Luke 10:31-32), we can make the wrong choices when we forget that all of the law can be distilled down to two principles: love for God and love for others (Mark 12:31-32). We must obey God’s commandments, but we must not twist them so that they no longer reflect God’s character of love.
To illustrate His point, Jesus recounted the story of David taking the shewbread because he was hungry (1 Samuel 21:1-6). In giving this example, Jesus was saying that some rules should be broken when a human’s spiritual or physical needs were involved. More importantly, he was showing that God does not view keeping the rules as the criteria of sin, but rather the spirit with which the rules are kept. David’s actions were not out of disrespect or disobedience to God. He was attempting to care for the people that God had put in his charge.
One of our hardest choices as Christians is to know when we can break a rule and when we cannot. We must honor God’s commands, but sometimes in a sinful world, those commands can be forced into conflict. For example, Jesus said that the only reason for divorce was adultery, but what happens when a man beats his wife? Some women have been advised to stay with their husbands because of Jesus’ command. However, more study of the Bible will reveal that God never commanded a person to stay in a situation where abuse happens. Many Christian women have prayerfully reached a decision to simply stay separate. Others have divorced and remained unmarried. Still others have divorced and remarried. What is the correct answer to these complicated situations that are caused by living in a sinful world? When we are faced with such complex moral decisions, we must prayerfully study God’s word to understand the choices that are open to us. Then we must act based on the information we have found. It may be that we later realize that we have chosen wrongly. Then we must repent and come to Jesus for forgiveness. Jesus understood the human condition, and He provided us with principles to guide us. In most situations, a thorough knowledge of the scriptures will provide clear answers to the problems we face, but in a few cases, there may be no clear pathway, and we must fast and pray for understanding. Then we go forward in the direction that the Spirit seems to be leading us. The rest of the church needs to have compassion for people who are faced with these kinds of choices and pray with them and for them as they search to find clarity.
DAY 6–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 3:1-6 A Paralyzed Hand
Jesus went into the synagogue again, and a man with a paralyzed hand was there. The people watched Jesus closely to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, intending to accuse him of doing something wrong. He told the man with the paralyzed hand, “Come forward.” Then he asked them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do evil on Sabbath days, to save a life or to destroy it?” But they remained silent. Jesus looked around at them in anger, deeply hurt because of their hard hearts. Then he told the man, “Hold out your hand.” The man held it out, and his hand was restored to health. Immediately the Pharisees and Herodians went out and began to plot how to kill him.
It was Sabbath, so Jesus went to the synagogue. He knew there would be hypocrites there, but He also knew there would be people in attendance who were seeking God. He would have been able to predict that attending this particular religious service would be stressful as the religious leaders of this synagogue were opposed to Him, but He went anyway. He knew that He was needed at the worship service to guide the worshippers who would listen onto the right path. We can learn from Jesus’ example. There are those who have been offended or stressed out by people in the church, so they stay home, but this was not Jesus’ way. The Bible tells us that it is essential to attend worship services. Paul says not to stay home alone, but instead, it is necessary to gather with other believers (Hebrews 10:25). We need the support that other believers can give us, even if it is simply to gain faith from having evidence that we are not alone in our beliefs. Maybe more importantly though, there are people at church who need us. We attend church for those brothers and sisters who we can support even if there are church members who will give us problems. Jesus showed us how to unselfishly think of others’ needs even if this means that we will be forced to be around people who irritate us. (By the way, the cure for this irritation is to ask God to transform us so that we can love the unlovable.)
There were two groups of opponents present in the synagogue that day—the Pharisees and the Herodians. The Pharisees had strict rules of Sabbath observance, and they knew that Jesus had already claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath, so they watched Jesus with an eagle eye intending to use the slightest infraction in order to destroy Jesus’ religious influence. The Herodians were political. They supported King Herod. Jesus was viewed as the Messiah by a growing number of people, and the popular view stated that the Messiah was going to set up a political kingdom. For this reason, the Herodians’ opposition had grown as they began to view Jesus as a serious political rival for King Herod’s position.
The trap was already set when Jesus entered the synagogue. Jesus’ enemies did not understand His motivations, but they could predict His behavior. If there were someone suffering nearby, Jesus would be unable to resist alleviating that suffering. The man with the withered hand may have been a regular attendee; he may have come on this day for the first time because he was searching for the great Healer, or he may have been planted there by Jesus’ enemies specifically to ensnare Jesus in their web. Whatever the reason for his presence in that synagogue at that particular time, he was about to become ground zero for a battle between the kingdoms of heaven and of the world.
The Pharisees had laid a trap, but Jesus neatly sidestepped their snare by posing a question, as any good rabbi would. Is the Sabbath a day to do good or evil? Is it a day to save a life or destroy it? Then Jesus healed the man with the withered hand. On the surface, these questions are the justification that Jesus used for healing on the Sabbath, but a deeper analysis of the situation will reveal that the purpose for these questions was to reach the hearts of Jesus’ enemies. This passage tells us that Jesus was angry at His enemies, but He was angry because He was hurt by their hard hearts. He was angry because he longed to embrace them in His love, but they refused to be loved by God. The questions were intended to reach past their stubborn defenses and cause them to think about what they were doing. They were using the Sabbath as a day to try to destroy the life of an enemy. Their plan was evil. The Law of Moses had taught them that there were limits as to what could be done against an enemy. For example, if an enemy’s cow got out, it was to be returned (Exodus 23:4). They were ignoring the very laws that they claimed to be upholding. However, Jesus’ attempt to reach them failed. The Pharisees and Herodians left the worship service more stubborn in their determination to defeat Jesus than ever.
