Some highlights from my reading on Mark 3 & 4:
Some people in the world and even in the church are critical of Christians when they get angry, “you’re a Christian you’re not supposed to get angry.” Mark 3:5 clearly illustrates that Jesus who was perfect had at times anger. Anger is not the problem, there is an acceptable type of anger. To know what anger is acceptable or not two questions must be asked:
I will not speak for you but I know most my anger is self-protective or selfish. What I mean by that is that I get angry to protect myself or in defense of myself this is most often (some instances like abuse of some nature it is acceptable) not a good reason to be angry. Because many times that anger is because of insecurity or because we place our self worth in the hands of our fellow man. Or my anger is because I am selfish. Someone doesn’t do what I want! Those two types of anger are not acceptable. And how one’s anger is manifested is hopefully obvious to most.
I love the succinctness of Mark’s account of the calling of the disciples (3:14). He called twelve to be with Him (Jesus) and then go out and work for Him. That simple! We are first with Jesus we then go out as witnesses/workers for Jesus. Wow! And yet we seem to make it so tough so often.
I never realized before or it never struck me that Jesus gave James and John their nickname, “Sons of Thunder” (3:17)
In the parable of the Sower and the Soils (4:1-12) most sermons I’ve heard on this and that have I have preached focus on the soils as the focus of the illustration. When I read through this parable my eyes this time saw it from another perspective, that of the sower…a lot of churches and organizations talk about where to go for the right climate of ministry. In fact some churches don’t hold evangelistic meetings because they say, “the soil in our area is not right” in other words people won’t come, I noticed as I was reading this, the sower just sows and doesn’t worry about which soil the seed falls on. I also noticed Jesus doesn’t condemn this, in fact in Jesus’ explanation there is a powerful verse,
“The sower sows the word.” -Mark 4:14
That’s it Christians just sow and let the Trinity work out the hearts (the soil).
Again something similar caught my eye in the parable of the mustard seed. We often focus on the size of the mustard seed at the beginning and the end and I realized when I read 4:32, none of it would have matter…neither the size at the beginning or the size at the end, if the seed hadn’t been sown! It is really that simple.
SOW SEEDS Brothers and Sisters!
Tomorrow’s Reading: 1 Corinthians 9 & 10