Bible Notes- Mark chapter 2

 

Read Mark chapter 2

·        Jesus heals a paralyzed man

o   The first chapter of Mark’s Gospel ended with several healings, as Mark moves us in a fast paced narrative of this part of Jesus life. Chapter 2 starts out with another healing miracle, but in this account the man needing the healing can not get to Jesus because he can’t walk. He is lying on a mat that his friends carry. But even once they get to where Jesus is staying they cant get to Jesus because of the crowds. But they don’t give up, they know their friend needs Jesus. The house where Jesus was staying at in Capernaum was probably made of stone, but would have had a flat roof made from mixing mud and straw. The friends would have carried the man up the outside stairs on the side of the house to the roof where they made a hole in the roof and lowered their friend right down to Jesus.

§  Are we ever so preoccupied with what we are doing that we hinder others from being able to get to Jesus? Are we ever this way in the church?

§  How can we be more attentive to those who need to “get to Jesus”?

§  The friends took a great risk by digging a hole in someone else’s roof to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus! What risks are we taking to get our “paralyzed” friends to Jesus? Are we more concerned with the owner of the house and what he/she might think or are we moving with reckless abandon to Jesus?

§  Jesus said “your sins are forgiven” (GR word also means healed and/or saved). What relationship do you see between physical healing and the forgiving of sins? Is this part of the “wholeness” of an abundant life in Christ? How you answer someone who asked you “why does God heal some people and not heal others?” Picture yourself lying on that mat in the middle of room with Jesus kneeling beside you and saying, “your sins are forgiven.” How do you feel?

·        Jesus eats at Matthew’s house

o   Mark states that after Levi (Matthew) accepted Jesus’ offer to “follow” Him, that Jesus went to Matthew’s house for dinner and “many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples” (Verse 15). What is important about this statement? What should this mean to us as “followers” of Christ? What should this mean to us as the church?

·        Fasting

o   We have been talking about fasting this past week in regards to Lent. Fasting is an outward sign of humility and repentance from sin, and is also an inward discipline to clear the mind and keep the spirit alert. Jesus here emphasizes not the practice of fasting itself, but the motive behind the fast. If people fast only to impress others (or only because it’s Lent and everybody else is doing it), then the fast is being twisted into a personal agenda, without the focus on repentance/forgiveness/relationship.

o   Jesus compares himself to a bridegroom (verse 19), and this image portrays us as the bride of Christ. If you are married think back to your wedding day (if you are not married think about a wedding that you have seen.) How did you feel? How does the bride look? Was the groom waiting as she arrived? What expression is on the groom’s face when he sees his bride walking toward him? How does all this relate to our relationship (bride) with Jesus (groom)?

·        Picking wheat on the Sabbath

o   As Jesus and his disciples are walking through a grain field on the Sabbath (Saturday in this time) some of them apparently pick heads of grain and eat them. The Pharisees (who at this point are watching everything that Jesus does so that they can find fault with it) accuse them of breaking a Sabbath law.

§  Read Exodus 34:21

§  They were not stealing when they ate this grain either per their custom (Read Deuteronomy 23:25). The edges of the fields were supposed to be left for travelers and the poor in the community.

§  Of course Jesus was not breaking a command to “not harvest on the Sabbath”, he and his friends were just getting something to eat.

o   Jesus uses an example from David’s life in his answer to the Pharisees.

§  Read 1 Samuel 21:1-6

§  For more info on the consecrated/show bread read Leviticus 24 and Exodus 25

o   God made the Sabbath (a day of rest and worship) for us as a gift.

§  For some people, the Sabbath rules had become more important that the Sabbath rest. Is it that way still today for some people? What do you picture when you hear the words “Sabbath Rest”? Is every Sabbath like this picture for you? Why or why not?

 

What one or two things have really impacted you from your reading of Mark 2 and listening to God’s voice today? And of course, the next question is “what are you going to do about it?”

