The Living Bible (313 page)

Mark
7

One day some Jewish religious leaders arrived from Jerusalem to investigate him,
²
 and noticed that some of his disciples failed to follow the usual Jewish rituals before eating.
³
 (For the Jews, especially the Pharisees, will never eat until they have sprinkled their arms to the elbows,
*
as required by their ancient traditions.
⁴
 So when they come home from the market, they must always sprinkle themselves in this way before touching any food. This is but one of many examples of laws and regulations they have clung to for centuries, and still follow, such as their ceremony of cleansing for pots, pans, and dishes.)

    
⁵
 So the religious leaders asked him, “Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old customs? For they eat without first performing the washing ceremony.”

    
^6-7
 Jesus replied,
“You bunch of hypocrites! Isaiah the prophet described you very well when he said, ‘These people speak very prettily about the Lord but they have no love for him at all. Their worship is a farce, for they claim that God commands the people to obey their petty rules.’ How right Isaiah was!
⁸
 
For you ignore God’s specific orders and substitute your own traditions.
⁹
 
You are simply rejecting God’s laws and trampling them under your feet for the sake of tradition.

    
¹⁰
 
“For instance, Moses gave you this law from God: ‘Honor your father and mother.’ And he said that anyone who speaks against his father or mother must die.
¹¹
 
But you say it is perfectly all right for a man to disregard his needy parents, telling them, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you! For I have given to God what I could have given to you.’
^12-13
 
And so you break the law of God in order to protect your man-made tradition. And this is only one example. There are many, many others.”

    
¹⁴
 Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear.
“All of you listen,”
he said,
“and try to understand.
^15-16
 
*
Your souls aren’t harmed by what you eat, but by what you think and say!”
*

    
¹⁷
 Then he went into a house to get away from the crowds, and his disciples asked him what he meant by the statement he had just made.

    
¹⁸
 
“Don’t you understand either?”
he asked.
“Can’t you see that what you eat won’t harm your soul?
¹⁹
 
For food doesn’t come in contact with your heart, but only passes through the digestive system.”
(By saying this he showed that every kind of food is kosher.)

    
²⁰
 And then he added,
“It is the thought-life that pollutes.
²¹
 
For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts of lust, theft, murder, adultery,
²²
 
wanting what belongs to others, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, pride, and all other folly.
²³
 
All these vile things come from within; they are what pollute you and make you unfit for God.”

    
²⁴
 Then he left Galilee and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon,
*
and tried to keep it a secret that he was there, but couldn’t. For as usual the news of his arrival spread fast.

    
²⁵
 Right away a woman came to him whose little girl was possessed by a demon. She had heard about Jesus and now she came and fell at his feet,
²⁶
 and pled with him to release her child from the demon’s control. (But she was Syrophoenician—a “despised Gentile”!)

    
²⁷
 Jesus told her,
“First I should help my own family—the Jews.
*
It isn’t right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

    
²⁸
 She replied, “That’s true, sir, but even the puppies under the table are given some scraps from the children’s plates.”

    
²⁹
 
“Good!”
he said.
“You have answered well—so well that I have healed your little girl. Go on home, for the demon has left her!”

    
³⁰
 And when she arrived home, her little girl was lying quietly in bed, and the demon was gone.

    
³¹
 From Tyre he went to Sidon, then back to the Sea of Galilee by way of the Ten Towns.
³²
 A deaf man with a speech impediment was brought to him, and everyone begged Jesus to lay his hands on the man and heal him.

    
³³
 Jesus led him away from the crowd and put his fingers into the man’s ears, then spat and touched the man’s tongue with the spittle.
³⁴
 Then, looking up to heaven, he sighed and commanded,
“Open!”
³⁵
 Instantly the man could hear perfectly and speak plainly!

    
³⁶
 Jesus told the crowd not to spread the news, but the more he forbade them, the more they made it known,
³⁷
 for they were overcome with utter amazement. Again and again they said, “Everything he does is wonderful; he even corrects deafness and stammering!”

Mark
8

One day about this time as another great crowd gathered, the people ran out of food again. Jesus called his disciples to discuss the situation.

    
“I pity these people,”
he said,
“for they have been here three days and have nothing left to eat.
³
 
And if I send them home without feeding them, they will faint along the road! For some of them have come a long distance.”

