Category Archives: Mark

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The Offering Police

Read Mark 11:1-12:44

The Offering Police

“Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how
the people put money into the treasury.”
Mark 12:41

Go Deep: It was offering time in the Temple, and Jesus was watching! He was the “offering police” that day, and he didn’t just happen to notice what people were giving, he was watching them like a hawk. He was not just observing the quantity of each gift, he was assessing the quality of those offerings as well.  Jesus was providing a kind of a play-by-play commentary of offering time at the Temple on that particular day.

How would you like that next Sunday when the ushers receive the offering? What if your pastor came off the platform with the microphone and provided a running commentary on each gift, announcing the amounts in the offering envelopes and revealing if they were proportionate to the giver’s income or not?

Well, that won’t ever happen in most churches I know, certainly not in mine. But I’ll tell you what: It sure would spice up offering time! There would be no need for an offertory; the choir could take a break; the solo could be saved for another part of the service. The play-by-play would be more than enough, wouldn’t you say?

Of course, I am being facetious, but you get the point: Your giving is private, but God knows. He knows what is in your bank account, and he knows what is in your heart. He knows if you are giving joyfully, generously, sacrificially and worshipfully, or if you are giving grudgingly, stingily, selfishly and just for show.

The amount doesn’t count; it’s the heart that God wants in your giving. The poor widow gave only two mites—the modern equivalent of not even one penny. But she gave all she had. She gave out of her poverty, trusting that the God toward whom she was being so generous would now be generous toward her.

The others that day gave out of their abundance, but they put nothing on the line in so doing. They still had plenty, so there was no sacrifice, no trust, no risky faith involved.

God probably won’t require you to empty your bank account the next time you give, but he wants you to empty your heart. In other words, he wants all of you when you give. He wants your ongoing stewardship to be characterized by love, generosity, sacrifice, risky faith, and expectant trust.

Before you give again, I hope you will give that some thought. And next Sunday, when it’s offering time, take a moment to thank God that there will be no play-by-play commentary.

Just Saying… Here is some great advice I once heard: “Give according to your income, lest God make your income according to your giving.”  Now I’d say that adds a compelling dimension to stewardship!

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What Is God Like?

Read Mark 9:1-10:52

 

What Is God Like?

 

Then they brought little children to Him, that He might touch them;
but the disciples rebuked those who brought them. But when
Jesus saw it, He was greatly displeased and said to them,
“Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid
them; for of such is the kingdom of God.”
Mark 10:13-14

Go Deep: What is God like? No human has ever seen him, so we are left to wonder.

A little girl was drawing a picture, and her mom said, “Honey, what are you drawing?” Quite confidently, the little girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God!” The mother reminded her that no one really knows what God looks like. To which the little girl said, “they will when I get done.”

People in Jesus’ day had never seen God. They only knew of him from their wooden laws, their vacuous traditions and from their misguided theologies. No one had ever seen God, but Jesus came along and said, “they will when I get done.”

So what does God looks like? Just look at Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells us in Colossians 1:15, “Jesus is the image of the invisible God.” Verse 19 says, “For in Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”  In other words, when you see Jesus, you’re seeing God himself. Jesus is the perfect picture of God; the absolutely accurate image of the Father. Jesus is the invisible God made visible.

So what does watching Jesus tell us about God in this chapter? Well, how does God feel about your marriage? Just look at Jesus tell the Pharisees, “What God has joined together let not man separate.” (Mark 10:9)

How does God feel about your children? Just look at Jesus gathering up kids and saying, “Let the little children come to me…” (Mark 10:14)

How does God feel about your struggle to let go of earthly dependencies? Just look at Jesus’s interaction with the rich young ruler: “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” (Mark 10:21)

How does God feel about your competitiveness with others? Just look at Jesus saying to his disciples, “Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant.” (Mark 10:44)

How does God feel about the things you care about? Just look at Jesus asking blind Bartimaeus, “What do you want Me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51)

What is God like? What does he look like? How does he feel about you? Just look at Jesus.  Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.”

In Jesus, God has identified with us so we can identify with him. In Jesus, God has come near to us so we can come near to God. In Jesus, God has made a way for us to live before him with complete confidence and daring prayerfulness.

Therefore, as Hebrew 4:16 goes on to say, “let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

One More Thing… J.B. Phillips wrote, “If New Testament Christianity is to reappear today with its power and joy and courage, men must recapture the basic conviction that this is a Visited planet.  …The great Mystery, Whom we call God, has visited our planet in Person. It is from this conviction that there springs unconquerable certainty and unquenchable faith and hope.  … As a sober matter of history, [in Jesus] God became one of us.”

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Stinking To High Heaven

Read Mark 7:1-8:38

Stinking To High Heaven

Jesus said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written:
‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.
In vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines commandments
of men.’ For laying aside the commandment of God,
you hold the tradition of men…”
Mark 7:6-8

Go Deep: As Jesus began to preach and minister the Kingdom of God, conflict with the Pharisees, religious leaders and other “stakeholders” in traditional Judaism increased dramatically. They didn’t like the fact that Jesus wasn’t holding to their traditions at all—and Jesus wasn’t intimidated by their pressure to conform.