Thus, in the church of Jesus’ day, people who claimed to be followers of God looked with malice upon another follower of God. When they could not lower that follower’s standing in the church service itself, they met together privately to complain and plot to hurt their opponent. Unfortunately, church members today tend to repeat the mistakes of the past. As members of the body of Christ, we should never get together to plot against someone secretly. We should be able to answer from God’s word any problems put forward by other members, but plotting is prohibited. This sounds reasonable to most of us until something happens to cause offense. For instance, how should we react when someone comes into the church and starts diluting the gospel? What should we do when we are rightly offended by the sinful choices of church leaders? These questions are more relevant today than ever as the problems of how to deal with abortion, gay marriage, and legislation of morality continue to divide churches. When faced with controversial issues, it has been too common for members, who may be perfectly correct in their offense at the dilution of the gospel, to start gossiping and complaining. This then leads to them thinking that they must DO SOMETHING about someone who is bringing in an unwanted change. This urgency, in turn, leads to trying to refute him/her in church or small groups and when direct action does not succeed, secret plotting against that person or group of people begins. However, just like the Pharisees, the Bible has given Christians directives and limits for dealing with opponents. The overriding principle for all of our actions must be to act in a loving manner, i.e., no secret plotting or gossip. It is not enough to be right in our opposition to the activities of an opponent. Being right without love equals being wrong.
We must always examine our hearts to see if we are acting with faith in Jesus. Are we willing to trust Him to deal with problems in the church and in society? Who are we when we are fighting for the cause of right? Are we fighting as worldlings with a sword, or are we fighting as Christians with the gospel? It is interesting that even Jesus’ enemies knew of Jesus’ compassion. They were positive that the man with the paralyzed hand would be difficult for the great Healer to resist. Even though they did not know Jesus, they knew that He loved to heal hurts. They could not understand Him, but they could predict His actions. Why is it that some of us who claim to love Jesus cannot seem to predict how He would want us to react? Our first job as followers of Jesus is to know Him. Our second job is to follow where He leads. Would He lead us to be plotters or healers?
DAY 7–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 3:7-12 Crowds
So Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea. A large crowd from Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, from across the Jordan, and from the region around Tyre and Sidon followed him. They came to him because they kept hearing about everything he was doing. Jesus told his disciples to have a boat ready for him so that the crowd wouldn’t crush him, because he had healed so many people that everyone who had diseases kept crowding up against him in order to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they would fall down in front of him and scream, “You are the Son of God!” But he sternly ordered them again and again not to tell people who he was.
Because of the large numbers of people, Jesus had to leave town again, so He went down by the sea. In fact, the multitude had become so numerous and bold that they were crowding Jesus as they reached out to touch Him for a blessing or to be healed. The group was not only local. At this point in His ministry, word had gone out about Jesus’ miracles and innovative teaching, and people were arriving from both the immediate area and distant locations—Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, across the Jordan, Tyre, and Sidon. Essentially, they were coming from all the areas that had made up the historical kingdoms of Israel and Judah. They were even traveling from the port cities of Tyre and Sidon. Tyre was on the northernmost edge of Galilee while Sidon was in Phoenicia. Basically, at this point in His ministry, literally all the Jews in the Jewish areas of the Roman Empire had heard of Jesus, and large numbers were coming to see for themselves if Jesus was the Messiah, as well as to be healed. God had ensured that no one in the Jewish regions would be able to say that they were ignorant of the Messiah’s presence.
Jesus draws people to Him even when they hate Him. Maybe, the reason so many demon-possessed people flocked to Him was because even the demons could not stay away. It is true that Satan may have been sending great numbers of his soldiers against Jesus to test His strength, but another reason that so many had converged on this location was because the fallen angels simply could not help but draw near to the One that they had once served. They could not ignore God even in their rebellion. That might be one reason why Satan hates Jesus. Satan wants to be the supreme leader, yet in his heart he not only cannot deny the superiority of Jesus, but Satan himself feels drawn to Jesus. It is pitiable that the fallen angels might not have been able to stay away from Jesus when He was here on Earth even though they still rejected Him as the King of Heaven.
Jesus could tell that this was going to be a difficult rather than an orderly group. People were crowding up to Him and reaching out to touch Him. There were many with diseases in the throng, and they were desperate to be healed. Mark paints a picture of chaos with these pushy people becoming more and more out-of-control. Jesus could have restrained them with the power of God, but He chose not to. Instead, He used a different method as the mob started to become unmanageable. He sent the disciples ahead to get the boat ready for Him as He continued to walk at the slower pace dictated by the masses of people. When they reached the boat, Jesus quickly hopped in. He may have been thinking of the spectators’ safety more than His own. He would have been protected since it was not yet His time of sacrifice, but the crowd might trample or hurt each other. It has happened at modern concerts and other public gatherings of today, so the possibility is not farfetched. Jesus knew human nature and that if He removed Himself from the immediate situation, the mob would settle down.
Most of us do not have the kind of charisma that attracts masses of followers. We tend to feel inadequate because we cannot reach large groups of people, like Billy Graham or other popular evangelists. What we forget is that God does not want or need us to draw people to Him. Jesus said that He was the attraction, not His followers (John 12:32). In fact, we see from the history of popular television preachers that those who draw people using their own charisma end up causing more harm than good. There is a place for a Spirit-filled evangelist, like Billy Graham, but most of God’s work is done on a more personal level. The believer with the spiritual gift of hospitality who invites people into her home is just as important in the gospel work as the teacher who leads out in Bible study. The Christian man with the spiritual gift of helps is many times more useful for spreading the gospel than even a pastor. Our job is not to draw people to Jesus. Our job is to lift Him up wherever we are so that He can draw people to Himself. God can find more use for the believer who is always striving to know Him better than any preacher who relies upon his own charisma to bring people into the church.