    
⁴
 “Are we supposed to find food for them here in the desert?” his disciples scoffed.

    
⁵
 
“How many loaves of bread do you have?”
he asked.

    
“Seven,” they replied.
⁶
 So he told the crowd to sit down on the ground. Then he took the seven loaves, thanked God for them, broke them into pieces and passed them to his disciples; and the disciples placed them before the people.
⁷
 A few small fish were found, too, so Jesus also blessed these and told the disciples to serve them.

    
^8-9
 And the whole crowd ate until they were full, and afterwards he sent them home. There were about 4,000 people in the crowd that day and when the scraps were picked up after the meal, there were seven very large basketfuls left over!

    
¹⁰
 Immediately after this he got into a boat with his disciples and came to the region of Dalmanutha.

    
¹¹
 When the local Jewish leaders learned of his arrival, they came to argue with him.
*

    
“Do a miracle for us,” they said. “Make something happen in the sky. Then we will believe in you.”

    
¹²
 He sighed deeply when he heard this and he said,
“Certainly not. How many more miracles do you people need?”
*

    
¹³
 So he got back into the boat and left them, and crossed to the other side of the lake.
¹⁴
 But the disciples had forgotten to stock up on food before they left and had only one loaf of bread in the boat.

    
¹⁵
 As they were crossing, Jesus said to them very solemnly,
“Beware of the yeast of King Herod and of the Pharisees.”

    
¹⁶
 “What does he mean?” the disciples asked each other. They finally decided that he must be talking about their forgetting to bring bread.

    
¹⁷
 Jesus realized what they were discussing and said,
“No, that isn’t it at all! Can’t you understand? Are your hearts too hard to take it in?
¹⁸
 
‘Your eyes are to see with—why don’t you look? Why don’t you open your ears and listen?’ Don’t you remember anything at all?

    
¹⁹
 
“What about the 5,000 men I fed with five loaves of bread? How many basketfuls of scraps did you pick up afterwards?”

    
“Twelve,” they said.

    
²⁰
 
“And when I fed the 4,000 with seven loaves, how much was left?”

    
“Seven basketfuls,” they said.

    
²¹
 
“And yet you think I’m worried that we have no bread?”
*

    
²²
 When they arrived at Bethsaida, some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch and heal him.
²³
 Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and spat upon his eyes, and laid his hands over them.

    
“Can you see anything now?”
Jesus asked him.

    
²⁴
 The man looked around. “Yes!” he said, “I see men! But I can’t see them very clearly; they look like tree trunks walking around!”

    
²⁵
 Then Jesus placed his hands over the man’s eyes again and as the man stared intently, his sight was completely restored, and he saw everything clearly, drinking in the sights around him.

    
²⁶
 Jesus sent him home to his family.
“Don’t even go back to the village first,”
he said.

    
²⁷
 Jesus and his disciples now left Galilee and went out to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along he asked them,
“Who do the people think I am? What are they saying about me?”

    
²⁸
 “Some of them think you are John the Baptist,” the disciples replied, “and others say you are Elijah or some other ancient prophet come back to life again.”

    
²⁹
 Then he asked,
“Who do you think I am?”
Peter replied, “You are the Messiah.”
³⁰
 But Jesus warned them not to tell anyone!

    
³¹
 Then he began to tell them about the terrible things he would suffer,
*
and that he would be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the other Jewish leaders—and be killed, and that he would rise again three days afterwards.
³²
 He talked about it quite frankly with them, so Peter took him aside and chided him.
*
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” he told Jesus.

    
³³
 Jesus turned and looked at his disciples and then said to Peter very sternly,
“Satan, get behind me! You are looking at this only from a human point of view and not from God’s.”

    
³⁴
 Then he called his disciples and the crowds to come over and listen.
“If any of you wants to be my follower,”
he told them,
“you must put aside your own pleasures and shoulder your cross, and follow me closely.
³⁵
 
If you insist on saving your life, you will lose it. Only those who throw away their lives for my sake and for the sake of the Good News will ever know what it means to really live.

    
³⁶
 
“And how does a man benefit if he gains the whole world and loses his soul in the process?
³⁷
 
For is anything worth more than his soul?
³⁸
 
And anyone who is ashamed of me and my message in these days of unbelief and sin, I, the Messiah,
*
will be ashamed of him when I return in the glory of my Father, with the holy angels.”