Day 288—We are in the TENTH month of Bible reading and studying the New Testament Gospels.

    Day 288 – Mark 4 – 5 (Parables, storm calmed, healings)

These chapters in Mark review what we have already read but with his own slant. The first is the parable of the Sower and Seeds. Then, when Jesus was alone with His disciples, He explained the meaning. “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables.”

(When someone persists in unbelief, giving them more “light” only increases their guilt.) Nothing is hidden or secret to the one who genuinely desires to understand. “Pay attention to what you hear;  with the measure you use (to hear/understand), it will be measured to you, and still more will be added. 

When the Word is scattered around, like seeds on the ground, it sprouts and grows.  We don’t know how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, the ear, and then the full grain.  1 Peter 1:23 calls the Word of God that enters a person’s heart “the imperishable seed.” God gives life to seeds and the Word in a person, bringing them to full fruit. It’s a mystery, but Praise God.

After teaching the crowds and His disciples about the “imperishable” seed all day, evening came. Jesus decided to leave the crowd, get into a boat, and cross to the other side of Galilee.  While out on the water, a great windstorm arose, and the waves broke INTO the boat, and it began to fill with water.

Jesus was sleeping in the back of the boat. Panicked, they shook him awake, saying, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing?” Jesus awoke, rebuked the wind, and told the sea to “be still.”  And, of course, the creation immediately obeyed its Creator.  Jesus then looked at His amazed disciples and smiled at them. As if to little children, he asked them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”  The disciples stared at him, mouths agape with fear.  WHO IS THIS, that even the wind and sea obey Him?

,

On the other side, Jesus delivers the man with 2,000 demons, sending the evil creatures into pigs. The man who formerly roamed the graveyard and broke any chain that bound him is now sane and asks to follow Jesus.  Jesus, instead, tells him to go back into his town and become a witness of his salvation.

Back on the west side of the sea, Jesus heals the woman with the issue of blood and raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead.