SESSION 9
January 28, 2022
Very good Friday morning: We are about to head to my Georgia homeland, and I wanted to say a few words before we go. I'm still thinking about Mark 6 where Jesus cannot do any great miracles. But I want to make it personal here. It is true not only that the Lord could not do great works in Nazareth because of the cold winds of unbelief; He cannot do great works in US, either, when those winds surround us. To be clear, regular church members easily can have plenty of cold winds blowing around them; and, as something I noticed in Isaiah 6:1-6 recently, around God's throne are fiery, burning 'Seraphim,' not ice-cold angelic beings. You can't be close to the Lord and be cold!
You see, as we have been said, our unbelief hampers Christ's power. Oh, no, it is not for a lack of power, it's for a lack of our tapping into that power. Paul calls it the "power that works within us" -- Eph. 3:20 -- but that power only works in those men and women who have come to understand the depth and height, the breadth and width, of the love of Christ. As Paul writes in v. 17 of that context, his hope and prayer is "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ..." Please note: That doesn't mean merely that because we develop a degree of faith by studying the Word that Christ dwells in our hearts -- even though that is true to a degree -- because a man may study God's Word until he's blue in the face and still not develop a working faith. But it means that when we put our deep faith in Christ, depending on Him with all that we have -- including trusting in His word -- that Christ can dwell in us. His power can work in us. It means that He can do great things in us, that He can bless us with His greatest gifts because we open up our hearts in faith.
This faith is not a mere belief. We forget that sometimes. This faith is "the motion of your will and heart toward God." Many believe but never turn their will to Him. Many believe and never emotionally depend on Him in a way that warrants His opening up his treasure- house of blessings.
Something else: Christ's offering us His salvation -- the greatest blessing -- is not merely the absence of hell. I think that is what some people's religion can amount to. He does not just promise that if we obey Him we won't go there. His work is greater than that: It is to give us the graces that come by walking by His Spirit, Galatians 5:16, to give us a new love, new desires, a new direction, a new Spirit living within us.
Again, remember Mark 4:24-25: The Lord measures to us His blessings in proportion to the measure of desire that we have. That statement needs to stay in the forefront of our minds. "With what measure we mete it shall be measured to us": The KJV words sound complex, but now we understand them better. We dig down -- even as what you're doing now as you're searching for new perspectives, new insights, new knowledge, a greater hope in the Lord -- and we seek; and the more we seek the more paths of blessings and peace He opens for us. That, precisely, is how Christ dwells in us by faith.
Those are just a few early morning thoughts. Blessings to you in your work today!
SESSION 7
Monday, Jan. 24, 2022
*We adapted the original writing for Session 7 into a column.
Front-Porch Gospel: Going Back Home
Good cold, February day to all. Welcome to the ‘Front Porch.’
We are continuing some reflections based on the gospel of Mark. We have thirty or more ‘official’ Bible students studying along with us. If you want to join in, feel free to Facebook at Steven Ray Bowen or email.
For the next two weeks, we’ll be looking at chapters 6 – 10, beginning here with the early verses of chapter six. This segment is titled, appropriately, “Going Back Home.”
Here in the sixth chapter, Jesus' visit back to Nazareth isn't what we would've thought— or maybe it is: As you read Mark 6:1-6, you'll be stopped in your tracks at two statements:
One, "And he could there do no mighty work ..." - v. 5.
And, two, "And he marveled because of their unbelief," v. 6.
This is back HOME. These are the ones for whom he carpentered and did stone work, whom he met in the synagogue regularly, those with whom he saw at the market for the better part of thirty years. ... I think I understand the idea. I'll tell something to illustrate that I think you'll understand thoroughly:
This weekend, Lord willing, the amazin' blonde and I are going home – LaGrange, GA, my old stomping grounds. I noticed something a long time ago as I and my family would take that trip to my Southland. I was always a different person back home than I was way out in Texas, all the way from the beginning. That was mostly good, but there was also some reality to it, too. On the good part, going home was a way to reset the dial, to go back to the values that every landmark and every person there seemed to represent. It slowed life down. It was Grandma's cooking and shooting baskets down at the Y and seeing all of those church folks. It is still that way, and, Lord willing, I'll spend a few minutes with many of those same folks this Sunday. It's always a thrill I can't duplicate anywhere else.
