Mark 3a (8-20-25)

what's up everybody it's Pastor James welcome back to our midweek Bible study

today we're gonna start chapter 3 and this is a little bit of Scripture and

it's talking about Jesus healing on the Sabbath and crowds following Jesus and

some of the kickback that Jesus gets from the religious leaders so let's

start with verses 1 through 6 and we'll make it about halfway through the

chapter today verse 1 it says Jesus went into the synagogue again and noticed a

man with a deformed hand since it was the Sabbath Jesus enemies watched him

closely if he healed the man's hand they plan to accuse him of working on the

Sabbath Jesus said to the man with a deformed hand come and stand in front of

everyone then he turned to his critics and asked does the law permit good deeds

on the Sabbath or is it a day for doing evil is this a day to save a life or to

destroy it but they wouldn't answer him he looked around at them angrily and was

deeply saddened by their hard hearts then he said to the man hold out your hand

so the man held out his hand and it was restored at once the Pharisees went

away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how to kill Jesus okay so

what we see in verses 1 through 6 is this continuation of what we've seen at

the end of chapter 2 the religious leaders are watching Jesus like a hawk

they're hounding him they're constantly present among his ministry not as

supporters but as critics and naysayers who were looking for a way to get rid of

Jesus and we see at the end of this passage in verse 6 that they are

literally trying to find a way to kill him to get rid of him this is how bad

they want him gone now it has taken a turn very quickly the religious leaders

have been established as Jesus great enemy during his ministry on earth and

for good reason so once again and the issue is the Sabbath like it was in

chapter 2 as we said last week the religious leaders had added so many

strict regulations to the law of Moses and the Sabbath the Sabbath may have had

the most rules added to it from the religious leaders and there were over

1,500 additional rules related to the Sabbath some examples are you couldn't

spit on the Sabbath as not to disturb the dirt or it would be considered plowing

you couldn't look in the mirror at your reflection as you may be tempted to

pluck a gray hair which was considered work you couldn't swat a fly because

it was considered hunting these are just some silly examples of how

meticulous things had gotten for the people of Israel by the time Jesus came

along so for Jesus to come on the scene and allow his disciples to break

off stalks of grain and eat them was outright rebellious for the expectations

of the day according to the religious leaders even something like killing

people was seen as a way to work rather than to do good but basically this

situation that we just read it reveals the hearts of the religious leaders they

saw doing good as a form of work rather than a chance to do good as a joy and

a blessing I want to say that again they saw doing good as work it was not

a joy it was not a blessing to them it was a job and that's how they viewed

serving the Lord people who belong to God are filled with his spirit and they had

the fruits of the spirit and God empowers them to do his will which is

also to do good and this is what we see in Jesus in this moment he is very

much willing to do good all the time there's no law against love there's no

law against doing good and serving the Lord and that's what we see here as Jesus

asked these men is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath they refused to answer

Jesus in the Bible says that Jesus was angry and saddened by their hard hearts

they're unwilling to acknowledge that healing someone is a good thing and

not a form of work that's the difference that's the attitude of the

men that were dealing with in this passage so they refused to acknowledge

their wrong they refused to acknowledge their hearts and they were like Pharaoh

whose heart was hardened and unwilling to change that we see in the book in the

book of Exodus as God is leading the people of Israel out of Egypt so these

religious leaders who clung so tightly to the law of Moses are becoming the

very enemy of God that Pharaoh was to God and Moses during that time one of

the wonderful things we see about Jesus in this moment is his willingness to do

the right thing despite the opinions and the thoughts of others he does not

care what they think he does not care what they say he does not care about the

danger that it will put him in or the attitude they will have towards him he

always does what's right Jesus is always consistent he is always perfect

and that's why we can follow him and not be hesitant in any way so let's read

verses 7 through 12 really quick it says Jesus went out to the lake with his

disciples and a large God followed him they came from all over Galilee Judea

Jerusalem Adamia from east of the Jordan River and even from as far

north as Tyre and Sedan the news about his miracles had spread far in

what and vast numbers of people came to see him Jesus instructed his disciples

to have a boat ready so the crowd would not crush him he had healed many people

that day so all the sick people eagerly pushed forward to touch him and whenever

those possessed by evil spirits caught sight of him the spirits would throw

them to the ground in front of him shrieking you are the son of God but

Jesus sternly commanded the spirits not to reveal who he was all right so we see

here in verses 7 through 12 that Jesus is becoming wildly popular with the

common people as they literally came from all over now Mark wanted these

Roman readers to understand that it was not just a fad in Galilee and Judea

this man Jesus drew in crowds from all over a large area around the

Mediterranean Sea to give you an idea of things here in the north was roughly a

hundred miles away from Adamia in the south people were traveling distances

that would take days to come and see Jesus they were even crossing rivers to

get to see Jesus crossing seas and the effort to see Jesus in this day was

quite impressive and the effort alone was a great indication as to the amount

of faith that people had as they traveled to see Christ in this moment in time to

