Week 40 Day 5 – A Curtain Wrenching Experience

Mark 15:33-41

What miraculous event happened when Jesus died?

What is the significance of this happening?

Read Leviticus 16:1-17. What was the attitude the people were to have toward what was behind the curtain?

Read Hebrews 10:19-25. Based on this passage, what is the result of the curtain being torn in two?

Spend some time thanking God that you have been granted access into His presence. Evaluate your own attitude about coming into God’s presence. Do you take Him for granted? Do you come flippantly before Him and treat Him with contempt? Perhaps, as you prepare to gather with the church for worship this week, you can think about a way to increase your level of appreciation and honor that you show to God.

Week 40 Day 4 – Of Bread and Blocks

Mark 8:14-21, Mark 13:1-2

These must have been frustrating moments for Jesus. Both conversations take place at the end of His ministry, after having spent three years teaching His disciples. From the moment His ministry began, Jesus had been teaching them that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, that God’s Kingdom and God’s law was a matter of the heart and of eternal, spiritual consequences, not a set of external rules of behavior. Yet, His disciples still didn’t get it. When he talked about the “yeast” of the Pharisees, meaning their sinful character, which would continue to spread through the hearts of the nation, all they could think of was literal bread. When they walked into Jerusalem, even after He had taught them about the eternal Kingdom of God, all they could see was how marvelous the polished stones of the Temple appeared.

To paraphrase Jesus’ rebuttal of His disciples, “Don’t you get it boys! I’m talking about things that really matter, eternal things, and all you can think about is bread and blocks. Those things are incidental. I can literally pull those things out of thin air. I don’t care about the temporary things like what I’m going to eat today or where I’m going to live, I’m concerned about eternal things, like where I’m going to spend eternity!”

It took the disciples a long time to figure this out. Shortly after this dialogue in chapter 8, Peter makes his proclamation that Jesus is, “the Christ, the son of the living God.” Upon Peter’s pronouncement Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem and began the journey towards fulfilling His mission. It is pretty safe to say that Peter had missed the point in his proclamation. Even though he said the right words, he probably did not yet understand them. As Jesus entered Jerusalem on the donkey, the disciples probably believed, along with the praising crowds, that Jesus was about to take over the city and establish His Kingdom on Earth. When Jesus allowed Himself to be arrested and executed the disciples fled for their lives, confused and disillusioned.

They were still focused on bread and blocks. It wasn’t until they saw the resurrected Jesus and were filled with the Holy Spirit 50 days later at Pentecost that they began to understand the deep teaching of Jesus. His Kingdom was not a physical kingdom. Physical kingdoms come and go. Bread molds, buildings decay. God’s Kingdom is a Kingdom of the heart that is based upon true character and inward integrity. God’s Kingdom is eternal.

Which Kingdom do you live in each day? Do you worry about the “stuff” or do you focus on the eternal truth of the good news of Jesus?

Week 40 Day 3 – Crowds!

35 times in his gospel Mark refers to the crowds that gathered around Jesus. Wherever Jesus was there was always a crowd swarming him. Why were they there? Most likely there were mixed motives in the crowds. Read these passages and list what the motivation seems to be for their following of Jesus.

Mark 1:27-28

Mark 3:10

Mark 8:1-3

Mark 11:8-10, 18

Mark 14:43

Mark 15:11-15

Did you notice what happened? Up through chapter 11 the crowds were enamored with Jesus. They loved His teaching, they loved the fact that He would heal the sick; they loved getting free bread and fish. They became star struck and convinced that this was the Messiah who would ride into Jerusalem and take over the joint. Then what happens? The very crowd that was one day shouting out “Hosanna” was, just a few days later, crying out “crucify Him!”

Crowds are fickle. One day you are the hero, the next day you are the goat. Crowds are motivated by what they can get out of something or someone. Jesus knew this about the crowds. Notice how He spent a great deal of time trying to get away from the crowds. When He fed the 5000, He was trying to get away from people so that He could mourn over the death of John the Baptist, but when He saw the crowds He had compassion on them and said they were like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus knew the crowds were selfish and fickle, and that is why He said, “boo!” to them in Mark 8:34-38. He told them that they had to pick up their cross if they wanted to follow Him. From this point on Jesus’ teaching turned intense and the crowd started to turn on Him.

