Mark - Lesson 4

Lesson 4

Conflict, Mountaintops, Redefinition

Mark 3:1–35

LAST WEEK IN REVIEW

Mark recorded four examples of great and defining works of Jesus during the early Galilean ministry, and how this led to conflicts between Jesus and the religious leaders of His day.  These religionists had so legalized their Judaism that the actual meaning and heart of the Law of Moses had taken a second place to their traditions.  Jesus addressed the heart of our need and the need of our heart to be right with God, not just leaning on external and empty ritual.  In each of the four examples, we also learned of four aspects about Jesus.  The following chart summarizes what we learned:

DAY ONE:  Compassion and Conflict

Please carefully read Mark 3:1-6 and answer the following questions.

1.  As we mentioned last week, today’s passage is the fifth example of the growing conflict between Jesus and the hypocritical religious leaders that opposed Him.  We don’t know specifically when this took place, but what happened, and who else sought to be around Jesus on the Sabbath (v. 1, 2)?

NOTE:  The Greek word for Sabbath here is plural, Sabbaths, so it seems that they were spying on Jesus on a number of occasions, or watching him closely as the niv put it.  This is confirmed when we consider that the verb watching is in the imperfect tense, which means it was a continuous action of spying on Him.[i]

2.  What was Jesus’ reaction to the man’s plight, and how did He address the accusing thoughts of the Pharisees (v. 3, 4)?

NOTES:  Although the niv and nlt have Jesus saying, “stand up front,” the Greek phrase means to stand in the middle of everyone. Nowhere in this story did the man ask to be healed, and certainly he could have been healed the next day.  But rabbinic law (their own tradition) had so twisted the idea of working on the Sabbath that they said healing was only allowed if a life was actually in danger; the real issue wasn’t even compassion for a man who had suffered for years and had no hope, but for Jesus to further demonstrate the validity of His message and claims.[ii]

3.  What was Jesus’ two-fold response to these people?  What happened to the man, and what was the Pharisees’ reaction to this (v. 5, 6)?