Mark (Program #9) – The Ways the Slave-Savior Carried Out His Gospel Service (4)

By the time Jesus was ready to begin His earthly ministry, a well established God ordained religious system was firmly entrenched in the land of Palestine.  But as the very God Himself who was the fulfillment and reality of all of the components of that established religion you would think that He would had taken a great care to approach the leaders of that religion and to bring them into His ministry.

But the record of the New Testament reveals quite the opposite.  The gospels, in particularly the gospel of Mark revealed that Jesus showed no interest in maintaining the old religion with its’ traditions and rituals.  Even those were among the ones that God had originally instituted such as the Sabbath.

Rather, Jesus  offended the religious community to the uttermost by breaking the Sabbath regulation repeatedly and revealing that as the Lord of the Sabbath He was well within His authority to use the Sabbath to care for His people instead of as a  religious fetter to bind them and even to kill them.

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Mark (Program #7) – The Ways the Slave-Savior Carried Out His Gospel Service (2)

Mark chapter 2 gives us the account of the Lord Jesus as the Slave-Savior carrying out His gospel service to care for the need of fallen people. It’s a marvelous chapter that shows us 5 cases or incidents, each one demonstrating this loving care in a particular way meeting the need of all manner of weak, sick and sinful people.

What a picture of the glad tidings being lived out in their midst!  Of course, not all the people are eager and happy to see such a manifestation of the reality and the enjoyment of God.  The scribes and the pharisees, the self-righteous and religious among the people were indignant that their own the authority and their time on the traditions were completely ignored by the Lord Jesus.  For as He Himself told them, “those who were strong have no need of a physician but those who are ill. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.“

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Matthew (Program #26) – The Continuation of the King’s Ministry (2)

In Matthew 8, the Lord Jesus spoke to one of His disciples, indicating that He had nothing, not even a home or a place to rest or lay His head.  But then in the following verses He unveils that what He did possess was absolute authority; authority over the winds and the sea, authority over the demons and even authority to forgive sins.    This our focus on today’s life study of the Bible from the gospel of Matthew.

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1 Peter (Program #17) -Christian Life and Its Sufferings (4 & 5)

The Bible speaks about marriage and about the marriage life in many places.  It’s common for people to select their own favorite passages on this most personal of subjects.  How often, for example do husbands anxious to establish their authority quote such verses as Ephesians 5 :22 where the apostle Paul says “Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord;”  While many wives might prefer to remind their spouses of verse 25 in the same chapter; “Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”  But Peter also speaks of marriage and may in fact offer one of the most excellent passages in all of Scripture on the subject.  Speaking to the husband, he says in chapter 3 of his first epistle, “Husbands, in like manner dwell together with them according to knowledge, as with the weaker, female vessel, assigning honor to them as also to fellow heirs of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.“

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Numbers (Program #16) – Journeying (8-9)

Rebellion.  Of all the evils and sins of mankind none carry greater consequence nor evoke a more serious reaction from God.  That’s because the target or object of all rebellion is authority which comes from and signify God Himself.  God’s people Israel were caught up in acts of rebellion against God and His deputy authority on many occasions.  The book of Numbers records the accounts of several progressive stages of rebellion ultimately resulting in God’s judgment and wrath being poured out in a very sobering display.  The on-going and progressive rebellion of Israel in the wilderness is again our topic on our life study from Numbers.

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