Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

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16 April 10

    Dear ones...
    There's a lot more I'd like to have done by Friday.  That's why I envy Robinson Crusoe!  He had almost everything done by Friday!

    Moving right along....    It's now 11:22am already.  I've already been out and about.  But I returned in time to start a fire to heat some stones for cooking our lunch with  our long time friends, David and Fran Wakefield, Wycliffe Bible Translators.  We have a bit in common as they spent a number of years in Melanesia--Papua New Guinea.  The hot stones are now involved in the cooking process...so when noon comes, it'll be ready for the table.  Care to join us?

    Have a great rest of the day.  Jesus is Lord!

        Love, Dad/Ray

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16 April 2010
Passage:  Mark 9:14-32
Focus:  “If you can?” Mark 9:23

            I really like the illustration given us by the children’s color book exercise of connecting dots.  I hope I don’t use it too much.  But I believe that the Heavenly Father (with Jesus) is doing essentially the same thing with His children.  He arranges a bunch of dots before us and expects us to intelligently connect them to form a bigger more comprehensive picture. 

            Let’s take a moment to review some of the lesson notes (dots) presented by Jesus via Mark so far.  Are you paying attention?  We clearly see Jesus as the Master over physical human bodies.  That’s a glaring dot.  Look how many He healed of sickness and disease.  Jesus is proven to be the Master over demons.  Notice how many evil spirits He has kicked out…one even by remote control (when He told the Syrophoenician woman to go home as the evil spirit had been evicted from her daughter).  Jesus is shown to the Master over matter.  Look how many thousands of people He fed with a little bit of nothing.  Jesus is presented as the Master over physical laws.  See Him walking on the sea, a feat that requires the transcendence of gravity and the normal instability of fluid.  Jesus is the Master of the weather and the elements.  At His command the storm died down to the comfort zone.  Jesus is the Master of Spiritual power and anointing for ministry.  See Him giving a special enduement to His disciples for a special ministry tour.  But, perhaps the biggest dot of all, Jesus is presented as the Master over DEATH.  He has already raised the dead girl to life.  The capstone of this wonderful truth is His own resurrection from the dead yet to come.  Wow!  I must say, I really can’t think of any scripture more wonderful and exciting in the entire Bible than what Jesus states and proves in John 11:25:  “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?” 

           Are you paying attention?  Are you connecting dots?  What kind of picture do you see forming?

            Now we won’t be too hard on the father whose son was demonized.  He could not have had this many dots to form a frame of reference.  But against the backdrop of Who Jesus really is, it was technically ignorant for this man to approach Jesus saying, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”  Jesus repeats his phrase in question form.  “If you can?”  It really wouldn’t bother me at all if I learned that Mark had left out one little word of exclamation from Jesus.  I think it would be very appropriate for Jesus to have said at that point something like, “HA!”  Meaning, “Do you realize Who you are talking to?”

            Well, there are lots of other trails of thought that lead out from this passage.  Maybe we’ll let this one suffice for now.  It seems to be an often-repeated theme.  But that’s OK.  Let’s be reminded again exactly Who we are serving and living to please.  He is the Lord and Master of ALL.  And I do mean ALL!  However, just because He has all this power over everything does not mean you’ll never have to face the consequences of sickness, storms, sinking in water, demonic attacks, hunger, or physical death.  But it does show Him as a mighty Savior Who has promised to never leave those who trust Him.  And that’s GOOD NEWS!