The Living Bible (310 page)

Mark

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Mark
1

Here begins the wonderful story of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.

    
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 In the book written by the prophet Isaiah, God announced that he would send his Son
*
to earth, and that a special messenger would arrive first to prepare the world for his coming.

    
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 “This messenger will live out in the barren wilderness,” Isaiah said,
*
“and will proclaim that everyone must straighten out his life to be ready for the Lord’s arrival.”
*

    
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 This messenger was John the Baptist. He lived in the wilderness and taught that all should be baptized as a public announcement of their decision to turn their backs on sin, so that God could forgive them.
*
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 People from Jerusalem and from all over Judea traveled out into the Judean wastelands to see and hear John, and when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River.
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 His clothes were woven from camel’s hair and he wore a leather belt; locusts and wild honey were his food.
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 Here is a sample of his preaching:

    
“Someone is coming soon who is far greater than I am, so much greater that I am not even worthy to be his slave.
*
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 I baptize you with water
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but he will baptize you with God’s Holy Spirit!”
*

    
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 Then one day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and was baptized by John there in the Jordan River.
¹⁰
 The moment Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens open and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descending on him,
¹¹
 and a voice from heaven said, “You are my beloved Son; you are my Delight.”

    
^12-13
 Immediately the Holy Spirit urged Jesus into the desert. There, for forty days, alone except for desert animals, he was subjected to Satan’s temptations to sin. And afterwards
*
the angels came and cared for him.

    
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 Later on, after John was arrested by King Herod,
*
Jesus went to Galilee to preach God’s Good News.

    
¹⁵
 
“At last the time has come!”
he announced.
“God’s Kingdom is near! Turn from your sins and act on this glorious news!”

    
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 One day as Jesus was walking along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew fishing with nets, for they were commercial fishermen.

    
¹⁷
 Jesus called out to them,
“Come, follow me! And I will make you fishermen for the souls of men!”
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 At once they left their nets and went along with him.

    
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 A little farther up the beach, he saw Zebedee’s sons, James and John, in a boat mending their nets.
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 He called them too, and immediately they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and went with him.

    
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 Jesus and his companions now arrived at the town of Capernaum and on Saturday morning went into the Jewish place of worship—the synagogue—where he preached.
²²
 The congregation was surprised at his sermon because he spoke as an authority and didn’t try to prove his points by quoting others—quite unlike what they were used to hearing!
*

    
²³
 A man possessed by a demon was present and began shouting,
²⁴
 “Why are you bothering us, Jesus of Nazareth—have you come to destroy us demons? I know who you are—the holy Son of God!”

    
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 Jesus curtly commanded the demon to say no more and to come out of the man.
²⁶
 At that the evil spirit screamed and convulsed the man violently and left him.
²⁷
 Amazement gripped the audience and they began discussing what had happened.

    
“What sort of new religion is this?” they asked excitedly. “Why, even evil spirits obey his orders!”

    
²⁸
 The news of what he had done spread quickly through that entire area of Galilee.

    
^29-30
 Then, leaving the synagogue, he and his disciples went over to Simon and Andrew’s home, where they found Simon’s mother-in-law sick in bed with a high fever. They told Jesus about her right away.
³¹
 He went to her bedside, and as he took her by the hand and helped her to sit up, the fever suddenly left, and she got up and prepared dinner for them!

    
^32-33
 By sunset the courtyard was filled with the sick and demon-possessed, brought to him for healing; and a huge crowd of people from all over the city of Capernaum gathered outside the door to watch.
³⁴
 So Jesus healed great numbers of sick folk that evening and ordered many demons to come out of their victims. (But he refused to allow the demons to speak, because they knew who he was.)

    
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 The next morning he was up long before daybreak and went out alone into the wilderness to pray.

    
^36-37
 Later, Simon and the others went out to find him, and told him, “Everyone is asking for you.”

    
³⁸
 But he replied,
“We must go on to other towns as well, and give my message to them too, for that is why I came.”

    
³⁹
 So he traveled throughout the province of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and releasing many from the power of demons.

    
⁴⁰
 Once a leper came and knelt in front of him and begged to be healed. “If you want to, you can make me well again,” he pled.

