I started this blog when I was following the Life Journal Bible reading plan on YouVersion. (I've since completed that plan.) At that time, YouVersion didn't provide any way for people to respond to my notes, other than to "like" them. So this blog is here to remedy that problem. You may comment on my notes here in the comment section.
I also have a general blog.
My Life Net Group has been doing a study of Mark over WhatsApp, so I've not been doing my SOAP studies, so I thought I'd share what we've discussed so far instead. 1 The Gerasene demoniac: this was the other side of the passaged we discussed in chapter 1 when Jesus told the man with the dreaded skin disease not to tell anyone. The healed demoniac wanted to go with Jesus but Jesus did not permit him to do so. Instead, he said to him, “Go to your home and to your people and tell them what the Lord has done for you, that he had mercy on you.” So he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him, and all were amazed.
So the former demoniac became a great evangelist. I am guessing Jesus allowed him to do that now because Decapolis isn’t a Jewish area, so his evangelism will not affect Jewish opinion so much and cause them to try to make him a political king instead of the sacrificial lamb of God.
2 Jairus’ daughter and the bleeding woman: Again Jairus was told not to tell anyone, as they’re back in Jewish territory.
The bleeding woman was excluded by Mosaic law from active participation in the worship life of the Jews because her bleeding rendered her ritually unclean. So it wasn’t just a physical problem it was a social and spiritual problem for her as well.
Popular Jewish belief at the time took the prophecy of Malachi 4:2 to mean that the “wings” of the Messiah (the ends of the Jewish prayer shawl / robe) had healing in them, so the bleeding woman was actually showing that she believed in Jesus’ Messiahship by her action. (The word כָּנָף “kanaph” in Hebrew can be translated both as “wing” or as “fringes of garment”.)
And indeed, that faith enabled God’s healing to pass from Jesus to her. As Jesus’ reaction showed, he could sense that her touch was different from the touch of the jostling crowd. Hence “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
My Life Net Group has been doing a study of Mark over WhatsApp, so I've not been doing my SOAP studies, so I thought I'd share what we've discussed so far instead.
1 Parable of the sower: the Gospel remained the same, but there’re different responses.
2 “although they look they may look but not see, and although they hear they may hear but not understand, so they may not repent and be forgiven.” Why did Jesus not want them to repent and be forgiven? Elsewhere it’s clear that he _does_ want them to repent and be saved… so what’s going on here? In fact, the very next section talks about the parable of the Lamp.
3 Parable of the Lamp: we are to let our light shine. We should not be “undercover Christians”. If nobody knows we’re Christians, something’s wrong. Of course, there’re exceptional circumstances, e.g. in times of severe persecution, but in general this is the case.
4 Parable of the Mustard Seed: Some people interpret it as evil “birds” from the parable of the sower -- but I think more likely it’s talking about how the church from a small beginning grows and spreads to influence the whole world.
My Life Net Group has been doing a study of Mark over WhatsApp, so I've not been doing my SOAP studies, so I thought I'd share what we've discussed so far instead.
1. Healing the man with the withered hand: The Pharisees were more interested in following their legalism than to notice that God had done an amazing miracle in front of their eyes! How could they be so blind? Yet, phariseeism is a danger for us Evangelical Christians as well.
2. Interesting that the unclean spirits cried out “You are the Son of God.” But he sternly ordered them not to make him known. Why? Because it wasn’t his time yet? He didn’t want people to make him a political king?
3. Appointing the apostles: Jesus himself chose Judas, who betrayed him.
4. Even his own family thought that he was crazy. But later they came to faith, and his brother James even became the bishop of Jerusalem. I used to think that it seemed rude of Jesus to ignore his mother and brothers and instead say that those who do the will of God is his family -- but the Jesus film showed how it may not have been like that: it showed him just using the opportunity to make the point, then he got up and went to see them.
My Life Net Group has been doing a study of Mark over WhatsApp, so I've not been doing my SOAP studies, so I thought I'd share what we've discussed so far instead.
1. Jesus dealt with the *invisible* problem of the paralytic first -- “Your sins are forgiven” -- before dealing with his visible physical problem. Perhaps it was so that he could draw out the Jakims as was what happened, (“He’s blaspheming!”)
2. I suspect this wasn’t Matthew Levi’s first exposure to Jesus. Jesus had been known in Capernaum already, as evidenced by the crowds mentioned earlier. But Levi probably thought he was too “dirty” to be accepted, just like the Jakims did, (“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”) Jesus proved him (and them) wrong, “Those who are healthy don’t need a physician, but those who are sick do. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
3. What did Jesus mean by the “new wineskin”? It’s not fasting, since He did say we would fast after He’s gone. This -- new wine and new wineskins -- are terms that modern Charismatics throw around a lot, but from the context, it’s not so clear to me what Jesus meant. The New Covenant, replacing the Old Covenant? Fasting not as a ritualistic obligation but rather for spiritual growth? Maybe that’s what he meant, because he made more or less the same point in the next paragraph about the sabbath.
My Life Net Group has been doing a study of Mark over WhatsApp, so I've not been doing my SOAP studies, so I thought I'd share what we've discussed so far instead.
1. Sometimes we get the impression that John the Baptist invented baptism, but actually, baptism as an outward sign of repentance and cleansing was already practiced by the Jews. They've even found baptismal pools that date back before Jesus' time in Israel.
