Father, may our time together draw me closer to You today. I truly need Your touch in all that is yet to transpire. Amen.
Mark 16:8b-20 (<<click to read the passage)
With all my heart I believe that God is a Sovereign God. I wanted to hone this concept down because it is pretty all-encompassing, so I looked it up and this is the way well-known pastor and author Chip Ingram puts it, “…the way I like to explain God’s sovereignty best is simply to say, ‘God is in control.’ There is absolutely nothing that happens in the universe that is outside of God’s influence and authority. As King of kings and Lord of lords, God has no limitations.” (from Christianity.com)
That’s it!
The reason this comes to mind is that the last verses of Mark 16 are to most Biblical scholars, outside the norm. The text notes (not the life application notes) under these verses of my Life Application Study Bible New Living Translation state,
The most reliable early manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark end at verse 8. Other manuscripts include various endings to the Gospel. A few include both a “shorter ending” and the “longer ending.” The majority of manuscripts include the “longer ending” immediately after verse 8.
From a scholarly viewpoint that may be true but, as I said, I believe that God is a Sovereign God – He is in control. Maybe Mark didn’t write this portion but if God did not want it there it wouldn’t be there. This isn’t the only portion of the Bible that doesn’t fit together the way translators feel that they should. But it doesn’t bother me because, again, if God didn’t want me to see it, it wouldn’t be there.
Overall, these verses speak of the struggle Jesus’ followers had with accepting his resurrection. I think we would all have a hard time grasping that truth. There was irrefutable evidence that He had died, yet there He stood! But they came to believe! The other Gospels confirm this.
Jesus sent them out to the world to “preach the Good News to everyone” and they did! Again, Scripture confirms this!
And when His time on earth here was done, Jesus “was taken up into heaven and sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand” where He patiently waits for that time when we all will most assuredly stand before Him to give an account of what we did with the lives we were given. Be ready, for the Apostle Paul in Romans 13:11 (AMP) proclaims,
“Do this, knowing that this is a critical time. It is already the hour for you to awaken from your sleep [of spiritual complacency]; for our salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed [in Christ].”
Sept 24th, 2019, Tues, 12:22 pm
