Mark 2

CHAPTER 2THEME: Palsied man let down through roof; call of disciples; no fasting with the bridegroom present; new cloth on old garmentnew wine in old bottles; the SabbathChapter 2 is another chapter filled with action. It is really a continuation of chapter 1, beginning with that marvelous connective “and” that Mark uses so often. It’s the little word that is the cement that holds this Gospel together. It always joins what has gone before with what is to follow.

Mark 2:1

PALSIED MAN LET DOWN THROUGH ROOFWe see that He entered into Capernaum after some days. As we have said before, He had moved His headquarters from His hometown of Nazareth down to Capernaum. The best I can tell is that Capernaum remained the headquarters for our Lord’s earthly ministry of three years. We saw in chapter 1 that he had to withdraw into desert places because the leper whom He had healed didn’t obey what Jesus had requested that he do, but had gone out and told everyone. So then the crowds pushed upon Him and our Lord couldn’t do His work. This is one of several reasons why the Lord Jesus did not come as a thaumaturgist, a wonder worker. He didn’t want that to be the thing that would characterize Him. He didn’t want this man and others to tell about His miracles because He had come for a spiritual ministry. He had come to die upon the Cross for the sins of the world. This type of publicity obscures the gospel. Very candidly, and I want to be fair and frank, one of the reasons that I object so vociferously today to these people who put the emphasis on healing or tongues or something like that is that, even if these were gifts for this age in which we are living, it is getting the cart before the horse. Someone said to me some time ago, “Well, Dr. McGee, So-and-So preaches the gospel, just like you do, and he has a healing ministry too.” Yes, but is he known for preaching the gospel? Is that the reason people go to the meetings? Do they go to hear the gospel to be saved, or is the emphasis upon healing or some other emotional experience? I think we need to whittle this down to a very fine point.

Our business is primarily to preach the gospel. We see here in Mark’s Gospel that our Lord was hindered so much because of this sensation over the leper that He left Capernaum for a while (we don’t know for how long) and then came back again. When He came back, it says it was noised that He was in the house. The little Greek word the is really an adjective in the Greek and it is so declined. It is a modifier to the word house and refers to a very definite, particular house. So the question is: Which house is mentioned in the first chapter of this Gospel? In the first chapter we are told that after He had been to the synagogue that morning, He entered into the house of Simon and Andrew. This leads us to believe that when these fellows start taking off the roof, they are taking the roof off Simon Peter’s house! It’s hard to imagine Peter being docile and standing aside to let them do it. Not Simon Peter! I have a notion that he even threatened them with the police. It was his house. The word got around that our Lord had come back to Capernaum and that He was at Simon Peter’s house.

Mark 2:2

The ministry of our Lord was to preach the Word of God, and that is the emphasis that we feel should be made today. It is the emphasis upon the Word of God, upon the integrity and inerrancy of the Word of God. My prayer for myself in this connection is, “Oh, God, give me more confidence in the Word of God.” I see what it is doing today in hearts and lives, and I know what it has done for me. As a result, I should have even more confidence than I have. I’ll be very frank with you; sometimes I wonder whether it is going to have any influence in any heart or life. I must confess that I don’t have the faith that I should have. We must remember that this is the Word of God and it will never return unto Him void (Isa_55:11). So I rejoice to read here that our Lord preached the Word unto them. Now our attention is directed to another group. It consists of a little delegation of five. They are coming down the dusty road to Capernaum.

Mark 2:3

Our attention is directed to this little group of five, and this is how they look. One man is sick with the palsy, poor fellow. He couldn’t even have made it there because he’s in that stretcher. The other four make a kind of quartet, one at each corner of the stretcher. And here they come. They can’t get in because of the crowd which actually fills the doors and the windows. Now, I’ve found in church work today that the thing that is done more than anything else is to designate committees. The committee is what the pastor of a church often depends on. Church work, today, is done largely by the committees of various organizations. Someone has said that a committee is made up of those who take down minutes and waste hours. Another has said that a committee is made up of a group of people who individually can do nothing, but together they can decide that nothing can be done. And that is generally what they do. If they did it like we do it, this little group had a committee. They had a door committee who came up and looked around and then went back and said, “You can’t get in the door.” Then they had the window committee who went up and looked around and came back and said, “You can’t get in a window.” Fortunately, they had a roof committee, and the roof committee came back and said, “We think we can get him down through the roof.” So, maybe, if you have enough committees, there will be one that will function. Anyway, they decided to let him down through the roof, and so these men tackle the job of taking off the roof. When they get him down into the presence of Christ, I think they are embarrassed because they see they have broken up the meeting. You can imagine what it did for the meeting in progress! We have no notion what the Lord was teaching on this occasion, but it came to a sudden halt. But our Lord must have looked at them and smiledI’m almost sure that He did.

