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| The first day of spring! - From last year's flowers - near Mt. Celo Church in the NC Blue Ridge Mountains |
Go and Possess / Go and Tell / Go and Preach - The OT and NT readings for today give commands that are similar, salient, and that complement each other at two very pivotal points in human history. In Deuteronomy 1 and 2 Moses continues the recounting of the Exodus of the Israelites, their wilderness journey, and its triumphs and tragedies. The 40 years are at an end, God's word that none of the people of that generation would enter the Promised Land except for Joshua and Caleb has been fulfilled. All in that generation have died. Moses has been told he will soon "be gathered" to His people and not allowed to enter the Promised Land - also as God had said. While God GIVES the land to the people, they have work to do. Over and over they are told to GO, POSSESS it. This means more struggles and battles, but with the promise of God's help and victory. God places boundaries in this command of possession as well. There are people God says not to harass, not to meddle with, not to dispossess - other people whom God blessed with land. But this will be the Promised Land - the land God has preserved for His chosen people. In the NT in Mark 16, at the greatest moment in history (until the Second Coming), Christ - the promised Messiah has come, preached the gospel, been rejected, was crucified, and now has risen from the dead. Of course, the Messiah's lineage is from the remnant of God's chosen people whom God has saved through the Exodus. We will watch this miraculous, divine saving of a remnant of this people throughout our OT readings - for this purpose which we now read in the NT. God has purposed and planned this from the foundation of the world, once again intervening to save His elect. Christ's earthly mission is complete, and now we, as believers, are commissioned - GO, TELL / GO, PREACH "the gospel to every creature (Mark 16: 5.15) For other Great Commission verses: Matthew 28:18-20, Luke 24:46-47, Matthew 28:19, Matthew 9:37-38 , Isaiah 6:8 , Acts 1:8) Jesus says in John 20:21: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”
My Lessons/Applications: We are commissioned to possess the world with His gospel. Salvation - the consequence of our work - belongs only to Him.
Yet For All That You Do Not Believe - (Deut. 1:32 and Mark 16:14) in the OT and the NT readings we are told this. Regardless of the miracles that God did in Egypt, in the Exodus, in the wilderness wanderings - still the people did not believe and continually reverted back to sin. Regardless of all Jesus said, of all His miracles, of all His prophecies that were fulfilled - still the disciples did not believe - until His ascension and their receiving of His Holy Spirit.
My Lessons/Application: Still we do not believe at times or become skeptical. "Yet for all that" - we, too, still revert back to sin. Please read Hebrews 3 regarding the faithfulness of the Son and of Moses and our call to follow in that faithfulness and reject unbelief - the root of all sin.
A Quandary - Mark 16: 9-20 - One side of the debate says that Eusebius, the 4th C. historian and research show that verses 9 - 20 were a later addition to the gospel of Mark, that he oldest manuscript does not have these verses. Supposedly a recent discovery of an even older manuscript has been found, but it seems they are still trying to verify authenticity. They argue that drinking poison and handling snakes are not corroborated by other Scripture except for the Acts 28:3-6 account of Paul gathering sticks and being bitten by a snake and living, and possibly Luke 10:19. The ending of Mark at verse 8 has also puzzled gospel scholars. Many believe that Nero's persecution may have caused Mark to abandon his work, or that perhaps the ending was lost. This is a greatly debated chapter.
Oswald Chambers on Mark 16:12: "After that He appeared in another form unto two of them."
"Jesus must appear to your friend as well as to you; no one can see Jesus with your eyes. Severance takes place where one and not the other has seen Jesus. You cannot bring your friend unless God brings him. Have you seen Jesus? Then you will want others to see Him too. 'And they went and told it unto the residue, neither believed they them.' You must tell, although they do not believe."
Regarding Mark 16:9-20: the brief footnotes in some Bible translations do not give an adequate picture of the evidence. The two earliest manuscripts of Mark are from the 300's, and in them the text of Mark stops at 16:8. But each one has unusual features at the end of Mark that indicate that the copyists were aware of verses 9-20. All other undamaged Greek manuscripts of Mark 16 (over 1,500), including the early uncials A, C, and D, contain at least part of the passage. Also, utilizations of Mark 16:9-20 are embedded in patristic writings from the 100's, such as Irenaeus' "Against Heresies," Book 3, in which he specifically quoted Mark 16:19.
ReplyDeleteAlso, regarding Eusebius: although he did not include Mark 16:9-20 in his cross-reference system for the Gospel, he did not firmly reject the passage in his composition "Ad Marinum." What he said is that someone, facing the harmonization-difficulty between Matthew 28:1 and Mark 16:9, might resolve the perceived discrepancy by rejecting Mk. 16:9-20 on the grounds that the passage is not in most of the manuscripts, or is not in the accurate manuscripts, or is in some copies but not in all of them. But he framed that as something that someone might say. Then Eusebius recommended to Marinus (whose text obviously included Mk. 16:9-20) that punctuation be added in 16:9 to resolve the problem. (Eusebius' full statement is hardly ever presented by commentators; many of them simply repeat Bruce Metzger's somewhat vague description of what Eusebius wrote. The Greek text and an English translation of "Ad Marinum" can be found, however, in the book "Eusebius of Caesarea - Gospel Problems and Solutions.")
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
Minister, Curtisville Christian Church
Indiana