Fr. Mike highlights the reality of sin and our capacity to choose hell as we read about Jesus' teachings on temptations, divorce, and wealth. Jesus' teachings can be challenging, but following him is the path to true holiness. Today we read Mark 9-10 and Psalm 29. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of today's reading?
Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is day 158. We have four more days left, including today in our second Messianic checkpoint. We're reading today from the Gospel of St. Mark, chapters 9 and 10. We're also praying Psalm 29.
As always, the Bible translation that I'm reading from is the Revised Standard Version, the Second Catholic Edition. I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a Year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year.
And you can also subscribe to this podcast if the app in which you listen to this podcast allows you to subscribe. You can. You're invited to. You're also invited to share it and like it and rate it and all those things if you like. And if you don't, that's okay. No big deal. Because you are on day 158. Incredible. We're reading from Mark chapter nine and chapter 10 and praying Psalm 29.
The gospel of St. Mark chapter nine. And Jesus said to them, truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power. The transfiguration.
Chapter 2: What does the transfiguration signify?
and after six days jesus took with him peter and james and john and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves and he was transfigured before them and his garments became glistening intensely white as no fuller on earth could bleach them and there appeared to them elijah with moses And they were talking to Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus, Master, it is well that we are here.
Let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah. For he did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid. And a cloud overshadowed them. And a voice came out of the cloud. This is my beloved son. Listen to him. And suddenly, looking around, they saw no longer anyone with them but Jesus only. The coming of Elijah.
And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen until the son of man should have risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what the rising from the dead meant. And they asked him, why did the scribes say that first Elijah must come? And he said to them, Elijah does come first to restore all things.
And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him. the healing of a boy with a mute spirit. And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd about them and scribes arguing with them.
And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. And he asked them, what are you discussing with them? And one of the crowd answered him, teacher, I brought my son to you for he has a mute spirit and wherever it seizes him, it dashes him down and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.
And I asked your disciples to cast it out and they were not able. and he answered them o faithless generation how long am i to be with you how long am i to bear with you bring him to me and they brought the boy to him and when the spirit saw him immediately it convulsed the boy and he fell on the ground and rolled about foaming at the mouth And Jesus asked his father, How long has he had this?
And he said, From childhood. And it has often cast him into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us. And Jesus said to him, If you can, all things are possible to him who believes. Immediately, the father of the child cried out and said, I believe. Help my unbelief.
And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again. And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out. And the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.
And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could we not cast it out? And he said to them, This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting. Jesus again foretells his death and resurrection.
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Chapter 3: How does Jesus heal the boy with a mute spirit?
And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me. Another exorcist. John said to him, Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him because he was not following us. But Jesus said, Do not forbid him.
For no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak ill of me. For he that is not against us is for us. For truly I say to you, whoever gives a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose his reward. temptations to sin.
Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go to hell to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off.
It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. For everyone will be salted with fire.
Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. Chapter 10, teachings about divorce. And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as his custom was, he taught them.
And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? He answered them, what did Moses command you? They said, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to put her away. But Jesus said to them, for your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. And in the house, the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.
And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Jesus blesses the children. And they were bringing children to him, that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, Let the children come to me, do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.
Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them. the rich man. And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt down before him and asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good?
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Chapter 4: What are Jesus' teachings on divorce?
And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said, Call him. And they called the blind man, saying to him, Take heart, rise, he is calling you.
And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, What do you want me to do for you? And the blind man said to him, Master, let me receive my sight. And Jesus said to him, Go your way. Your faith has made you well.
And immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way. Psalm 29, the voice of God in a great storm, a Psalm of David.
Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of God, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name. Worship the Lord in holy attire. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters. The God of glory thunders. The Lord upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars.
The Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf and Syrian like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the oaks to whirl and strips the forests bare. And in his temple all cry glory. The Lord sits enthroned over the flood.
The Lord sits enthroned as king forever. May the Lord give strength to his people.
May the Lord bless his people with peace.
Father in heaven, we give you praise and we bless you and you bless us and you give us, you keep giving to us. And so we give you praise and we know that you are the one who's blessed. Lord God, in the gospel, you often ask, what is it you wish for? What is it that you want?
And if I don't know what I want, if I don't know what it is that I wish for, if I don't know what is the deep desire of my heart, then I don't know how to answer this question.
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Chapter 5: How does Jesus address wealth and eternal life?
And so, Lord God, before I even can ask, before I can even ask what I wish for, I ask that you please give us all a spirit of clarity, a spirit of actually knowing what it is that our heart longs for, knowing what it is that we really truly desire. Because our hearts are a cloud of misjudgment. Our hearts are clouded by a number of contradictory desires.