So, what’s the point? There are two lessons in this; one for leaders, one for followers. For the leader: Don’t listen to the voice of the crowd to determine what your actions should be. It is the sirens’ song to listen to the praises of the crowds. They will tell you that you are wonderful...as long as you are doing what they want. As soon as you make a tough decision that ruffles feathers, the honeymoon is over. That’s just how it is. As a leader you need to listen to one voice only; the Holy Spirit’s. He will guide you. Stay true to what God wants you to do, and let the crowd follow or not.

If you are a follower: be sure to not get caught up in the undertow of popular opinion. It is easy to look around and see everyone else doing something that you know to be wrong and rationalize it. Don’t. The crowd will sweep you away into idolatry. Pull away from the crowd from time to time and ask God what He wants from you.

Week 40 Day 2 – Inside Out

Mark 7:6-23

There are two things to keep in mind in this passage. First, the Pharisees had created a system of rules, or “traditions”, that were designed to guarantee that people would follow the Laws of Moses. They believed that the reason God was not blessing the nation and was keeping the people under the rule of Rome was because the people were breaking Moses’ Law. In order to safeguard against breaking the Laws, thus insuring that God would bless them, they created a long list of rules that were even more intense than Moses’ Law. In a sense, they built a fence of rules around the Law that would be so strict that, even if someone broke one of their rules by accident, they still wouldn’t have broken the true Law. Their motivation behind this was to bring the nation back into obedience so that God would deliver them from their oppressors. While the motivation may have been good in the beginning, the problem with it was that, after a few generations, the traditions became all about external behavior and not about inward transformation. When you really study Moses’ Law, his motivation (God’s motivation working through Moses) was not to conform people’s behavior to a set of rules, but to transform people’s hearts to have a heart for God. The traditions of the elders became a power trip for the Pharisees that seduced them into believing that they were the judge and jury for everyone’s behaviors. Jesus did not approve of this.

The second thing to keep in mind is that Jesus’ disciples did not understand what Jesus was talking about right away. His teaching was so radical that they thought He must have been speaking in a parable. When asked about this, Jesus said,” Hello! I wasn’t speaking in a parable, the truth of this is as plain as day!” You see, the disciples had grown up with the traditions of the elders so these sets of rules were so ingrained in them that it was difficult for them to see any other way. Jesus clearly said that it is what comes out of a man’s mouth that makes him clean or unclean, because what comes out of a man’s mouth is a direct reflection of the condition of his heart and character. The Jews thought that moral cleanness was about what you did and did not do, eat, or touch. It took the disciples a long time to grasp this. Actually, they didn’t even get it after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven. The whole book of Acts is the story of how the disciples realized this teaching for themselves.

The lesson for us to be careful about the standards we use to judge ourselves and others. It is easy to get caught up in the externals: appearance, status, impressive speech, etc. Although we might not like to admit it, we often get caught up in playing the “who’s better than who” game while we jockey for position in our social environment. As Christians we use external indicators to figure out who fits where on the totem pole. We must stop this and remember what God told Samuel when he was looking for Saul’s replacement amongst Jesse’s sons, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.”

Week 40 Day 1 – Filling and Spilling

Mark 1:35-39

The point of this devotional is simple. Jesus needed alone time with His Father in order to serve the demanding crowds. This is an encouraging word, especially for introverts. It is true that Jesus had a mission and had a lot of work to do. It is also true that the crowds were pressing on Jesus every moment of the day. Jesus could have filled every waking moment with His ministry, but He didn’t. He got up early in the morning and found a place to be alone so that He could pray. Jesus modeled for us the Filling then Spilling principle. If we want to be effective in ministry we need to focus not on the doing of our ministry first, but on the filling of our heart with God’s presence first. Then, if we have been properly filled, we can spill over onto the “crowds” that demand our time.

Think about it. If Jesus needed to have Quiet Time with God, we probably do too!