Mark 2:5

Whose faith? It was the faith of these men. That disturbed me for quite a few years whenever I looked at this verse. It seemed to me that it was the faith of these men that was responsible for his being saved. “Thy sins be forgiven thee.” But as I studied it, I realized that it was not their faith that saved him. It’s wonderful to have a godly mother, but you are not going to heaven tied to your mamma’s apron strings. It’s wonderful to have a godly father, but your godly father won’t save you. You will have to exert faith yourself. You must be the believing one. On closer examination we see that it is not the faith of these four men that saved this man. It was the faith of these men that brought him to the place where he could hear the Lord Jesus deal with him individually and personally. “When Jesus saw their faith” means their faith to bring the palsied man to Him. When He saw this, then He dealt personally with the man and said, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” What we need in the church today is stretcher-bearersmen and women with that kind of faith to go out and bring in the unsaved so they can hear the gospel. There are many people today who are paralyzed with a palsy of sin, a palsy of indifference, or a palsy of prejudice. A great many people are not going to come into church where the gospel is preached unless you take a corner of the stretcher and bring them in. That’s what these men did. They had the faith to bring this poor man to hear the Lord Jesus deal with him personally and say, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.”

Mark 2:6

Here’s the enemy and they don’t speak out but just think their thoughts. In their thinking, they are wrong on the first question, but they are right in the second question. This Man was not speaking blasphemies. But it is true that only God can forgive sin. No judge has any right to let a criminal off. His business is to enforce the law. God is the moral ruler of this universe, and He must defend His own laws. God cannot be lawless. He can’t be, because He is righteous. Having made the laws, He obeys those laws, and His laws are inexorable. They are not changed at all, and by them you and I are guilty before God. We need forgiveness of our sins and He does forgive. Let us never make the mistake of thinking He forgives because He is big-hearted. He forgives us because Christ paid the penalty for our sins! The Lord Jesus was not speaking blasphemiesHe is God. And He could forgive sins because He came to this earth to provide a salvation for you and me and for the man with the palsy.

Mark 2:8

These men didn’t speak out, you see, but they thought this in their hearts. He tries to draw them out, but these men had had a run-in with Him before and they had always come away with a bloody nose. So they decided the best thing to do here was to keep quiet, and they did. So our Lord said to them,

Mark 2:9

By the way, they’re not about to answer that one at all. They’re quiet and since they are quiet, He is still going to deal with them. He knew what they were thinking. In Joh_2:25 it says: “[Jesus] …needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.” Now the Lord Jesus really puts them on the spot. Is it easier to forgive the sins of this man or to make him arise and walk? Even though they didn’t answer, I’m sure they would have said it is just as impossible to do one as the other. Only God could do either. That answer is right and that is why the Lord Jesus told the man to take up his bed and walk.

Mark 2:10

An old Scottish commentator said that the reason He told the man to take up his bed and walk was because he would not have a relapse. He wouldn’t be back on that bed, and he wouldn’t be coming back to the stretcher. He’s going to walk from now on. When our Lord healed, He did a good job of it.

Mark 2:12

You see, this is a Gospel of action, and here is one of the miracles of action.

Mark 2:15

CALL OF DISCIPLESWe have continuing action here, although this is not a miracle. We see a lot of action in this Gospel. This is the call of Levi, or Matthew. Matthew, by the way, belonged to the tribe of Levi. Imagine that! He belonged to the priestly tribe and here he has become a publican, of all things. And, by the way, this should answer the question about the ten lost tribes. This is one of the many places where we find an individual who belongs to a tribe other than Judah.