And so, Lord God, I don't even know what my heart wants half the time. And so I ask that you please, before I can give you any answer of what it is that you want me to do for you, I need to know what it is. I need to receive a pure heart from you, a pure heart that can see not just other people well, but also see what it is that is in the depth of my heart.
God, I want to approach you always with clarity. I want to approach you always with confidence and with courage. And so I ask that you please send into my heart, into the hearts of all those who are praying with me now, that spirit of clarity, of confidence, and of courage. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Okay, gosh, oh brother, here we go. So it's so incredible. I mean, there's so many things that I wanna highlight, as I'll say, every single time we get to the gospels, because there's just, I mean, again, Mark is action-packed. Every seven verses, he's onto a different story.
Sometimes it's just one verse, and he's onto a different section where he's talking about, and Jesus then did the next thing here. So one of the things we're going to highlight is just the fact that here is Jesus beginning of chapter nine in the transfiguration. Now we're going to talk more about this when we get to the gospel of St. Matthew, because St.
Matthew gives us a couple more details when it comes to what they talked about. Same with Luke. They talk about a couple of different interesting points. For example, here's Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah represent the law. Moses represents the law. And Elijah represents the prophets. And here's the old covenant.
And here is Jesus conversing with them as not just their equal, but when the father's voice speaks out over Jesus, it's very clear that Jesus is not merely the equal of Moses and Elijah. He transcends Moses and Elijah. He is greater than Moses and Elijah because that voice coming from the cloud, remember that Shekinah glory cloud? That voice that says, this is my beloved son. Listen to him.
This is the gosh, this is such a powerful witness because once again, Jesus is going to claim some things about himself that are massively dramatic and that are, that are massively. For example, when we finished chapter eight, we talked about yesterday.
Jesus saying, whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. Jesus is basically saying something about himself that he's like, I'm not just another teacher. I'm not just another Moses or Elijah, even though those were incredible teachers.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of humility and servitude?
And this is remarkable because this debate over who the greatest is comes immediately. Literally comes one verse after Jesus says, the son of man will be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him. And when he is killed after three days, he will rise. The very next verse, verse 33 of chapter nine says, Jesus asks them, what were you discussing?
And they were silent from the way they had discussed who was the greatest. And you can imagine that Jesus is thinking, are you kidding me? This is, you're the people that I've just invested the last three years of my life to mentor and to disciple and to be my witnesses to the world. But he doesn't say that. In fact, he takes the opportunity to teach them.
If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. And he goes on to talk about the role of scandal. And that is so massively important. If any one of you were to cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
I remember one of my favorite classes in moral theology and seminary, our professor, Dr. Thompson, He was a layman, and at one point we were talking about this. We were talking about the responsibility of priests not only to give witness to the Lord with their teaching, give witness to truth with their teaching, but also to give witness to the Lord with their lives.
And he said, gentlemen, he says, if... If any of you want to teach something that's contrary to Jesus, contrary to the church, I have one word for you. And that word is millstones. And he said, gentlemen, if you're not willing to be as holy as you possibly can be with God's grace and give a witness to Jesus and his holiness by your holy lives, I have one word for you, millstones.
And it was just this dramatic, like very, very clear kind of getting called out, called higher by this incredible husband and father and teacher of Jesus.
god's word and just so so good at the seminary it was remarkable and i've never forgotten that you know the responsibility teachers have and in my case the responsibility priests have to not only teach accurately teach the truth but also to as best we can in my brokenness to live the truth with god's grace moving on jesus you know he says if your hand causes you to sin cut it off better for you to enter life maimed with them with two hands to go to hell
Two things. One is, you know, Jesus talks more about the reality of hell than almost anyone. Actually, sorry, let me rephrase that. Jesus talks more about the reality of hell than anyone else in the Bible. That there's no one even close who talks about the reality of hell more than Jesus Christ.
And so we have to, again, remember this whole project, 365 days of reading the Bible, listening to God's word is to give ourselves a biblical worldview and Jesus teaching so powerfully and teaching so clearly about on the reality that it is possible for us to choose hell. It is possible for us to say, I'd rather not have heaven, and I actually want eternity without God.
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Chapter 7: How does Bartimaeus demonstrate faith?
And then it comes to whatever the content on their laptop, the content on their smartphone, whatever that is, just trips them up regularly. And here's Jesus's words. It says, yeah, if your smartphone is causing you to sin, get a dumb phone. If your laptop caused you to sin, get rid of it. And we can think that's too extreme.
