March 5
Mark 12:18-37
You have been reading about twenty verses a day and hopefully taking your time to meditate on those verses. One of the values of slowing down while you read is noticing the details of Scripture. As Jesus asked and responded to a series of questions in Mark 12, he revealed the importance of even the minutiae of Scripture. In his response to the question of the Sadducees, Jesus quotes Exodus 3:6, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Jesus is confronting the false view of the Sadducees regarding their failure to believe in a resurrection and doing it from a piece of Scripture they would have valued.
The main point of Jesus’ argument was the word “am.” God did not tell Moses that he 'was' the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but that he presently is. This claim only makes sense if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive, and therefore, he is still their God. So, though they had died hundreds of years before this, they were still alive with God. As Paul makes clear, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Something as small as the tense of a verb allowed Jesus to prove the futility of the Sadducees’ beliefs. This is something we might easily miss. So let us slow down, think deeply, and thank God for how he reveals himself to us through every book, chapter, verse, word, and even tense in the Bible.
Father God, help me to slow down and allow you to speak to me through what I read every day. Amen.
What would help you to more intentionally pay attention to the details of Scripture?
You have been reading about twenty verses a day and hopefully taking your time to meditate on those verses. One of the values of slowing down while you read is noticing the details of Scripture. As Jesus asked and responded to a series of questions in Mark 12, he revealed the importance of even the minutiae of Scripture. In his response to the question of the Sadducees, Jesus quotes Exodus 3:6, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Jesus is confronting the false view of the Sadducees regarding their failure to believe in a resurrection and doing it from a piece of Scripture they would have valued.
The main point of Jesus’ argument was the word “am.” God did not tell Moses that he 'was' the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but that he presently is. This claim only makes sense if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive, and therefore, he is still their God. So, though they had died hundreds of years before this, they were still alive with God. As Paul makes clear, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Something as small as the tense of a verb allowed Jesus to prove the futility of the Sadducees’ beliefs. This is something we might easily miss. So let us slow down, think deeply, and thank God for how he reveals himself to us through every book, chapter, verse, word, and even tense in the Bible.
Father God, help me to slow down and allow you to speak to me through what I read every day. Amen.
What would help you to more intentionally pay attention to the details of Scripture?
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