But I noticed a long time ago something else. When I went back home, my home folks weren't affected one way or another by what I may or may not have accomplished. It was okay, but they weren't overly impressed, at least in my mind, that I had coached a thousand basketball games and taught thousands of classes and laid brick for a decade to get to that point and gone to college so long they named a wing after me (ok, maybe not actually).
You get the picture. No, when I went back home, I've always been much closer to the barefooted boy riding his bike all over Juniper Street and Truitt Avenue and the one who stood up with knees shaking to lead his first song or give a talk. And – and you can relate here – I also was the one who was the last one to get anywhere because I dilly-dallied those growing up years. I'm still the last one sometimes, but I claim it's not for dilly-dallying. I have to talk to everybody wherever we are until the last person is out the door and all the cars are gone
About dilly-dallying, I think that helped me in coaching because one thing I did not allow was dilly-dallying to get down to the gym to get practice started or dilly-dallying on a drill. Your weaknesses do sometimes become your strengths. That's another front-porch talk for us. But the point is that people at home still see you as the boy you were, and I'm okay with that. I like it. You don't have to put on any airs.
And here's the good part: They care about you, you and your family, they don't care so much about whether you're the president or not ... So, there's a real good side to going home, to that "prophet in his own country."
But for Jesus – while there may have been plenty of 'hey, good to see you, my, you've grown into quite a man' when he went home, the trip home is characterized by the fact that he was too close for them to accept Him. Mr. Maclaren wrote, "It is possible to live too near a man to see him." So true. Even though they recognize His wisdom and mighty words, v. 2, and are 'astonished' by them, that awe is neutralized by their acquaintance with Him in His former life.
For the Master, those are the drawbacks to going home. But, note, it is more than a drawback. Mark records that Jesus 'CANNOT' do any mighty works there, v. 5. Pause at that thought a moment -- Jesus 'cannot'! ... We'll come back to that, but think on it awhile, until we see you next week, here on the ‘front porch.’
We left off with the surprising idea that at home in Nazareth that Jesus ‘cannot’ do any great works. In fact, Jesus ‘marvels’ at the unbelief in those from his own country. We understand better the disbelief with the hierarchal religious men of Jerusalem; but we expect more faith in Galilee, in the rural areas of our Lord’s upbringing. And, as part of the manhood in the Lord’s nature, the Lord marvels at it. He Himself is surprised at it.
Note that only twice does the Lord marvel – once by the centurion’s faith, a Roman soldier – and then here in his own hometown people. He marvels once for a man’s faith, in a place where we would least expect faith, and again at men’s lack thereof, in a place where they have the greatest opportunity.
We learn something here: Faith is not dependent on opportunity but, rather on the “bent of the will and the sense of need,” so says Maclaren. Sometimes the wild grapes bear clusters more precious than those that are tended to on the vine. So, Christ’s miracles are ineffectual in a place where things are the darkest; and where men have the propensity for faith, shall we say, then faith is the strongest.
I’ve learned something else about this gospel of Mark. While we are lingering for a time on just a few verses here in the sixth chapter of Mark, we can expect fully to see these principles played out over and over, all the way to the Lord’s resurrection and ascension – and, further, all the way to the gospel being preached in the early years of the church. Where men have the greatest opportunity, often faith is the most lacking. And then the opposite is true, too. No wonder, when you think about it, the Lord ‘marvels’ at that.
We learn even more about the way of life and faith as we dig a little deeper. Do you know how you grow much fonder of people who seem, for whatever reason, to like you? This is an amazing concept. You can be the same person, treat the people around you no different, and yet one person will think you hung the moon almost, as we say, and the next person can be as indifferent to you as a husband to his wife’s Hallmark show. You understand.
The writer says, “We all know how hearts expand in the warm atmosphere of affection and sympathy, and shut themselves up like tender flowerets when the cold east wind blows.” And, an orator, standing before his crowd, can feel the sympathy and connection with his audience and, thus, is buoyed to higher flights in his great message; while the indifferent audience can render him flat and unemotional. The marvel is that sometimes the same speaker and the same sermon can have one effect on one side of a room and the opposite on the other.
The answer to the dilemma certainly lies not with the orator but lies with the hearer. And isn’t that the Lord’s message all through these early chapters of Mark. To him who digs down and gives a generous measure of desire and emotion the Lord will measure out the more. And to him who will dig down very little and offer such a small measure of themselves to the great message of the gospel, to him the Lord offers little – Mark 4:24-25.
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