Hello everybody, and welcome in to episode Eight of the Bible 2021 podcast. We are reading Mark 6 today, and our focus is on the blindness of hard hearts, which almost sounds like a misnomer. Welcome to new listeners in Budapest, Hungary, Telangana, India, Hamburg, Germany, and Atlanta, Georgia. Thank you for joining us for Bible 2021! We are a daily podcast, where we will dig into ten minutes of truth from the Word of God by reading one Bible chapter a day. Our focus this year is on DAILY Bible reading, so you can jump in at any time and join with us. We want to invite as many people as possible to join us in daily Bible reading, so help spread the word and share the podcast Don’t forget about our new web-page, Bible2021.com – contact page, show notes, transcript and more – Click here for our reading plan!
Today’s chapter is long and interesting. It begins with people in Jesus’ home town quite confused about His power and authority, because He was so…human. They knew Him as the son of the carpenter, one person among many brothers and sisters – a young man who grew up among them. We know almost nothing about His childhood, but this passage does seem to clue us in that Jesus did not perform miracles and show Himself to be God as a young person. Why not? Perhaps for the same reason He told His mother during the Wedding of Cana, His time had not yet come. We clearly see the humanness of Jesus in this passage – Jesus was human. Was He more than that? Let’s read our passage and find out.
At the beginning of our chapter, people are offended at Jesus because He’s merely the carpenter’s son – we see the humanity of Jesus quite clearly. By the end of Mark 6, we are seeing something quite different. Jesus has walked on water, fed thousands with food that would barely feed one single small family, calmed the storm on the water, and healed innumerable sick people. Jesus’ Godhood – His divinity is on full display at the end of Mark, as we see in our focus verse:
56 Wherever he went, into villages, towns, or the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch just the end of his robe. And everyone who touched it was healed. Mark 6:56
So, which is it? Was Jesus human, or God? And the mind-blowing answer is, of course, He was both – 100% human and 100% God. The Word made flesh, dwelling among humanity. And you know what? The disciples didn’t see it yet – they were blown away when Jesus calmed the storm – utterly astonished. Why? Let’s ask Pastor Tony Evans:
And verse 52 says “For they had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their heart was hardened.” Anybody follow that? God gave them one miracle, feeding the five thousand but they didn’t get the message in the next trial. The next trial when they’re stranded out on water, they believed the God who could feed five thousand with a couple of fish and barely loaves can’t remember how to move when a new trial shows up. They didn’t learn that God can take a mess and turn it into a miracle. That God can take a mess and make it a blessing.
Tony Evans, “‘A Lesson about Faith,’” in Tony Evans Sermon Archive (Tony Evans, 2015), 1 Ki 17:17–24.
End of the Show: Bible memory verse for January: Mark 1:15 15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Happy by Mike Leite https://soundcloud.com/mikeleite
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/al_happy
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/TlwWc-6dZig