Mark, my words: Jesus tackles divorce head on.

Let’s be honest – this is a passage i would rather skip over, and most people do. I can’t remember ever hearing someone preach on this. I don’t particularly want any of my friends who have been divorced to read or watch this.

But at the same time, can we afford to avoid it. And what makes this one really difficult is that it doesn’t seem like a lost-in-translation or easy-to-misinterpret passage. It is Jesus talking. And what He is saying seems pretty clear to me.

Let’s take a nervous look at Mark 10 from 1-12:

[For the next passage on becoming like a little child, click here]

Aslan Jesus: Part kicking some pharisaical butt

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” [The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe: C.S.Lewis]

Continuing our look at how Jesus compares to Aslan [or is it the other way around?] in the C.S.Lewis Narnia series and the question of Him being good, but not necessarily safe or tame. Matthew 23 explodes this question right open.

There are three interesting things about this for me:

[1] Jesus is taking on the teachers of the law – the religious leaders of the day – the very people who were meant to be helping the average man and woman in the street to follow God well.

And He doesn’t take them on gently.

“Woe to you, blind guides!” [vs. 16]

“You blind fools!” [vs. 17]

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? [vs. 33]

Similiar to when Jesus sends the money lenders out of the temple grounds, we see passion and anger and strong language here. Jesus is serious about this. The lion is opening His mouth and letting out a gut-wrenching roar for all He is worth.

Paul reminds us in a more subtle way in 1 Thessalonians 5.21 that we must always test the spirits – hold on to the good and avoid every kind of evil. In our modern day setting it is vital that we compare what we hear from the preacher or what we read or watch with the words in the Bible and if they do not measure up, to feel free to discard them and let them fall away. We need to be correct handlers of Truth.

[2] Jesus is accusing them of not living out what they teach:

23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

[3] Jesus takes them on publically – none of this ‘just you and them business we always get pointed to in Matthew 18’

15 “If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.’

And why not? Well maybe the key is in the first line where it says “sins against you” – what Jesus was taking on here was sin that affected the whole audience and so it needed to be dealt with publically. This can be a dangerous precedent to set [especially when it’s not Jesus doing the disciplining] but i believe there is a place for this [and have not found many who have vocally shared their agreement with me on this one]. My feeling is that if the preacher says something that is wrong and you deal with it with him alone, then everyone else has still heard the wrong thing and has no idea that it was wrong and so they will still take it on as truth. Perhaps this is why the Bible tells us there is a higher responsibility placed on those who preach/teach?

The audience needed to know that what the Pharisees were teaching and how they were living was not acceptable to God. 

As easy as it is to look down on the Pharisees and dismiss them, the primary objective of this story is for us to be reminded of the short distance between someone who follows Jesus and someone who becomes like them. I need to check my heart against the things that Jesus railed about in them and make sure that I do not fall into the same.

[To return to the beginning of this series to see the other posts, click here]

Mark, my words: Rather cut things off?

This is one of those passages that we like to speed our way through and assure ourselves how understood it is that Jesus is speaking completely in metaphor.

The cost would simply be too high if He wasn’t. Gouge out your eye? Really? Well obviously Jesus doesn’t mean that… or does He? Not in terms of actually wanting anyone to literally take a spoon [or whatever you use for eye-gouging, to me a spoon feels right] and go at their eye… but in terms of really hearing the seriousness with which He makes the suggestion that THIS THING is just THAT IMPORTANT…

This reminds me of the passage where Jesus says it is better for a man to lose the whole world rather than forfeit His own soul… Let’s take a look at Mark 9: 42-50:

[To read the next passage where Jesus deals with Divorce, click here]

Mark, my words: Be nice to the little ones.

As we continue to wander with Jesus through the book of Mark He comes across some children and relates to them in a way that would have been quite unfamiliar and possibly quite scandalous to the adults of His time…

There is so much to be learnt simply from observing how Jesus behaved around people – how He spoke to them and how He spent time with them, and it is good to reflect that back to our own lives and ask if we are doing the same…

Let’s head to Mark:

[For the next passage that deals with cutting things off rather than missing out, click here]

Mark, my words: I BELIEVE! [help me overcome my disbelief!]

Wow! This passage and that statement resonate with me so deeply and i think always have.

Illustrating the tension of holding seemingly contradictory beliefs or understandings at the same time.

The hopelessness of a situation vs. the trust placed in God.

Yeah, this is just a really good one, so join me as I look at Mark chapter 9 verse 14 to 32:

[For the next passage which has to do with Jesus and His encounter with some children, click here]

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 59

Another Psalm begins with David in trouble, railing against his enemies [this time we more specifically know they are men who have been sent by Saul to watch his house] and what is great again is that we see where David turns to:

1 Deliver me from my enemies, O God;
    be my fortress against those who are attacking me.
2 Deliver me from evildoers
    and save me from those who are after my blood.

We don’t know it’s his first point of turning [for most of us it rarely is, right?] but whether it is or not, we get the sense of his trust and reliance on God with terms like ‘fortress’ and phrases like ‘deliver me’. David always seems to end up at the feet of God when he has trouble [and fortunately when he is full of praise] as opposed to letting trouble in his life send him running away from God. If we only draw close to God when things are going well, that says a lot about our relationship with God. In the same way, if we only draw close to God when things go badly, that also says a lot. A good relationship stays consistent through good and bad. Whatever comes my way I will face it knowing God is with me.

What is great about this psalm [as it is with so many of them] is the honesty. This is not great theology David is throwing out here, it is human emotion in whatever words he has at his disposal. We can see this as he goes from show no mercy to wicked traitors [verse 5] to But do not kill them, Lord our shield, or my people will forget [verse 11] and then to consume them in your wrath, consume them till they are no more so a little bit of contradiction happening here which just gives an indication that this is more an expression of how David is feeling right now, than an accurate portrayal of what he actually thinks God is going to do. We see this later when David has at least two opportunities in caves to kill Saul and chooses not to.