hear his teaching to see his power and his healing another thing that we see in

this passage is the spiritual healing once again that is taking place with the

physical healing Jesus has healed physically and yet he continues to cast

out demons and heal people spiritually as well he's proving that he has the

authority both over the physical and the spiritual and this is really really

important remember this the ability to heal the spiritual to cast out

demons is so important as to proving who he is that we'll talk about a little

later on but Jesus has authority over the physical and the spiritual and

that's what we're seeing consistently so far in the book of Mark lastly we

see the messianic secret once again these evil spirits are identifying Jesus

as the Son of God they're giving him the credit they're giving him the honor

the glory they're identifying him of who he rightfully is and Jesus does not

seem interested in having people or evil spirits identify him as the Son of

God at this moment and so his desire is for each person or seems for each person

to make up their minds without being prompted by others in what they are saying

so he commands the spirits to be quiet and the true reason why Mark is intent

on communicating Jesus asking people to be quiet about him being the Messiah and

then he commands the evil spirits to be quiet it's still kind of a mystery this

fascinating mystery of the messianic secret that we see in Mark and we don't

truly know the reason but it's fun to speculate it's fun to wonder and to just

see and know that Jesus is working and moving in peculiar different and

unexplainable ways well let's finish up today with verses 13 through 19 as

Jesus chooses the 12 disciples so afterward Jesus went up on a mountain

and called out the ones he wanted to go with him and they came to him then

he appointed 12 of them and called them his Apostles they were to accompany him

and he would send them out to preach giving them authority to cast out demons

these are the 12 he chose Simon who he named Peter James and John the sons of

Zebedee but Jesus nicknamed them sons of thunder Andrew Philip Bartholomew

Matthew Thomas James son of Alphaeus Thaddeus Simon the zealot and Judas

Iscariot who later betrayed him so finishing up today we have this very

special moment when Jesus picks his closest followers and appoints the 12

disciples that would be with him and carry on his work after he's gone now

you got to notice that Peter is listed as the first disciple as he would have

been the main one ministering to the people in this gospel that the this

gospel is intended for he's the one that we believe kind of took Mark under

his wing and Mark's gospel is directly tied to Peter's testimony of who

Jesus is so Mark was the other 12 and it's very intent on identifying Judas

Iscariot as the one who would later betray him that's something else that we

noticed about Mark it's very clear that Judas is the traitor they identify that

early on every time it mentions him basically it just gives credit to his

betrayal and the disciples went by various names now if you look at the

different gospels they all have basically this list of 12 but what

you'll find is that some of them have very different names and so like if you

look at Thaddeus Thaddeus was actually the last name of Judas Thaddeus and

they also called him Jude as you can imagine nobody wanted to be known as

Judas after Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus so we know him as Jude and also

Thaddeus Bartholomew was also known as Nathanial or the twin Thomas was also

known as I'm sorry Bartholomew was also known as Nathanial Thomas was also known

as Didymus or the twin and this has always made it difficult for me to

remember the 12 disciples as multiple of them went by different names a couple

of disciples had the same name so there was two Judas's two James and it just

kind of makes things a little complicated in my opinion it's not as

easy as just saying oh there's 12 people with 12 different names no they kind of

overlap a little bit and they go by different names at different times and

and that makes it a little confusing so if you've ever read the gospels and

you're just wondering why it's hard to get a clear list of who the 12

apostles were that's why but um anyway those are good things nothing major just

wanted to kind of cover that with you let me pray for you today and I'll let

you go and we'll finish up chapter three next week father in heaven thank you

so much for the opportunity to read your word today to be able to share it

online like this and to have this study just so we can learn and grow with you

father I pray that you would work and move in a powerful way in our hearts

Lord as we read your word and submit ourselves to you Lord I pray that you

would speak to us in powerful ways help us to be yours help us to belong to you

we love you we're very thankful for you and we ask all us in Jesus name amen

all right guys thanks again for tuning in for another week and for being a

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love you we're praying for you hope you have a great week