Though there were many “violations” that disturbed them, in this particular conflict, they were upset that his disciples didn’t go through ritual washing before eating. When they questioned Jesus about it, he let loose a holy tirade against their ridiculous traditions, giving us an open window through which we can see what is truly irksome to God: Shallow, hypocritical, spiritually incongruent religiosity.

Jeremy Taylor writes, “The Pharisees minded what God spoke, but not what He intended…They were busy in the outward work of the hand, but incurious of the affections and choice of the heart. So God was served in the letter, they did not much inquire into His purpose; and therefore they were curious to wash their hands, but cared not to purify their hearts.”

God wasn’t impressed with the Pharisees, nor is he impressed with your rituals; he wants to be in relationship with you. Holding on to tradition for the sake of tradition is meaningless to God; he wants your acts of worship to be authentic. Lips that affirm one thing but a heart that holds to something else is completely odious to God—it stinks to high heaven, literally!

God desires integrity in our behavior, intimacy in our walk with him, and authenticity in our worship practices. Spirituality devoid of integrity, intimacy, and authenticity is even more repulsive to God than people who know they are sinners and don’t try to hide the fact.

Now there is an obvious application to this particular reading: God wants your heart. And he wants the heart you offer him to be pure. But let me suggest a riskier application of this text, as well as all the other accounts of Jesus’ confrontations with the Pharisees: Rather than reading them and feeling a sense of spiritual justification, why not read yourself into the story as one of the Pharisees. You see, the longer you are in the faith, the greater the likelihood that you will slip into some of the very practices God found so odious in the religious establishment of Jesus’ day.

Whatever it takes, keep your relationship with God fresh and vital!

Just Saying… John McClintock was right: “The Pharisees are not all dead yet, and are not all Jews.”

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Are Miracles Possible?

Mark 5:1-6:56

 

Are Miracles Possible?

 

Jesus went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep. But they laughed at him.  After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” ). Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.
Mark 5:39-42

Go Deep: Imagine the joy of the little girl’s parent—their daughter was dead, their hearts were broken, their hopes crushed.  But just one word from the Master changed everything.

When you read a wonderful story like this, you probably ask yourself the same questions I do: Is the Master still performing miracles today?  Are the sick still getting healed, the demonically oppressed being set free, and the dead being raised?  Are the miracles we read about in the Gospels still possible today, or were they only for that era?

This might surprise you, but about eighty percent of American adults say they believe miracles are still being performed by the power of God.  Yet do a cursory reading of leading Christian thinkers and you will find, at best, scant enthusiasm and more likely, very little support for the present reality of miracles in the world today.

How sad!  Perhaps the fact that spiritual leaders are reluctant to embrace the miracle working power of God explains why we are seeing so few of them.  Maybe it’s time for the ordinary person in the pew to bypass their pastor and take Jesus up on his promise to work even greater miracles than he did through his followers.

Who knows—maybe one of you are just crazy enough to believe Jesus will actually raise the dead one of these days. I sure hope so!

Just saying… Hebrews 13:8 reminds us, “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.”  Hmmm—guess that means miracles are still possible.

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Kingdom Killers

Mark 3:1-4:28

Kingdom Killers

“Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word,
and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for
other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
(Mark 4:18-19)

Go Deep: The proclamation of God’s Word—whether from pulpits, in casual conversations, or simply through its reading in your quiet time—is meant to produce Kingdom expansion in your life. That is, the Kingdom of God, which simply put, means the rule of God within you, is no static thing. It is either thriving and bearing fruit, or it is stunted and shriveling.

A critical question you and I must constantly ask ourselves is this: Is God’s Kingdom expanding in my life? Is God’s rule gaining ground in every detail of my world? Am I bearing fruit?

If the answer to those questions is “no”, or “not a whole lot”, then the culprit will be one of those three things Jesus identified as “Kingdom killers” in his Parable of the Sower: One, the cares of this world—worry over the things we have to do; Two, the deceitfulness of riches—the wastefulness of pursuing wealth; Three, the desires for other things—wanting to keep of with the Jones’.

Jesus antidote to these three “Kingdom killers” is found in this classic verse from Matthew 6:33,

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and all these things shall be added to you.”

If you are caught up in the cares of this life, turn worry into meditation on the goodness of God. What is worry anyway, except thinking continually about things you cannot control? Just flip that around and train yourself to think about the things God can control. Learn to do that continually—call it reverse worry—and it will do wonders for you.  Begin by spending time this week reading and reflecting on Matthew 6:25-33 and watch how the things that worry you get put in their rightful place—under the feet of Jesus.

