Key Verse: Mark 6:50 “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.”

If there’s anything for which Jesus is most remembered by the secular world (apart from the Christmas story), it’s something recorded in this chapter: Jesus walking on the water. He and the disciples had just finished a very labour-intensive (to say nothing of people-intensive) task, the feeding of the five thousand. He insisted His disciples take a break, in fact we read, “He made His disciples get into the boat…” while He, himself, went “to the mountain to pray.” Later in the night, He saw His disciples straining at the oars as they fought the wind. So He walked out to them…on the water!

The disciples, predictably, were terrified. They were sure a ghost was walking on the waves, and cried out in fear. Jesus responded with the comforting words in all of scripture, “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.” The key words are, “It is I”. It’s Jesus, and if it’s He, then everything is okay. “Take heart. It is I.”

Someone has rightly said the the only adequate faith for deep distress is a person. Central in this vast created order is a person —the Person, the God of Love. Underneath all human sorrow and fear are the everlasting arms of a God who “so loved the world”. John MacMurray has wisely said,

“The sense that the world as a whole is personal is the very heart of religious experience. To the man with the sense of God alive in his soul the world is neither a mechanical system, nor and evolving something. It is something made by Someone, and brought to life by Someone, controlled, indwelt, loved by an infinite person, who is its meaning, its reality, and its good.”
(The Christian World)

Those three words, “It is I”, are pivotal to faith. We cry out in our distress, “O God!”, and we hear in reply, “It is I”. When we hear those words, any storm is suddenly put in perspective. A peace “that passes understanding” calms the waves and we rest.

Key Verse: Mark 5:34 “…your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed…”

Here we have the stories of a dead girl and a sick woman. The woman had an affliction which had disabled her for twelve years. What’s more, it brought with it a ceremonial uncleanness– which meant she was a bit of an outcast. Because of this, she lived with a deep sense of shame, affecting her self-esteem and self-confidence to the point where she would shrink from coming to Jesus openly and of easily confessing afterwards that she’d touched Him. The dead girl, on the other hand, had been alive as long as the woman had been sick. Her father, Jarius, had come boldly to Jesus, and it was while on His way to Jarius’ house that the timid woman had reached out to touch Him. And so the two stories converge.

Jairus had encountered a sudden sorrow after twelve years of joy. The woman had been living with twelve years of deferred hope, longing for the day her affliction would cease, but finding every new day was just as bad as the last. It could very well be that she had spent most of her money on doctors and medicine, even while the young girl had been merrily skipping through a carefree childhood. Enter Jesus, the compassionate and versatile healer.

To the woman who had been sick for twelve years, He says, “Your faith has healed you, take heart.” As for the girl, He goes to her house where a noisy crowd has already begun singing death dirges. He tells them to stop because the girl “is not dead but asleep”. Here is an instance where Jesus faced open mockery. Nevertheless, He went inside the house, took the girl by the hand, ordered her to get up, and she got up. Jesus had done it again. In one case, twelve years of hope, suddenly dashed, had been give new life. In the other case, twelve years of sorrow with no hope of release, had suddenly ended and a whole new life begun. On the other hand, a timid touch by the sick one, on the other, a commanding touch by the Healer, both resulted in the kingdom of heaven coming amongst mankind once again. All because of faith in Jesus.

Key Verse: Mark 4:9 “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

This has been called by some commentators the chapter of parables. Mark suggests in verses 2, 33 & 34, that the parables here are just some of the many Jesus taught. Two of them deal with the kingdom and what the kingdom of heaven is like; they other two talk about a proper responses to the gospel. Just a few comments about that first parable, that of the sower. It is not so much about seed or sowers, as it is about soil. Broadcasting or scattering seed was often used as an illustration of the act of teaching, and the students were seen as the soil. Some students produced a harvest and others produced nothing–only barrenness.

The point of the parable is that any broadcasting or sowing of the truth involves some loss. And I don’t think we can assume from this that because there were four kinds of soil, and only one kind bore fruit, that we should expect a return of only twenty-five percent. I feel we can assume that the good ground is most of the field. Nevertheless, men can choose to hear or not to hear. They can also choose to respond or not to respond. So it’s not a case of passively bearing fruit, or passively deflecting the seed. Rather, it’s a matter of one actively allowing the seed to take root in one’s heart. Notice the conclusion of the chapter. It’s the story of Jesus calming the storm. I think the outstanding aspect of this is the terror and consternation in the minds of the disciples as they ask, “Who is this Jesus anyway? Even the winds and the waves obey Him.” Obviously the disciples hadn’t turned in to know what the demons already knew. We’ve seen in Mark that evil spirits were very much convinced of who Jesus was. It’s ironic that Jesus should have to take three years to demonstrate who He was to an increasingly recalcitrant and hard-headed group of disciples. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on the religious leaders who misunderstood and rejected Jesus. His own disciples, our spiritual forefathers, not only misunderstood Him, they even forsook Him during the critical hours of His passion.

