Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Mark 9:30-32

Mar 9:30-32  
They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know,  (31)  for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise."  (32)  But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.

Two things that appeared worth commenting on while reading these verses:

1. Why did Jesus continually “not want anyone to know”.  Whenever he healed someone, Jesus always asks them to keep it quiet.  It seems that this is strange, yet it would be good to maintain a little quiet so that he and the disciples could move without a mob of people following, and therefore teach with a little privacy and not in the midst of a hyped up healing show.  There may be other reasons.

2. Even at this late a stage, the disciples still did not understand that Jesus was to be a sacrifice to atone for sin.  They couldn’t understand within their expectations of the messiah coming that he would die and have victory in a different way to what they were expecting.