You know, Jesus used extreme languages like if your hand is causing, your foot causing, your eye causing you to sin. What he's telling us is that it is far, far better to have to struggle, limp through life without a smartphone, to limp through life without a personal computer. then it would be to not go to heaven than to actually lose heaven because of our own sins.
It's a hard teaching, but Jesus has some hard teachings, both about relationships and about wealth. And so just to highlight these two things, Jesus in chapter 10, some Pharisees asked him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Now, you know, this question comes out of nowhere in Mark's gospel and in Matthew's gospel as well, where there's no context immediately for it.
Like, why are you asking Jesus about this? Because it's clear that in the Old Testament, Moses permitted couples to offer one another or husbands to offer their wives a bill of divorce. Why are they asking him about it? He must have been teaching about the indissolubility of marriage, so much so that Jesus didn't Doubles down. He says, well, you know, what did Moses command you?
Moses allowed Rand to write a certificate of divorce to put her away. And Jesus said this, these very powerful words. He also repeats in Matthew's gospel. He says, for the hardness of your heart, he wrote this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God created the male and female and in Matthew's gospel says, but from the beginning, it was not so. And so one of the things that St.
John Paul II did, he's a Pope, a couple of Popes ago, John Paul II, he begins his teaching called the theology of the body with these words, where Jesus points back to the beginning and says, in the beginning, it wasn't like this. Moses allowed you to divorce because you're broken because you have a hard heart because of the fact that yes, you're good. We're here in this world.
We're created good, but we're broken. We live in a world that's holy, but it's fallen. And so he says, yeah, for the hardness of your hearts, Moses allowed for divorce. But from the beginning, it was not so. What John Paul II did is he goes back and says, what did it look like in the beginning? What were relationships like in the beginning before the fall?
And we recognize that those relationships were radically different. And Jesus has come to restore that. So as Christians, Jesus makes it incredibly clear. that there is no room, no room for divorce and remarriage at all. In fact, he doesn't give any qualification. Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. Whoever divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.
Again, these are hard teachings and they get summed up really clearly in why Jesus can say this in the next couple of teachings. We have the rich man who comes up to Jesus and says, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says this public puzzling words. He says, why do you call me good? No one is good, but God alone. Now he's not saying, Hey dude, I'm not God.
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Chapter 8: What is the essence of Psalm 29?
I'm not really, that's not me. Why are you calling me good? No, he's actually inviting this man to reflect more deeply on what he's about to say. He's why do you call me good? No one's good, but God alone. Hey, make the connection. I am good and I am God. Remember, Jesus has been demonstrating ever since chapter two that he truly is the Lord of heaven and earth, that he truly is God himself.
And so he's inviting this man to reflect more deeply upon him because in just a second, what he's going to say is, you lack one thing. Go sell what you have, give to the poor, and you'll have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. Come follow me then. Your salvation will be dependent on whether or not you follow me. Who can make a claim like that except for God alone?
I mean, honestly, there's no teacher. There's no rabbi. There's no professor. There's no priest. There's no one who can make the claim that say your eternal salvation.
is based off of whether or not you follow me that's why jesus the beginning of this says why do you call me good there is no one good but god alone he's inviting the man to reflect more deeply upon his personal identity as actually god and this is why i said the beginning of chapter 10 when the teaching of divorce in this further chapter 10 i'm teaching on wealth where jesus says
But my children, how hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And you might have heard it said that, you know, in Jerusalem, there was this entryway called the needle.
And if it was only big enough for a camel to be unburdened, to crawl through on its knees, that in order for this camel to get through this gateway, you'd have to unsaddle it, essentially take all the material stuff off of it, and then it could go through. Maybe, maybe not. There's not really a ton of evidence for that.
But what the upshot really is, is here's a camel, which is the largest animal known to the people in the Middle East. I mean, they might have heard of elephants, but they're not familiar with them. They don't see them often. Taking the largest animal, camel, smallest aperture, the eye of a needle, and say, you can't get those things through. That's impossible. Jesus can say this. Why?
Because of who he is. When it comes for the teachings on male and female, when it comes to the teaching on divorce and remarriage, when it comes to the teaching on choose me in heaven or don't choose me and you're choosing hell, and here when it comes to the teaching on wealth, Jesus is highlighting so powerfully who he really is. He's highlighting the fact that he is who he says he is.
He is God himself. And to say yes to him is to say yes to God. And to say no to him is to say no to God. Oh man, there's so much depth in all these teachings. And I know that some of these teachings, maybe all of them challenge us. Because I know, hey, as we're listening to this, as we're listening to God's word, we all have a story, right? We all have history.
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