March 23 Jesus and His disciples came into Bethphage, a small village on the Mount of Olives, very close to Bethany between Jericho and Jerusalem. Jesus saw a fig tree covered with leaves, but it bore no fruit. Because there was no fruit on the tree, Jesus cursed it, though not because He was still…
March 22 Misreading Mark 10:23–41 can lead to dangerous applications of God’s Word. In this section, Jesus addressed possessions and the Kingdom of God. He told a rich man that in order to enter heaven, he needed to sell all of his possessions and give to the poor. The reason he should do this, the…
March 21 Mark 9:2–13 records the Transfiguration, where Jesus gave Peter, James, and John a glimpse of the consummation of the Kingdom of God. This story is recorded in all three of the Synoptic Gospels.[1] But, just prior to the Transfiguration in all of the Synoptics, Jesus tells the three disciples “Truly I tell you,…
Today let’s touch on three things from Mark 8. Mark tells us in verse 1 that “once again there was a large crowd.” They had followed Jesus for three days with nothing to eat. This raises a few questions: 1.) Why didn’t the people bring food with them? By now, a large crowd following Jesus…
March 19 Jesus never did a miracle the same way twice. On this occasion, he took the deaf and speech-impaired man away from the crowd for privacy. This is the first time I’ve noticed this detail. How ‘bout you? (Tomorrow, we’ll see the only other place where Jesus performs a private miracle in Mark 8:22–26.)…
March 16 Herod was a family name. It’s easy to be confused regarding the Herods because sometimes they were referred to simply as Herod. Herod the Great, Antipas’ father, was the one who had every two-year-old boy killed when the Magi asked about Jesus’ birth as the King of the Jews. (Matthew 2:16) I guess…
March 15 Immediately after calming the storm in Mark 4, Jesus arrived at the region of the Gerasenes (also called the Gadarenes or the Gergesenes). Sadly, about a thousand years ago, someone decided to put a chapter break in the text between these events, because if you’re reading one chapter at a time, you might…
March 14 Mark records several statements that seem a little unrelated in chapter four. We’ll look at each of them and see how they relate to each other. In verses 21–22, Jesus talks about things being revealed by the light. The purpose of a lamp is to reveal things that are hidden in the dark….
March 13 Jesus was in a synagogue on the Sabbath and encountered a man with a shriveled hand. The Jewish authorities wondered what Jesus would do. “Will He heal this man on the Sabbath?” they thought. Given that the man’s hand was withered, he had probably been this way his entire life. The Mosaic Law prohibited…
March 12 Jesus approached Levi as he sat in the tax office and invited him to follow Him. Immediately, Levi got up and followed Jesus, perhaps leaving money on the table. So, who was Levi? The name is Hebrew. We don’t know when he changed his name, but Levi was Matthew—the disciple who wrote the…