Mark 6

Division 2. (Mark 6:1-56; Mark 7:1-37; Mark 8:1-38; Mark 9:1-50; Mark 10:1-52.)The Service of a Rejected Master. In the face of rejection and active opposition; the Lord now sends out His disciples into the world as a field of labor. They take their character of necessity from Him; and as we have in Him the perfect Servant, so here the servant-character is what is seen in them. This, evidently, is what the second part of Mark takes up and dwells upon; the Lord being seen as the Leader in “this, as in the Christian path all through. It gives us first of all the unity of this opposition; from the lowest to the highest, the truth awakening by its challenge of all the corruption in the world the united energies of the world against it. In the next place we see the religions opposition, the legal traditionalism of the day (and traditionalism is always legal) ignorant of man’s true need, and therefore of the grace which alone can meet it, hostile really to Moses and to Christ alike. We have then the confession of Christ called for, with the cross as the present result, but the glory the final one.

The moral principles involved in the path are then insisted on; essentially the creature put in his right place, and so God having His. While, finally, we have the results when; the creature being thus with God, the victory of God is seen over all that has marred and distorted in it the reflection of Himself.

Mark 6:1-56

Subdivision 1. (Mark 6:1-56.)The unity of opposition and supremacy of divine grace. With the unity of opposition; the supremacy of divine grace is seen: for, after all, God cannot be thwarted of His purpose of blessing, though His method of victory may be by a cross. Divine fullness pours itself out even in a wilderness, and though with contrary wind upon a stormy sea, Christ walks upon it, coming to them and the wind ceases; and on the farther shore all evil yields to Him and passes away.

1. (1) But first we see Him rejected by His own, to whom He comes with power which they needs must own, yet which though manifest in grace cannot win reception for Him. The pride of the natural heart is always the most stubborn opposer of the salvation of God, and cannot even discern the glory of that self-humiliation in Him who has drawn nigh to them. They stumble over the Stumbling-stone. Yet in this decisive rejection of God’s message, there is nothing exceptional, except in the greatness of the Messenger. The Lord speaks of it, as only the exemplification of a common rule, that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country and among his own kindred. Human nature is, alas, consistent enough in evil to warrant such general statements: for “as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.” In the face of this, as Mark above all emphasizes, the Servant of divine love, able to do little because of an unbelief at which He marveled, patiently did this - “laid His hands on a few infirm persons and healed them” - and seeking yet the way to their hearts, “went round about their villages, teaching.” How the perfect manhood of the Lord comes out, and is meant to come out, in this account. The divine glory that is His must not obscure the reality of that which appeals so powerfully to us in the tender human fashion in which the Son of God has come down to minister to men. (2) He sends out now also the twelve, in extension of His personal testimony; two and two, the number of competent witness, and doubtless for mutual help. Mark emphasizes here as elsewhere the power over unclean spirits which is given them, over the dark and dreadful enemy of men; out of whose clutch they have to be rescued. They are sent forth in such a way as shall manifest in all this their absolute dependence upon Himself, - without provision either of food or money. They are to be shod with sandals, not the more luxurious “shoes;” and not to wear two coats. They are to be content also with what accommodation they find in the first house opening its doors to them; while, on the other hand, judgment is denounced on every place that will not receive nor hearken to a testimony accredited by divine power. With their message, and with this sanction put upon it, they accordingly go forth.
2. We are taken back now to see the death of the Lord’s forerunner, in which His own is not obscurely intimated. Herod, indeed, we are told, alarmed by his guilty conscience, when he hears of the miracles wrought by Jesus, supposes him to be the Baptist, risen from the dead. Thereupon the awful story of lust and hate is given us with very little variation from what we have had in Matthew. It completes the rejection which Nazareth has shown us already, wedding the lusts of the flesh in unholy union with the pride of life. It binds together the world and its rulers in opposition to the throne of heaven; and its claims and grace alike. This is the world in which nevertheless God is to be glorified as nowhere else, and to reap a spiritual harvest which shall show forth the exceeding riches of His grace to the principalities and powers in heavenly places.
3. The Lord retires into the wilderness, the type of the world in the condition to which sin has reduced it, in the Old Testament as well as in the New. Here disciples, hands minister to the need of the multitude out of their own provision multiplying through His blessing on it. Five loaves and two fishes feed, and more than feed, five thousand men. The application is of the easiest, and made by Christians generally; and we have been through it in Matthew already: the fullness of its blessed meaning is as little to be exhausted, as the loaves were at the time here brought before us. It is one of those scenes, exceptional in the evangelic history, to which its four writers all contribute, while in John the Lord Himself develops from it His teaching as to the bread of life.
4. The passage across the sea of Galilee is also connected with the ministry in the wilderness in three of the Gospels, Luke alone omitting it. In each of these the Lord’s walking upon the water is recited, and His coming to the disciples toiling in the contrary wind. The walk of Peter on the water to meet the Lord, characteristic as we have seen it to be in Matthew, is omitted in the other accounts; the numerical change being in harmony with this. The general significance of what is here before us cannot be mistaken. The ascent of Jesus into the mount to pray, leaving His disciples alone upon the sea until His coming again; shows us unmistakably the limits of the trial-time of faith, in which is experienced the opposition of the “course of this world.” No doubt, apart from the great and final interference of the Lord on behalf of His people, there are abundance of lesser fulfillments in which He comes in and ends for a time the storm; and some too in which we do not discern for a time the familiar form, and are afraid; until the Voice says, “It is I;” and we wonder we could have failed for a moment to know it; and the storm for the time is over. And yet, how often do we find, when a new trial comes, that we are scarcely more prepared than before to recognize the One who comes afresh with it; and when He makes Himself known it is scarcely less a wonder.
5. But at last the sea is passed, as when He joins us in the end it will be, and then the blessing comes, even for the earth, when it shall “know,” like the men of Gennesaret, the One upon whom all blessing depends, and the blight upon the whole frame of things shall pass, with the spiritual sickness it attends and indicates.