If the evil spirits recognize Jesus only because they dwell in the darker regions of the spirit realm, we shouldn’t be surprised that the disciples didn’t recognize Him until He had been resurrected in the space and time realm. Later, as their hearts were quickened by the Day of Pentacost events, the disciples became powerful witnesses to who Jesus really was– the eternal Son of God.

Key Verse: Mark 3:27 “Stretch out your hand…”

Two things stand out in this chapter. First of all, Jesus heals someone who has had a withered hand all his life. Notice that Jesus asks a man who has never used his hand before to stretch it out. This seems to be a rather unreasonable demand. The man probably expected Jesus to take the initiative in this healing; instead, He looks at the man and says, “You take the initiative. You stretch out your hand.” So he did. As he made the attempt, Jesus empowered him.

This is a good word to us. When we seek God’s touch in our lives we should, from time to time, think in terms of touching Him. We should take the initiative. The other things standing out in this chapter is the mention of the “unpardonable sin”. (Once again there is a record of evil spirits expressing belief that Jesus is the Son of God.) The religious teachers explain Jesus’ power to deliver from demonic possession as demonic power itself. In fact, they go so far as to say that He is Himself possessed by Beelzebub, the “ruler of demons”. To this Jesus says a house divided against itself cannot stand, and then He goes on to talk about the unpardonable sin–the sin against the Holy Spirit. Many people, feeling spiritually depressed, or just spiritually flat, often think they have committed the unpardonable sin. But look at the context. Jesus is speaking to religious leaders who should know better, but are in fact attributing the power of the Holy Spirit to Satan. He says it is absolutely unacceptable to credit Satan with what is the work of God. As long as one persists willfully in that kind of spiritual blindness and unbelief, he is beyond the reach of Grace.

The unpardonable sin is a deliberate, willful act of unbelief, where one maliciously impugns the work of the Spirit of God. I’ve been in the ministry twenty years and I have yet to see anyone guilty of this sin. And I probably never will.

Key Verse: Mark 2:17 “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.

In this chapter, Jesus really does and says some radical things. First of all, He heals a paralytic which in itself is outstanding, but precedes the healing by saying to this fellow who has dropped in from the roof, “Son, your sins are forgiven”. It’s no wonder the teachers of the Law were upset. Nobody has the right to forgive sins but God alone, and I think we would all agree with their comment. But the fact is that Jesus was someone unlike anyone else in history. He then goes on from this outstanding event to say that the ones who qualify for this kind of salvation He is freely giving out are not the religious, nor the healthy, nor the righteous people, but those who are sick–the sinners.

This, of course, goes against the grain of current religious thought. The idea, then as now, in the rabbinic tradition, was that a man obtained righteousness through good works. But Jesus contradicts tradition and says the ones who are really diseased are those qualifying for salvation. Then He takes some shots at two aspects of piety that spring out of the current view of righteousness. He first of all says that fasting is not necessarily a factor in pleasing God. He, in effect, was saying, “Look, I represent a whole new age, a new kingdom, a new message”. And in that context new wineskins are necessary for new wine. There’s a whole new horizon to be explored. The same applies to Sabbath observance, a very important and holy aspect of Jewish life. But Jesus, seeing the Sabbath becoming a bondage, says the  Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath. In other words, if the Sabbath does not benefit us, there’s no way we are going to benefit it. So He focuses in again on God’s commitment to the healthiness, or holiness, of man and his need for rest and recreation. Jesus is a Healer who saves, a Savior who heals, and a Free Spirit of the highest order.

Key Verse: Mark 1:15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”

After Mark tells us about John the Baptist and his ministry of repentance in preparing for the coming of Messiah, he immediately gets into the ministry of Jesus. Jesus’ ministry is characterized by the message, “the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe the good news”. (Repentance is fundamental in Jesus’ ministry. It is seen in terms of turning around and walking away from one’s sin.) We see Him calling the disciples in verses 14-20, then, as He gets to Capernaum, a fascinating incident occurs. An unclean spirit cries out and says, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are–the Holy One of God!”

Notice that the evil spirit knows Jesus’ identity. In the spirit dimension it’s no secret who Jesus is. If there is any secret at all, it’s in the the realm of men. Ironically, it’s the evil spirit who makes a sort of confession of faith. This is not necessarily faith to believe, but at least faith to accept that Jesus is who He says He is. Jesus dealt with the evil spirit directly and cast it out. The people, predictably, were astonished. In their amazement, they saw Him as a teacher with a new teaching, with an authority that was absolutely remarkable. A little later on in the chapter, as Jesus was healing and delivering people from demon possession, he commands the demons not to speak, because they knew who He was. Tie this in with the several instances where Jesus tells people He has healed not to talk about their healing, and you see a fascinating picture of a Savior, Deliverer and Messiah who, on one hand is exposing His ministry in history, and even at the same time is trying somehow to hide it.

Perhaps one observation which can be made here relates to our desire to follow Jesus’ example. We should be careful that we don’t sensationalize the spiritual ministres of healing and deliverance. Jesus saw healing and deliverance as a private thing between the person and the Spirit of God. We certainly shouldn’t attempt to make of this supernatural ministry more than Jesus Himself made of it.