In essence the Lord says that they are taking His Name in
vain, they don't know Him but they speak of Him as though they do. His accusation against them is that their
hearts are divided, they will run after idols and also speak of Him, and His
glory will not be shared with another.
He speaks of doing a new thing like has never been seen before and says
that in the past He has always told them what He was doing prior to doing it so
that they would know that it was no coincidence and that His works were not
attributable to anything else. Are we
listening to Him to know what He intends to do?
You know it's Mark's Gospel when you see the word
immediately so many times in such a short passage. The flow of blood immediately dried up, Jesus
immediately turned to the crowd, the little girl immediately got up and the
witnesses were immediately overcome with amazement. It seems truly amazing that He was able to
heal the woman without even knowing who was healed. She has bet everything on this one chance,
she has suffered under medical treatment for so long and now she takes the
chance of being among people and touching Him, even though she would certainly
have committed a grievous sin by doing so.
She was forbidden to have contact with anyone because of her infirmity
because she made them unfit for the temple according to the Law. Surely this was known in this area, but she
took her chance and received wholeness.
Her faith was incredible. The
ruler is desperate for his daughter and even though Jesus has just been in the
Decapolis among the tombs and pigs and has now had contact with this woman,
none of that matters, only his daughter, and he is rewarded. I wonder what became of Jairus.
Paul offers a very brief greeting to the church at
Galatia. He has too much business to do
to spend time on pleasantries. He begins
very abruptly, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who
called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel…" The matter is far too important to beat
around the bush. He essentially wants to
know what has gotten into them that they are willing to abandon the
Gospel. They need to understand that the
Gospel he has preached to them is not something he cooked up on his own, this
was given him directly by God and it is of the utmost importance that they get
it right and not distort it in any shape, form or fashion. The Gospel matters and we should have Paul's
attitude towards truth, we should challenge strongly any attempt to distort it at
all. God has spoken, we have no right to
change what He has said and done.
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