Verse by Verse Exploration of the Book of Mark

Chapter 8 Verses 24 - 37

Study Foundational Information:

The Torah is God’s teaching and instruction for our lives.  The disciples of Jesus followed his instructions.  Whatever the Rabbi did is what the disciples did also.  Jesus taught them from the foundation of the Torah or “Old Testament” while he was on this earth with them.  After he ascended and sat at the right hand of the Father, He sent the Holy Spirit to them and inspired them to put His words in writing for future generations.  In order for us to have the whole Gospel we must combine the Torah and the New Testament to rightly divide the Word of the living God.  Some say that the Old Testament is done away with.  Such a teaching limits and minimizes the impact of Gods’ Word and its application as related to the “New Testament”. 

Torah Foundational Scriptures:   Torah, translated: doctrine or teaching; consist of the first 5 books of the Bible written during the time of Moses.  These scriptures set the Old Testament foundation for our studies from the book of Mark. 

Exodus 12:15

 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. 

Exodus 12:19

For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land.

NOTE:  This scripture refers to strangers which can be understood as gentiles.  Even when the Children of Israel left Egypt, they had Egyptians and people from other lands with them.  So to take part in the blessings bestowed upon the Children of Israel, even the gentiles had to comply with God’s instruction.

Leviticus 2:11

No grain offering which you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven, for you shall burn no leaven nor any honey in any offering to the Lord made by fire.

NOTE:  Notice that God told them not to bring him anything with Leaven in it.  He doesn’t want us to bring him a mix of the World and what is His.  We need to come to the Lord in the purity of his instructions and of His Holy Spirit.

Isaiah 42:18

 “Hear, you deaf; And look, you blind, that you may see.

¹⁹    Who is blind but My servant, Or deaf as My messenger whom I send?

    Who is blind as he who is perfect, And blind as the Lord’S servant?

²⁰    Seeing many things, but you do not observe; Opening the ears, but he does not hear.”

Deutoronomy 13:4

You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him.

Psalms 103:13-14

As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him.

¹⁴    For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.

Introduction

In reading and studying the Old Testament foundation, we see that God provided the Children of Israel with instructions for living and conduct.  They were told not to bring him any bread offering with leaven in it as well as to keep it from their homes during a seven day time of consecration.  This time of consecration is what we know today as the Passover. 

With the traditional holiday of Easter approaching, it is important that we know and understand what we are celebrating.  In Leviticus 2:11 in our previous reading, we see that God instructs the people to refrain from offering grain offerings that included leaven.  In the same vein, we are to separate the things of God from the things of this world.  In the example of Easter, people have confused and fused the traditions of Easter with worship to the Lord.  Easter eggs, bunnies and other traditions of this holiday should be kept and separated from the delivery of the Gospel and out of the Church.

Scripture:  Mark 8:1-2

¹In those days, the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said to them, ²“I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. 

Knowing that the people had been with Jesus for a long time, He looked upon them and had compassion for their wellbeing. ^{Psalms 103:13-14}

Scripture:  Mark 8:3-7

³And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar.” ⁴Then His disciples answered Him, “How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?”

 ⁵He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?”  And they said, “Seven.”

 ⁶So He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. And He took the seven loaves and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and they set them before the multitude. ⁷They also had a few small fish; and having blessed them, He said to set them also before them. 

Jesus cares about our needs.  He loves and cares about us…  When you come to Him and follow Him, you will always go away with more than you came with.  You’re going to walk away full.  So if you come to the House of the Lord and leave spiritually empty or don’t leave with more than you came in with, then the enemy has hindered you.

Scripture: Mark 8:8-11

⁸So they ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments. ⁹Now those who had eaten were about four thousand. And He sent them away, ¹⁰immediately got into the boat with His disciples, and came to the region of Dalmanutha. ¹¹Then the Pharisees came out and began to dispute with Him, seeking from Him a sign from heaven, testing Him.

The Pharisees came out to challenge Jesus.  Many hear or see the word Pharisee and attach a negative connotation to the title.  But we must remember that Paul described himself as a Pharisee in the book of ACTS.  Before Paul followed Jesus, he was not only a Pharisee but a persecutor of those who followed Jesus.