 

Holy and Broken Hallelujah's

Today’s word of the day is hallelujah. Open a Bible to Revelation 19 and let’s check this out. Now we’re all probably pretty familiar with the word hallelujah, right? If you’ve ever been in a church you have probably heard it. Hallelujah it means “praise God” or “praise the Lord”.

Halle= Praise Jah= refers to Hebrew word for God which is Yahwey, but our Jewish brothers and sisters would not say this name so they used “the Lord” is used in place of it.

Now the word hallelujah isn’t in the Old Testament at all, but we do see “praise The Lord” in the Old Testament. In fact the last 5 Psalms all start out with the same words:

“Praise the Lord”, and this lyric of praise is used 23 times in the Old Testament, all found in Psalms 104-150

The word Hallelujah is found in only one place in the New Testament, in the very last book of the Bible…bet you figured out that’s why I asked you to turn to this chapter already.

Here is the Cliff’s Notes context of this chapter: this is a future time when God has said “enough”, and Jesus returns to usher in the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is a perfect time. For us as believers there will be no more death, no more tears, no more pain. This is what I would call a “holy hallelujah”, because everything is being made perfect. Of course we that have accepted Jesus as savior and Lord in our lives will be singing Hallelujah, because Jesus will be right here with us as God is creating a new heaven and a new earth.

So, I think there is the difference and the reality for us today. It’s easy to praise God when things are good, we will all be singing hallelujah when Jesus returns and we see all evil, all hurt, all poverty, all lies completely destroyed, it’s easy to say Hallelujah and bring our hallelujah as a pure and holy offering of praise to God in a peaceful and perfect time.

But what about the rest of the time? What about the broken times?

I talked to a woman this week, married, mother of 2, who was told by her husband that he didn’t love her anymore and had met someone new. Now this mother of 2 beautiful children has some broken hallelujahs in her life.

I talked to a guy this week who over a year ago was in a motorcycle wreck and the doctors said he probably lose his right leg. I met with him and his wife at the hospital, we prayed and asked God to heal him, and God did. He is walking now, and there was holy hallelujahs in that family. But 13 months after the accident he tried to stop taking the oxycodone that the Dr. had prescribed to him, and he couldn’t. He was addicted, and now he is fighting an addiction that has him feeling once again broken, he has a broken hallelujah.

When we were at Resurrection youth event in Gatlinburg last month we learned about a 12 year old girl, Emily, from Sweetwater, TN that was there with her youth group. I am sure that Friday night she had some holy hallelujah’s, as she was praising God through music from The City Harmonic and hearing God’s Word preached by Reggie Dabbs. Then Saturday her mom died. She was taken back home by one of her youth leaders. Her holy hallelujah had been turned into a broken hallelujah.

Saturday night at Resurrection there was an invitation to all the youth and hundreds of young people responded to God’s call, so many that all the senior pastors were asked to come up front and all the youth leaders went to the back of the auditorium so that we could pray with each and every youth there that night. That whole time seemed like a holy, holy, holy hallelujah as young people were giving their lives to Jesus. I prayed with a few of these youth, and there was one girl, I think she said her name was Sarah (it was pretty crowded and crazy) that I put my hand on her shoulder and she looked at me with mascara running down her face from crying out to Jesus, and she said “I was going to kill myself on Feb 14^th”.

It took a minute for her words to sink in, I wasn’t expecting that. She said something about showing “him what love was when he would lose it”, but then she looked me right in the eyes and said “but now I don’t have to do that, Jesus is the man that really loves me”. Somehow Sarah went from a very broken hallelujah to a perfect holy hallelujah in that auditorium.

The church where I serve as pastor has felt the blow of several deaths over the last few weeks. And that separation from loved ones, that feeling of loss, can break our hallelujahs and fill them with tears and pain.

And that’s OK.

When we bring our broken hallelujahs to Jesus, He will never turn us away, he restores our hallelujahs and He heals us.