If you are getting sucked into the money trap, start giving away what you have. True wealth, with the joy and satisfaction that comes from it, is to leverage your assets to resource the Kingdom of God. Jesus said, “Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:38, cf. Acts 20:35)

If you are in the proverbial rat race, competing with the Jones’, just stop. Let them be the only rats in the race.  Who cares if they have a bigger house, a better car, or spend more time enjoying exotic vacations! Do you think that will matter five minutes into eternity? Listen to Jesus’ sobering words in Luke 12:15-21,

And He said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.” Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Got any “Kingdom killers” in your life? Try some spiritual weed killer—get rich toward God and watch his Kingdom begin to thrive in your life.

Just saying… David Livingstone wrote, “I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ.” I would say that is a pretty good filter through which we should run every pursuit, each purchase and all of our possessions.

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Desperate For God

Mark 1:1-2:28

Desperate For God

Then they came to Him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men.
And when they could not come near Him because of the crowd,
they uncovered the roof where He was. So when they had
broken through, they let down the bed on which the
paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith,
He said to the paralytic, “Son, your
sins are forgiven you.”
(Mark 2:3-5)

Go Deep: I am not recommending that you knock over the pews to get to the altar or anything, but I wonder what you would be willing to do just to touch Jesus—either for yourself or someone you care about very deeply.  I personally like things a little more calm and controlled than that, but there was just something about a person’s holy desperation that seemed to move Jesus to action:

The blind man named Bartimaeus who wouldn’t shut up until Jesus healed him (Mark 10:46-52) …

The Canaanite woman who wouldn’t back down just to get Jesus to delivered her demonized daughter (Matthew 15:22-28) …

The woman with the issue of blood that pressed through the crowd just to touch Jesus (Mark 5:24-34)…

The guy named Zacchaeus who shimmied up a tree just to see Jesus (Luke 19:1-10)…

So how desperate is your faith?  Perhaps that’s the reason God doesn’t seem to do as much in your life, and mine, as we read about in Scripture or hear about in third-world Christianity.  When we become truly desperate for God, maybe we will see God move as he did in days of old.

There is a story told about a proud young man who came to great philosopher, Socrates, asking for the knowledge necessary to be wise.  He said, “Great Socrates, I come to you for knowledge.”  Socrates, who recognized a disingenuous and arrogant numbskull when he saw one, led the young man through the city streets to the sea, where they walked chest deep into water.

Then Socrates asked, “What do you want?”

“Knowledge, O wise Socrates,” the young man said with a smile.  So Socrates put his strong hands on the man’s shoulders and pushed him under.  Thirty seconds later Socrates let him up.

Again Socrates asked,  “What do you want?”

“Wisdom, great and wise Socrates,” the young man sputtered.  So Socrates shoved him under again. Thirty seconds passed…thirty-five…forty.  Finally when Socrates let him up, the man was gasping.

“What do you want, young man?” the venerable old teacher asked again.

Between heavy, heaving breaths the man wheezed, “Knowledge, O wise and wonderful…”

Before he could finish, Socrates pounded him under again…forty seconds passed…fifty…a minute.  “What do you want?”

“Air!…I need air!” he gasped.

And then Socrates said, “When you want knowledge as you have just wanted air, then you will have knowledge.”

When we want God like we want air—when we long for him as desperately as we long for the breath of life itself—we shall have God.

Just Saying… A.W. Tozer  “The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted.”

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Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It

Read Mark 16

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and
preach the gospel to every creature.”
(Mark 16:15)

Thoughts… You may recall the television show from years ago called Mission Impossible. It always began with a scene in which Mr. Phelps, leader of a team of government spooks, would receive a tape describing his next mission. The tape usually began with the line, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…” Then, after describing the mission, the tape would self-destruct in a puff of smoke.

For the believer, Jesus’ command here at the end of Mark’s Gospel is our “mission possible.” But unlike Mr. Phelps, we don’t have the option of accepting it. If you desire to be a Christ-follower, you will do this.

The mission is very clear and quite simple: Take the Good News with you wherever you go and share it. That is the mission of the Christian.

Don’t let the word “preach” trip you up. For sure, the Gospel is to be formally preached by preachers from pulpits in church services and by evangelists to great crowds of listeners. But the word “preach” has a simpler application as well. It simply means “to proclaim.”

Proclamation can happen in both formal presentations as well as informal conversations. I think the church has done pretty good job in the formal aspect of this mission. It is the informal, everyday part of the mission to be carried out by the individual believer where we have not done so well.

The mission of the Christian is proclamation. You and I are tasked to go and tell the story of Jesus. That is our business.

So that begs the question: How’s business? When was the last time you talked about your faith in Christ in a casual conversation with a friend or a co-worker? In the last six month? This past year? In the last five years? Have you ever shared Christ with another?

Don’t you think it’s time we get back to business? I do!

What do you say you and I look for opportunities today to carry out the mission! Jesus is counting on us.

Prayer… Lord, keep me acutely sensitive to the opportunities that will come my way today to share what you have done in my life with others. Help me to lead someone to faith in you.

One More Thing… “Evangelism is not a professional job for a few trained men, but is instead the unrelenting responsibility of every person who belongs to the company of Jesus.” —Elton Trueblood