WORD WEALTH: The word Pharisees comes from the Hebrew פרושים prushim from פרוש parush, meaning "separated", that is, one who is separated for a life of purity ^[1]. The Pharisees were, depending on the time, a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought among Jews that flourished during the Second Temple Era (536 BC–70 AD). After the destruction of the Second Temple, the Pharisaic sect was re-established as Rabbinic Judaism — which ultimately produced normative, traditional Judaism, the basis for all contemporary forms of Judaism and even the Karaites use the rabbinic canon of the Hebrew Bible.

Now these Pharisees wanted Jesus to show them a sign … He just fed 4,000 (Four Thousand) people with a few fish and loaves of bread, He caused the blind to see and the deaf to hear.  After all of that, what else could He possibly do to convince them of his credentials?

Scripture: Mark 8:12

¹²But He sighed deeply in His spirit, and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Assuredly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation.”

Some people you just don’t deal with.  Like Jesus, sometimes it is just best to just get in your boat and go on your way.  After the miracles he performed and they witnessed with their own eyes, nothing He did as a sign for them would be believed.  If we are required to come to the Lord in faith, believing things that we cannot see, then it was useless to convince those who did see with their own eyes.

Scripture: Mark 8:13-15

¹³And He left them, and getting into the boat again, departed to the other side. ¹⁴Now ^£the disciples had forgotten to take bread, and they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat. ¹⁵Then He charged them, saying, “Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”

Jesus just fed 4,000 people with a little food to begin with and the Disciples still worried about eating, after witnessing such a miracle.  His response to them had nothing to do with the bread; he was referring to the Torah in relation to God’s commandment to the Children of Israel not to taint what was His with Leaven.  They changed from a spiritual mindset and point of view to a natural one.  They had been with Jesus long enough to know that one loaf of bread would not be a problem for Him.  It’s not about how much you have that He can work with, it’s about what you are willing to give him to work with. 

God can make something out of nothing, while we as humans need a starting point.  We need to take something that God has already established to make our creations.

Sometimes, we have things in our lives that act similar to yeast (sin) that prevents us from grasping the gifts and Word of God for our lives. ^{Exodus 12:19}

Scripture: Mark 8:16-18

¹⁶And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “It is because we have no bread.”

¹⁷But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, “Why do you reason because you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart ^£still hardened? ¹⁸Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? ?”

 We forget quickly what God has already done.  Don’t forget what God has done for you so that when times are difficult, you can remember His track record for your life.  That is why we observe the Passover.  So that we remember what God did for the Children of Israel and know that what He did for them, He can do for us today.  If God didn’t bring them out of bondage in Egypt, we wouldn’t be living as partakers of His covenant today.

Scripture: Mark 8:19-21

¹⁹When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up?”  They said to Him, “Twelve.”

²⁰“Also, when I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up?”

And they said, “Seven.”

²¹So He said to them, “How is it you do not understand?”

Sometimes, we believe that all things are just going to happen miraculously with no problems.  In our natural minds, we expect to wake up one day in a big house, making a $250,000 a year salary, with the Mercedes Benz sitting in the driveway.  After seeing it with your own eyes, we can easily say, “It’s the Lord”.  But when God show’s you the house across the street and the door falls off when you turn the knob, you want to say it’s not God. 

Don’t deny anything that God gives you because our natural eye may not find the item or situation pleasing.  What God sees and what we see are two different things.  We need to turn our sight and hearing to seeing what God shows us and says to us.  It doesn’t always have to be the big house to be God.  We can miss the blessings of God by making judgments based on our natural eye.  Some people suggest that if God blessed them with one million dollars, they would give one hundred thousand to the Lord.  But if God can’t trust you to give fifty cents of your five dollars, how can He trust you with one million?

Scripture Mark 8:22-23

²²Then He came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to Him, and begged Him to touch him. ²³So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when He had spit on his eyes and put His hands on him, He asked him if he saw anything.

Jesus took the man from among the people and healed the man with no one around.  If Jesus can do miracles without proclaiming His own works, we need to make sure that He gets the glory for those things that we do in His name.  If you feed the family down the street, make sure that you tell them that you are feeding them under the instruction and inspiration of the Lord and not of your own will.  Without the Lord, you wouldn’t be able to feed anyone, even your own house.