Today, whether your hallelujah is holy or broken, I ask you to bring it to the Lord Jesus. Bring your praises, your joy, your pain and your tears as a holy and living sacrifice as we remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for each one of us.

Hallelujah!

 

 

 

Lent

“What are you giving up for Lent?”

               You’ve probably been asked this question. Even people who do not attend church are familiar with this practice of Lent, the practice of “giving something up” for 40 days. According to Biblegateway.com, here are the Top 10 things that people have tweeted or posted that they will be giving up for Lent in 2015:

1. School (11,330 tweets)
2. Chocolate (8,916)
3. Smoking (8,171)
4. Swearing (6,733)
5. Alcohol (5,820)
6. Soda (5,087)
7. Social networking (4,087)
8. Sweets (3,860)
9. Fast food (3,830)
10. Meat (2,687)

While some of the items on the list, such as smoking and fast food, can have a definite positive long term health and financial benefit, other items on the list, such as giving up school, are probably not practical and probably not for the right reasons.

So let’s start here, why do we have a custom of giving up various foods, habits, or actions for this 40 day period? Lent began as a practice of the early Christian Church (Lent is not mentioned in the Bible) as a way to prepare people in their faith journey to join the church and live a life of Christian discipleship. This 40 day period of time began on Ash Wednesday, and ended on Easter Sunday, at which time the new church members were baptized. As part of Lent these new members would learn and study important doctrines of the faith and study Scriptures. During this time there were many social and recreational things that they gave up, but more importantly they were taking on something new, taking on learning and growing in the new life that they were coming into.

So, from this practice, began the concept of giving up items for Lent to use our resources and time on things that really matter for the Kingdom of Heaven. We also in a small way experience an aspect of fasting and self-denial, through which we can (should) spend more time in prayer and thanksgiving as we think about the life and teachings, death and resurrection, of Jesus.

But I’m not going to ask you to give up chocolate or Facebook for 40 days, but I am going to ask you if you will take a Lenten journey with me. Take a journey through Scriptures like so many have done before us, as a way to prepare ourselves for the amazing Easter story. Here is a Lenten devotion of Scriptures that we can use together to read during the 40 days (not including Sundays) of Lent this year.

Day 1: John 1:1-18       

Day 2:  Matthew 3:13-17         

Day 3:  Matthew 4:1-11

Day 4: John 1:29-50     

Day 5:  Mark 1:1-20                 

Day 6:  Luke 5:1-11

Day 7:  Mark 1:29-39   

Day 8:  Matthew 4:23-25

Day 9:  Mark 1:40-45

Day 10: Luke 5:17-26

Day 11: Matthew 9:9-13

Day 12: John 4:1-42

Day 13: Mark 3:1-6

Day 14: Luke 6:17-26

Day 15: Luke 6:27-43

Day 16: Matthew 6:1-34

Day 17: Matthew 7:1-28

Day 18: John 7:31-8:11

Day 19: Luke 7:1-28

Day 20: Mark 5:21-43

Day 21: Matthew 13:3-23

Day 22: Mark 6:31-46

Day 23: Matthew 14: 22-46

Day 24: Mark 9: 14-29

Day 25: Luke 9:46-50

Day 26: Matthew 18:15-20

Day 27: John 9:1-41

Day 28: John 10:1-21

Day 29: Luke 10:25-37

Day 30: Luke 10:38-11:13

Day 31: Luke 12:22-48

Day 32: Matthew 11:20-30

Day 33: Luke 7: 36-8:3

Day 34: Matthew 16:13-17:8

Day 35: Mark 10:17-31

Day 36: Luke 15:11-32

Day 37: Matthew 20:1-16

Day 38: Luke 19:1-10

Day 39: Mark 6:1-13

Day 40: John 11

Have a blessed Lenten season. If you choose to give something up, use the money you save to help a local non-profit this year. If you give up an activity take the time you save to meditate in prayer. And allow God to work in and through you this season, to live into a Holy Lent.