Chapter 2 ended with a discussion of the Sabbath.
Verses 1-12
Chapter 3 begins with a healing on the Sabbath
Why is the Sabbath so prominent?
- Jesus is challenging their fundamental assumptions about the law and about who Jesus is.
- What is the heart of the law?
- Mark 12:28-31, “28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” 29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
- To live a life for God and to give of ourselves for others.
- Is that what the law had become to God’s people in the 1st century?
- It had become a list of rules
- The law was more God than God was God.
- As a result you can’t heal on the Sabbath because that could be construed as working on the Sabbath, and working on the Sabbath is breaking the law.
- Hence the question of Jesus, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to kill?”
- They can’t answer the question! Or they won’t.
- Verse 5 is instructive – this is the 3rd time in 3 chapters that we get insight into what Jesus is feeling. (1:41, 2:8, 3:5)
- Jesus heals the guy. Their response? Let’s kill him.
- What do we do when we are confronted with the truth?
Why are verses 11-12 so important in the immediate aftermath of Jesus healing on the Sabbath?
- God’s people are plotting to kill, while demons recognize who Jesus is!
Verses 13-19
Why 12 disciples?
- 12 is a significant number (12 tribes of Israel).
- Connects the old covenant and the new covenant
Are these guys it?
- Jesus had quite a few followers.
- Thousands at one point although many deserted him when the going got rough
- (John 6:60)
- Notice two things
- Who they are
- What Jesus gave them authority to do
Verses 20-35
We’ll finish with one of the most interesting, and confusing, passages in the New Testament.
- Verse 20 – His family thinks he’s crazy (brothers and sisters, probably not his mom)
- The teachers think he’s possessed.
- He addresses the second part first
- Recognition of Satan as a person and that he has a Kingdom.
- A house divided can’t stand.
- Strong man is Satan in this passage
- Jesus’ purpose – to bind the devil and set the captives free.
- Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit
- Who are my mother and brothers
- They come to stop what he is doing.
- Jesus is not saying he does not love his family.
- Think John 19:25-27, “25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.”
- But as Son of God he is about his Father’s business, and his purpose trumps everything else.
- Someone has said, “As the Son of God, he knew no other relatives but God’s children, to whom the performance of his will and the promotion of his glory are the first of all duties and the dominant principle of their lives.”