BRIEF NOTES OF READINGS ON MARK'S GOSPEL
BRIEF NOTES OF READINGS ON MARK’S GOSPEL
Chapters 1 and 2 This gospel gives us the Lord as the Servant. We are lacking in our understanding of Him as the Servant. It is where the sympathy of Christ comes in. He has addressed Himself to every grievance that is on man. His service closes with His death for us. Sometimes we see a person who is quite ready to go to heaven, but not so prepared to be on earth for Christ.
Chapter 1: 6: John the baptist was entirely different from Christ - his clothing, his food, etc., were outside the lines of ordinary men.
We do not get any account of the temptation in this gospel. But the Servant of God goes through it, and where the first man fell He stands superior to all Satan’s assailing. Adam had everything in his favour, yet in the midst of the most favourable circumstances he gave up God. Christ, where all was against Him, never gave in.
Verse 23. He addresses Himself first to the worst evil that rests on man - the power of Satan - a man taken possession of by an unclean spirit. The devil is dispossessed by the word of Jesus. Never before was the power of Satan rebuked in a man. Now it is: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you”! The next is a case of fever, natural excitement. He treats it quite differently. The leper presents a new kind of evil, it is contaminating. He touches him and he is cleansed immediately. In the gospel narrative I am learning what a rich Saviour I have, what boundless resources are available to me in Him!
Chapter 2: 12 closes the first series of miracles. You find that there is no pressure on man that He cannot remove. In the case of the palsied man grace [p. 138] comes out, that which he did not reckon on is done for him. “Thy sins are forgiven”, etc. He gives a practical proof in the man himself of the power of Christ. He relieves all the varieties of pressure on man. The first series of miracles has to do with things, circumstances, not so much with the person’s state. It was a new thing for Satan to find himself mastered by a Man. A Man has walked down here on earth and cleared a way through it. He made a path for Himself through this world, and thus a path for me to follow Him. I am connected with a Man who gives me power to walk superior to the ills of time.
People say: Oh! that is my weak point. But we have no excuse for failure now. It is your perverse point; if it were weakness you would be helped to overcome it. It is not ‘I take pleasure in my perversities,’ but “in weaknesses”. Suppose I am a nervous person and I am called to preach, what is the consequence? I am cast upon the Lord. He does not take away the weakness. He takes away perversity, but He stands by you in your weakness, so that your greatest weakness is the occasion of the manifestation of the greatest power. Then you come out in the strength of Christ.