    
⁴¹
 And Jesus, moved with pity, touched him and said,
“I want to! Be healed!”
⁴²
 Immediately the leprosy was gone—the man was healed!

    
^43-44
 Jesus then told him sternly,
“Go and be examined immediately by the Jewish priest. Don’t stop to speak to anyone along the way. Take along the offering prescribed by Moses for a leper who is healed, so that everyone will have proof that you are well again.”

    
⁴⁵
 But as the man went on his way he began to shout the good news that he was healed; as a result, such throngs soon surrounded Jesus that he couldn’t publicly enter a city anywhere, but had to stay out in the barren wastelands. And people from everywhere came to him there.

Mark
2

Several days later he returned to Capernaum, and the news of his arrival spread quickly through the city.
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 Soon the house where he was staying was so packed with visitors that there wasn’t room for a single person more, not even outside the door. And he preached the Word to them.
³
 Four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a stretcher.
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 They couldn’t get to Jesus through the crowd, so they dug through the clay roof above his head and lowered the sick man on his stretcher, right down in front of Jesus.
*

    
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 When Jesus saw how strongly they believed that he would help, Jesus said to the sick man,
“Son, your sins are forgiven!”

    
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 But some of the Jewish religious leaders
*
said to themselves as they sat there,
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 “What? This is blasphemy! Does he think he is God? For only God can forgive sins.”

    
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 Jesus could read their minds and said to them at once,
“Why does this bother you?
^9-11
 
I, the Messiah,
*
have the authority on earth to forgive sins. But talk is cheap—anybody could say that. So I’ll prove it to you by healing this man.”
Then, turning to the paralyzed man, he commanded,
“Pick up your stretcher and go on home, for you are healed!”

    
¹²
 The man jumped up, took the stretcher, and pushed his way through the stunned onlookers! Then how they praised God. “We’ve never seen anything like this before!” they all exclaimed.

    
¹³
 Then Jesus went out to the seashore again and preached to the crowds that gathered around him.
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 As he was walking up the beach he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at his tax collection booth.
“Come with me,”
Jesus told him.
“Come be my disciple.”

    
And Levi jumped to his feet and went along.

    
¹⁵
 That night Levi invited his fellow tax collectors and many other notorious sinners to be his dinner guests so that they could meet Jesus and his disciples. (There were many men of this type among the crowds that followed him.)
¹⁶
 But when some of the Jewish religious leaders
*
saw him eating with these men of ill repute, they said to his disciples, “How can he stand it, to eat with such scum?”

    
¹⁷
 When Jesus heard what they were saying, he told them,
“Sick people need the doctor, not healthy ones! I haven’t come to tell good people to repent, but the bad ones.”

    
¹⁸
 John’s disciples and the Jewish leaders sometimes fasted, that is, went without food as part of their religion. One day some people came to Jesus and asked why his disciples didn’t do this too.

    
¹⁹
 Jesus replied,
“Do friends of the bridegroom refuse to eat at the wedding feast? Should they be sad while he is with them?
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But some day he will be taken away from them, and then they will mourn.
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Besides, going without food is part of the old way of doing things.
*
It is like patching an old garment with unshrunk cloth! What happens? The patch pulls away and leaves the hole worse than before.
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You know better than to put new wine into old wineskins. They would burst. The wine would be spilled out and the wineskins ruined. New wine needs fresh wineskins.”

    
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 Another time, on a Sabbath day as Jesus and his disciples were walking through the fields, the disciples were breaking off heads of wheat and eating the grain.
*

    
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 Some of the Jewish religious leaders said to Jesus, “They shouldn’t be doing that! It’s against our laws to work by harvesting grain on the Sabbath.”

    
^25-26
 But Jesus replied,
“Didn’t you ever hear about the time King David and his companions were hungry, and he went into the house of God—Abiathar was high priest then—and they ate the special bread
*
only priests were allowed to eat? That was against the law too.
²⁷
 
But the Sabbath was made to benefit man, and not man to benefit the Sabbath.
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And I, the Messiah,
*
have authority even to decide what men can do on Sabbath days!”