When anyone tries to say there are the ten lost tribes today, they must be on an Easter-egg hunt. Friend, those tribes were not lost. Here is one of them right here, a man of the tribe of Levi becoming one of the disciples of our Lord. Our Lord is calling him here in this remarkable incident. You may remember that Matthew, in his Gospel record, told us nothing about the fact that he gave a great dinner and invited some of his friendsthe only kind of friends he had were sinners, by the way. Did you notice that three times here the statement is made that the guests there were publicans and sinners? Apparently there wasn’t a good man on the list. None of the elite of the town were there. Notice that the publicans come ahead of the sinners. These were the tax collectors of that day.

Mark 2:17

That is a tremendous answer. You don’t call for the doctor when everybody is well. It’s when you are sick that you want the doctor to come over. The Lord Jesus said that He hadn’t come to call the righteous, but to call sinners. The reason He said that, actually, was because there were only sinners there. There was only one kind of folk there that day. There was no righteous person there, by any means, but the Pharisees thought they were!

Mark 2:18

They were under the Law, but under the Law there was no instruction given for fasting. God had given seven feasts for His people, not fast days.

Mark 2:19

NO FASTING WITH THE BRIDEGROOM PRESENTWhat He is saying to them is that it is more important to be related to Him and to have fellowship with Him than it is to fast. It is the same today, friend. It is one thing to be religious and to put up a front, but it’s another thing to enjoy fellowship with the Lord Jesus and to love Him.

Mark 2:21

NEW CLOTH ON OLD GARMENTNEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLESThe Lord is giving two illustrations about this new life of love and fellowship with Him. He is saying that He did not come to polish up the Law. He didn’t come to add to the Mosaic system. He didn’t come to add a refinement or a development to it. He came to do something new. He didn’t come to patch up an old garment but to give us a new garment. Under the Law men worked, and their works were like an old moth-eaten garment. Our Lord came to provide a new robe of righteousness that comes down onto a sinner who will trust Christ. This will enable him to stand before Almighty God. This is the glorious, wonderful thing that He is saying here, friend. Our Lord didn’t come to extend or project the Law of the Old Testament system or of religion. He came to introduce something new. And that which is new will be the fact that He will die for the sins of the world. New wine goes into new wine skins. A new garment goes onto a new man. That robe of righteousness comes down on one who through faith has become a son of God. This is a tremendous thing!

Mark 2:23

THE SABBATHIn the last part of this chapter we come to a Sabbath Day in the fields. Then, in chapter 3, it begins with the Sabbath Day inside the synagogue. We see these two incidents in Matthew and in Luke. It is very important because it was on this question of the Sabbath Day that He broke with the religious rulers. From this time on, they sought His death. He claims in this incident that He is the Lord of the Sabbath Day. In the synagogue, He does good on the Sabbath Day. The question, of course, arises: Did He really break the Sabbath in either instance? When He healed the poor man with the withered hand, did He break the Sabbath law? Absolutely He did not. He came to fulfill the Law. But here we find that He is giving an interpretation of this. He reveals that He is the Lord of the Sabbath Day, and that doing good was the thing that was all important. The “corn” is the Greek sporima, meaning sown fields of grain. It may have been barley, or it could have been wheat. The disciples were plucking the grain and eating, which the Pharisees interpreted as harvesting grain and threshing it on the Sabbath. The Law permitted people to pull the grain. We read in Deu_23:24-25: “When thou comest into thy neighbour’s vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel. When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbour, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbour’s standing corn.” Actually, they were following the Law.

If they had put in a sickle, they would have been harvesting. But the Pharisees had put their own interpretation to it and would, therefore, interpret the action as breaking the Law.

Mark 2:24

He did not insist that they had not broken the Sabbath. Actually, He refused to argue the issue with them. Now He goes into the life of David, their king, and He cites an incident in the life of David where he had definitely broken the Mosaic Law and was justified. You see, the letter of the Law was not to be imposed when it wrought hardship upon one of God’s servants who was attempting to serve Him. And that, of course, is the story concerning David, and our Lord uses that illustration.

Mark 2:26

This is a great principle in respect to the Sabbath Day and its meaning. The Law was really made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Another great principle is that the Lord Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. Both those things are very important. By the way, I have a little booklet entitled, The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day, Which? This is a very important question today. Remember that we are not under the old Mosaic system concerning the Sabbath Day because it was a part of the covenant between the nation Israel and God (Exo_31:12-17). This Sabbath incident in the field and the Sabbath incident which we find at the beginning of chapter 3 should go together; so even though there is a chapter break in the Bible, let us go right on in our study of the incidents that relate to the Sabbath Day.