What is particularly great about this psalm is that David starts and ends with God. There appears to be a danger of him losing it during the piece and getting caught up in the enemy-bashing but it’s almost as if he checks himself and ends once more with a focus on who God is and what He will do. Reminding himself why he ended up there again.

16 But I will sing of your strength,
    in the morning I will sing of your love;
for you are my fortress,
    my refuge in times of trouble.

17 You are my strength, I sing praise to you;
    you, God, are my fortress,
    my God on whom I can rely.

 [To return to the Intro page and be connected to any of the other Psalms i have walked through before now, click here]

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 58

Wow! David having a bit of a bad day, it seems.

This is one of the Psalms I would generally skip or quickly move past to the next one if it was just for my reading, but since I’ve committed to commenting on them I guess I will have to give it a try, but this one is NOT for the faint of heart. In fact, if Psalms had movie restrictions, this would get an R for sure.

I think maybe one important point that can be brought up using this psalm is the following: Just because it’s in the Bible does not mean it is true. Wait, let me be more specific there – does not mean it’s true for me. Not every line in the Bible is teaching. Because it says he took a second wife means I can take a second wife. Because Cain killed his brother means I can kill my brother. No, that just shows lazy, uneducated reading of the Bible. Because the Bible is written in so many different forms of writing [history, poetry, song, metaphor, teaching] we need to be mindful of the intention of the part we are reading. What message would the intended audience have taken from it? Is this what God is trying to say to me now?

And with psalm 58 I think that is important because it is a bit of poetry or song and really seems to be David [once again, you say] having a bad day rant against the people he sees as unrighteous or his current enemies at the time [he had quite a lot throughout his lifetime] and he wishes some pretty hectic stuff against them.

1 Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
    Do you judge people with equity?
2 No, in your heart you devise injustice,
    and your hands mete out violence on the earth.

The first two verses echo what a lot of us might think and feel about our present governments, I imagine. Just a sigh of frustration as the people who have been put in the places of leadership [or authority, perhaps] just don’t seem capable or at least focused on doing what is right.

But then over the next few verses David gets a little graphic about what he wishes would happen to them and the wicked in general. I’ll let you go and look those up.

Then in verses 7 and 8 he comes up with some strong metaphors which I do want to look at [the one is very hectic and unfortunate, but does convey strong imagery] in terms of perhaps finding something that might apply to us in an introspective kind of way:

7 Let them vanish like water that flows away;
when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short.
8 May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along,
like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.

So, pretty hectic, right? But let me look at each one briefly in terms of the possible meaning I see in them [this is not necessarily what David was meaning but just trying to draw some meaning of my own from what I read here]:

# ‘water that flows away’ indicates something with non-present boundaries. If water is placed into a container it will remain there and be useful. But once you take all the boundaries away, remove all the limits and restrictions, then the water will be lost. It will seep away into nothingness. This can be a strong reminder for us as individuals and as society I think or the need for helpful boundaries and restrictions. Not ones that are so rigid that the water is not allowed to flow where it needs to or even ones that can’t be changed or adapted from time to time. But the complete lack of all restriction and restraint can often lead to something becoming completely ineffective and useless.

# ‘let their arrows fall short’ to me speaks of the lack of power behind the arrow. If you put an arrow into a bow and let go, the arrow will fall directly to the ground and have shown to be completely useless in achieving its goal [or your goal with it]. In the same way if we continue to operate purely in our own strength so we will miss our goal [or God’s kingdom goal for us] again and again. We need to be empowered by His Holy Spirit living in us and invited to operate fully in us. Have you surrendered yourself completely to God or are you at least in the process of living day to day offering your life to Him. When we allow ourselves to have the power of God working in and through us, then our arrow will fly further and be more effective in hitting its intended target.

# ‘a slug that melts as it moves along’ – with my limited understanding of biological things, i’m still pretty sure that if you throw salt at a slug it melts and so when I read this I think of a slug that is moving along on a trail of salt. The lesson for us being that if we pursue or follow a destructive path [or a path that contains strong elements of the things that are bad for us] then we are causing our own destruction. The warning to be aware of the things in our life that are not helpful or healthy for us and making wise [sometimes difficult] decisions to that we don’t melt as we move along. The enemy never starts out with tempting someone to commit adultery or to kill someone. No, he begins with the subtle temptation of a returned lingering glance, of a late night meeting with that person you have felt attracted to at work [despite being married] and choosing to go and have a drink with them afterwards instead of heading home [and not telling your wife about it] or a little white lie that at a later stage will need a slightly bigger one to cover it. Before you know it there is a weird smell and a bubbling sound. We are called to be salt in terms of adding flavour and preservation to things and people around us. But we must identify the things that would act as salt to us if we were slugs and choose a different, less dangerous path, every time.

# ‘a stillborn child that never sees the sun’ – this is a hectic image and not one I really want to look at because of all the pain that it carries for anyone who has walked that path [and even those who know people who have]. But simply put, it brings to mind the idea of missed potential. All that could have been that will now not be.

And so this psalm is a rant from David and not necessarily a teaching on what we should even wish on our enemies – after all, Jesus gave us some strong teaching on how we should love them, bless them, walk the extra mile for them [and at least the metaphorical satisfaction of the burning coals that might fall on them if we do] – but by looking at the extent of his curse-wishing on them, we have hopefully been able to do a quick stock take on our own lives and take some valuable lessons of things, life paths to avoid from those.

 [To return to the Intro page and be connected to any of the other Psalms i have walked through before now, click here]