Mark 9 060423

Today we will be finishing off the 9th Chapter of the Gospel of Mark. Afterwards we will be partaking of communion together as a family.

In our text we are going to see the disciples, once again, arguing amongst themselves. This time, they are arguing about who is the greatest amongst them. They still had a misunderstanding of what the Messiah had come to do, so they were trying to determine who would get the best positions in Jesus' political cabinet..

We are going to see Jesus teaching them that their understanding of "greatest" was completely opposite of the Heavenly Kingdom view of "greatest". The disciples thought it meant to be served and to wield great power and influence. Jesus would blow their minds by telling them that if they wanted to be first, they needed to be last and servant of all.

Then we are going to see some territorial jealousy from the disciples. They wanted to stop someone from casting out demons in Jesus' name because the one doing it was not part of the 12. Jesus said if they are not against us, they are for us so let them continue to cast out demons.

Then we are going to get into some text that has caused many people to do some pretty bad harm to themselves when it comes to sin. Cutting off arms, plucking out eyes and even worse. We are going to unpack the heart of this text and we will clearly see that Jesus was not calling us to dismember ourselves to keep from sinning.