Mark: According to
Part 17
Mark 3:6-12
Jealousy, Hatred and Plotting’s
“Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy Him.” Mark 3:6
I have trouble understanding such hatred and contempt that even when one is performing miracles and teaching the people that you would still plot to kill them. That is until I started thinking about jealousy. Jealousy has caused more hatred and more deaths than perhaps any other thing since the beginning of time. Even Satan himself started this horrible controversy between himself and God the Father over jealousy. Yes, it was jealousy, Satan wanting to be like the Most-High God that caused all these problems in the first place.
It is interesting that this text includes the phrase “plotted with the Herodians against Him.” The Herodians were a Jewish political party that favored the house of Herod. Remember it was Herod that had ordered all the babies to be killed in and near Bethlehem shorty after Jesus birth. After Herod’s death, his three sons took control of the region and acted a puppet kings for Rome. It was Herod Antipas that had imprisoned John the Baptizer and eventually had him beheaded. Normally the Pharisees hated Herod and all that he stood for. The fact that they now sought the aid of their avowed enemies is evidence that they were beside themselves to find a means of silencing Jesus.
This is another example of how religion when it feels threatened or wishes to impose its will upon others, goes and appeals to the civil authority in hope that the civil authority will become the strong arm for religion. What religion cannot accomplish on its own, it has always sought to employ civil authorities to carry out its business.
But Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from galilee followed Him, and from Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and beyond the Jordan and those from Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they heard how many things He was doing, came to Him.
Christ realized for Him to remain would cause his life to be in danger, for the time of his death had not yet come, so he withdrew by the lake and told his disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for Him because of the multitude, lest they should crush Him.
Since this is the only gospel that mentions about the boat it is thought perhaps this was Peter’s boat and thus the reason it always seemed ready for Jesus to use. Also, the word used here, “Lest the multitude should crush him.” The multitude that followed Jesus was not hostile wishing to hurt Jesus, but eager, each to have his own needs ministered to.
Verse Ten states “For He healed many, so that as many as had afflictions pressed about Him to touch Him.”
Yet for all the miracles that Jesus performed, the people recognized him as a great teacher and healer, but they refused to see the evidence before them that they were in the presence of the Messiah, God himself in flesh.
But Mark makes it clear that there were those who recognized who Jesus was. 11 And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw Him, fell down before Him and cried out saying, “You are the Son of God.” 12 But He sternly warned them that they should not make Him know.
These unclean spirits, the demons of the devil himself certainly knew who Jesus was, for they had spent time with Him in heaven and could clearly see that this was indeed the Son of God, come as a lamb to save to the world from their sins. And that through his death on the cross, all might partake in the gift of salvation. But, by their publicly proclaiming that Jesus was the Son of God, they hoped to incite the people against Jesus thus causing his death in another manner than by crucifixion. It was in this way that they hoped to thwart the plan of salvation, the keep earth’s people prisoners. So Jesus rebuked them to keep quiet.
Leaping ahead in the story we know that Jesus was lead to the cross to die, rejected and despised, in order to pay the price of sin that we no longer are separated from God but will one day live with Him in heaven and then in the earth made new. Since Christ has won the victory and it is only a matter of time before His return, should we not cry out to all that will hear that Christ is risen, the price has been paid the gift is their waiting for us to accept. Shouldn’t our lives be in such close connection with God that people can see Christ living out from within us to bring the light of the gospel message into the world.
Christ showed us all an example of the type of work he would want us all to be engaged with. Preaching, Teaching and healing the world of its troubles by spreading the gospel message to all those that would hear and believe, changing the world one person at a time.
The Bible In Your Hand 