Old Jerry

Paul knew the law and had persecuted those who were following Jesus. He wanted to share it with the church so that they would know that they could be forgiven for their sins also. By sharing this the church could know that Paul was being open and that they could follow him.

The problem with false doctrine in the Ephesus Church was it was leading the people astray. They were arguing about things that had nothing to do about Jesus and the lessons that he taught. If there is a doctrinal controversy in the Church there is usually a person that is heading up the false doctrine and will drive a wedge in and get his followers to split the church. People will see that there is a controversy and will not want to get involved is the mess so they won’t join the church. All talk will be about the controversy and they won’t be about to teach us about Jesus.

The “old” that the householder has that he brings out of his treasure box is the Old Testament. The new that he brings out is the New Testament. We must be like Paul and try to be everything to everybody that will bring them to the Kingdom of God.

People won’t listen to us if we don’t have a sharp and tasty witness. They will hear and see what we are doing and hopefully they will want to do the same. A bland witness to Jesus is one that looks like what the rest of the world is doing. We stay salty by reading and practicing what we have learned from the bible. I think that people and tempted to hide their “light” because they are trying to fit into the world. Jesus says we are to shine our light on the world.

I live in the southern part of the country and seems to me that the people here are acceptable to the gospel. I was a sower when I was leading the children ministry and I was a reaper when I went on mission trips. I think that the shortage of reapers is due to the fact that we don’t want to standout because the world does not like evangelist. I am always willing to be a reaper with Jesus’ help.

Jesus is heartbroken over the lost sheep because God had selected them to bring the word into the world. Now they are lost can’t see what God wanted them to do. Some of the mission fields that I have been on are down in Mexico. I know we have a great mission field here in the U. S. but my heart has been in Mexico.

Jesus is saying that He would like us to be merciful to those that don’t know the Lord more than he desires sacrifices. The Pharisees wanted to ignore the sinners. They had no compassion on them and just wanted them to go away. Jesus came to save the sinners. The role of a spiritual doctor is bringing all that will listen to the Lord.

Jesus was contrasting a Jewish priest and Levite because he was talking to a person of the law that wanted to embarrass Jesus and show that he knew more than Jesus. The Jewish priest and the Levite were high on the Jewish list. According to Jesus, anybody that we can help we are to help them because they are our neighbor.

Jesus wanted them to know that His return would be delayed and that He expected them to be advancing His kingdom. God has given us all talents and we are expected to use them to the best of our ability. I think the reason some of the people bury their talents is that they have been disappointed in the outcome of their efforts. I think that the reward for faithfulness is salvation. But there might be more than that if we are true to out talents. God has given those people great gifts and expects them to bring more people to Him.

Jesus was acting out the parable if being humble when He washed the disciples’ feet. The task of washing feet is one of the most menial tasks that there was at that time. The sense that a parable of cleansing was just a way of showing us, that if we are trying to please God all the time, we will sometimes stumble and will need to ask for forgiveness. The parable is also showing us we need to be humble and help our fellow man.

The similarity between Jesus’ Parables of the Friend at Midnight and the Unjust Judge is the persistence of the person making the request. This persistence looks like us going to God and asking Him for something in Jesus’ name and continue to ask for it until we get an answer. Persistence in prayer develops us to always turn to God with our problems.

Jesus was telling us that we are to go the Father in all circumstance. He is not going to give you something that will harm you. He is telling us even though we are evil we still give good things to our children and He us much greater than us and will provide us with thing that will not harm us.

God has always provided for the birds and the lilies and they do not sow or harvest and He is telling us that we are more important than those birds therefore He will take care of us. The future holds thing that we do not know about therefore we are not to worry about that either. We need to resolve today’s problems. We are to be setting our hearts on the Kingdom of God.

I am not in the position now because I am retired but making a decision of working on a day of worship is serving money and not God. A way of detecting these temptations in our hearts is to meditate on making the decision. I think that Jesus told his disciples the Parable of the Two Masters was to inform them that they had a decision to make.

Being wealthy is not a sin for Christians. It all depends on how we got that wealth. The actual sin was that man plans did not including God in what he was going to do with that abundant harvest. We can usually see greed in people by their attitude.

The dishonest steward is a positive example to disciples because it is teaching us that we need to be careful with what God has given us. We can “lay up treasures in heaven” by donating to the poor and taking care of those who can’t take care of themselves. If we take care of the small things in world then God can trust us with a much greater thing when we get to heaven. Usually those who are promoted beyond their spiritual growth will fail.

Jesus is teaching us that a false prophet can be spotted if we just look out for them. That is comparing what they are saying to what the Gospel is saying. They can split up a church or they can turn us against the pastor and lead us astray. Flawed Christian leaders can be corrected where a false prophet is trying to lead the church astray.

I think the metaphor means that we should be studying the attributes of Jesus and try to emulate him. We should get to know him the best that we can. When we are doing that, we are eating his flesh and drinking his blood. I think that nibbling the Bread of Life rather than actually making a meal of it means we aren’t taking Jesus seriously and only going to Him when we are in trouble. I think that Jesus used this offensive analogy because he wanted his true followers to stick with him. All the passer byes left.

To abide means that we think of what Jesus would do in this kind of situation. We are always wanting to be pleasing to Jesus. We need to keep our heads in the bible. But when Jesus says “Apart from me you can do nothing” He is telling us that we will not be able to evangelize without him and bring Him some more fruit.

The skillful pruning increases the fruitfulness of the grapevine by cutting off that branches that are not producing. This makes it so that those that are producing will produce more. We are pruned when we suffer. This makes us more sensitive to what the Lord wants to do. John 8:31-32 tells us if we know the truth it will set us free.

It is because we think we are good at hiding our hypocrisy but we really aren’t as good as we think, because if we can see it in others then they can see it in us. Hypocrisy is so deadly to spiritual growth because we are saying one thing and doing another. The antidote for hypocrisy is to do the something all the time no matter who is around you.

I think that we push ourselves forward because we think we are more important than we really are. According to verse 11 we will be humbled because we will be asked to move back. I think that humility is so important because we can be taught if we aren’t all into ourselves. We will be able to learn from others.

I think that the characteristic that Mark is trying to convey is one of humility. Maybe the characteristic that the disciples were displaying was one of protecting the Master from becoming burdened with the children. When that disciples were arguing about who was the greatest, they were showing their pride. We need to yield ourselves to Jesus and learn from Him. The children were humble and he wanted his disciples to be humble also.

The Pharisee is so convinced of his righteousness because he is following all the rules that God had given him and the rules that they had made up. His actual sin that is obvious is pride. He probably had others but this one stands out. The tax collector is a sinner and wanted to be forgiven. We are always wanting to show people how much better we are then they therefore we promote ourselves. Jesus probably knew that they would get big headed and he wanted them to know that they should be a humbling person.

There is nothing greater than my relationship with Jesus. It is our deeds that objectively prove that we have put Jesus first on our lives.