2. Jesus told the man with the dreaded skin disease not to tell anyone about it. (v44) In contrast, He told the Gesarene demoniac to tell everyone, and he did, so that all Decapolis heard about Jesus as a result.
The man with the dreaded skin disease disobeyed Jesus, to the point that Jesus was mobbed so much that He had to stay away from town.
I wonder if that's why He told him not to tell, whereas Decapolis wasn't His territory so it didn't matter that the former demoniac told?
We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over “non-Jewish sinners.” We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.
Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren’t perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was “trying to be good,” I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan.
What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the cross was certainly set before you clearly enough.
Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!
Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don’t these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.
Is it not obvious to you that persons who put their trust in Christ (not persons who put their trust in the law!) are like Abraham: children of faith? It was all laid out beforehand in Scripture that God would set things right with non-Jews by faith. Scripture anticipated this in the promise to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed in you.”
So those now who live by faith are blessed along with Abraham, who lived by faith—this is no new doctrine! And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure. Scripture backs this up: “Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law.”
The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right: “The person who believes God, is set right by God—and that’s the real life.” Rule-keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith, but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule-keeping, a fact observed in Scripture: “The one who does these things [rule-keeping] continues to live by them.”
Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. Do you remember the Scripture that says, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”? That is what happened when Jesus was nailed to the cross: He became a curse, and at the same time dissolved the curse. And now, because of that, the air is cleared and we can see that Abraham’s blessing is present and available for non-Jews, too. We are all able to receive God’s life, his Spirit, in and with us by believing—just the way Abraham received it.
Friends, let me give you an example from everyday affairs of the free life I am talking about. Once a person’s will has been ratified, no one else can annul it or add to it. Now, the promises were made to Abraham and to his descendant. You will observe that Scripture, in the careful language of a legal document, does not say “to descendants,” referring to everybody in general, but “to your descendant” (the noun, note, is singular), referring to Christ. This is the way I interpret this: A will, earlier ratified by God, is not annulled by an addendum attached 430 years later, thereby negating the promise of the will. No, this addendum, with its instructions and regulations, has nothing to do with the promised inheritance in the will.
What is the point, then, of the law, the attached addendum? It was a thoughtful addition to the original covenant promises made to Abraham. The purpose of the law was to keep a sinful people in the way of salvation until Christ (the descendant) came, inheriting the promises and distributing them to us. Obviously this law was not a firsthand encounter with God. It was arranged by angelic messengers through a middleman, Moses. But if there is a middleman as there was at Sinai, then the people are not dealing directly with God, are they? But the original promise is the direct blessing of God, received by faith.
If such is the case, is the law, then, an anti-promise, a negation of God’s will for us? Not at all. Its purpose was to make obvious to everyone that we are, in ourselves, out of right relationship with God, and therefore to show us the futility of devising some religious system for getting by our own efforts what we can only get by waiting in faith for God to complete his promise. For if any kind of rule-keeping had power to create life in us, we would certainly have gotten it by this time.
Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.
But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ’s life, the fulfillment of God’s original promise.
O: John Newton was captain of a slave ship. He did much evil. Yet Christ came in and saved him. And yet, Newton continued in that evil trade for some time after he was saved! It took a while for the truth of Christ to get him to see how evil his job was.
But eventually, God's amazing grace on Newton's life made him a priest who encouraged William Wilberforce to get the British Parliament to abolish the slave trade.
John Newton wrote the famous song Amazing Grace which says
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
A: Indeed, we're saved by grace through faith -- it is not due to our own merit, but rather, a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8). The good works do come -- but after the grace, and we don't do those good works to earn God's grace, but rather, as a response to it.
As we struggle against sin in our own lives, sometimes we lose sight of grace. Yes, we do need to get closer and closer to the image of Christ. Yes, we do need to discipline ourselves. But let us not lose sight of God's amazing grace!
P: Father, when I get too caught up in my struggle against sin, keep me from despair and remind me of Your Amazing Grace! In Jesus' name, amen.
Note: this is using the SOAP method. For more information, see this page (not written by me.)
S: 1 Samuel 18:5-9
David went out wherever Saul sent him, and behaved himself wisely; and Saul set him over the men of war. It was good in the sight of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul’s servants.
As they came, when David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tambourines, with joy, and with instruments of music. The women sang to one another as they played, and said,
“Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his ten thousands.”
Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him. He said, “They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed only thousands. What can he have more but the kingdom?” Saul watched David from that day and forward.
O: Saul had some basis for his suspicions. After all, Samuel had indeed anointed David to be the next king, to replace Saul. (1 Samuel 16) His son Jonathan had already become a close friend of David's and his daughter Michal would soon fall in love with him.
And indeed, David would become the next king. But David was indeed innocent of trying to usurp Saul's kingdom. God would be the one to put David on the throne, but David would never raise his hand against YHWH's anointed - and he proved it when twice he had the opportunity to kill Saul, but refrained. (1 Samuel 24, 26)
As a result of his suspicions, Saul found himself fighting against God Himself. He tried to kill David. He had the priests of YHWH executed unjustly. And eventually, God had him defeated and killed in battle.
A: We have to trust God and follow Him. If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31) Do not avenge yourselves, dear friends, but give place to God's wrath, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," says the Lord. (Romans 12:19)
P: Father, trusting You is easier said than done. Please give us Your power to do so. In Jesus' name, amen.
Note: this is using the SOAP method. For more information, see this page (not written by me.)
