Mark 11

Division 3. (Mark 10:46-52; Mark 11:1-33; Mark 12:1-44; Mark 13:1-37; Mark 14:1-72; Mark 15:1-47; Mark 16:1-20.)The Heart of Service revealed in Sacrifice, answered from the Heart of God in Resurrection and the Ascension to Heaven of the Offerer. The closing division of the book shows us the Lord’s service perfected in His sacrificial death, the acceptance of which is seen in resurrection. But Mark goes beyond this, and further than any of the Gospels, following Him into heaven itself, - to the right hand of God. The connection of this with the sin-offering aspect of the atoning work, as here presented to us, we must consider at another time. The Cross and the resurrection give us characteristically the second and third subdivisions here. The first, as introductory to these, takes us back (as at this point do all the Gospels) to Matthew’s view of the King, come to His own and rejected by them; the connection of which with what follows it is plain, when we realize that in this not only Israel’s condition but that of the world as a whole is seen, the sin of man in its full development, for which the cross of Christ is the only possible remedy. Thus the three parts of this last division are in fit relation to one another, and form a significant whole.