Bible Commentaries

Mark 6:3

In a letter written from Pavia, during his early mission there, Savonarola explains to his mother why he is working in Lombardy instead of nearer home. "Seeing that He hath chosen me for this sacred office, rest ye content that I fulfil it far from my native place, for I bear better fruit than I could have borne at Ferrara. There it would be with me as it was with Christ, when His countrymen said: Is not this man a carpenter, and the son of a carpenter? But out of my own place this has never been said to me; rather, when I have to depart, men and women shed tears, and hold my words in much esteem."

References.—VI:3.—C. Jerdan, Pastures of Tender Grass, p44. C. W. Stubbs, Pro Patria, p160; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv1894 , p129. J. Farquhar, The Schools and Schoolmasters of Christ, p61. Mark Guy Pearse, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li1897 , p118. T. Vincent Tymms, ibid. vol. lxvii1905 , p264. J. Clifford, The Dawn of Manhood, p34. C. New, The Baptism of the Spirit, p231.

Mark 6:4

Mr. Bentham is one of those persons who verify the old adage, that "a prophet has most honour out of his own country". His reputation lies at the circumference; and the lights of his understanding are reflected, with increasing lustre, on the other side of the globe. His name is little known in England, better in Europe, best of all in the plains of Chili and the mines of Mexico.

—Hazlitt, Spirit of the Age.

The following extract from Horace Walpole touches a similar chord: "Adieu, retrospect! It is as idle as prophecy, the characteristic of which is never to be believed where alone it could be useful, i.e. in its own country."

Compare Mrs. Oliphant's account of Edward Irving's reception in Annandale in1828.

References.—VI:5 , 6.—R. Scott, Oxford University Sermons, p276. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. Mark I-VIII. p237.

Abnormal Unbelief

Mark 6:6

I. As Jesus stood face to face with the unbelief of His townsmen, His kinsfolk, and even of the disciples themselves, He found Himself in a world that jarred His Divine instincts and sensibilities. Although it was true of Him here, as in Jerusalem at a later stage, "He knew what was in Mark 6:18

Speaking of Fnelon's "Tlmaque," in his Lectures on the Ancien Rgime, Kingsley protests: "It is something to have spoken to a prince, in such an age, without servility and without etiquette, of the frailties and dangers which beset rulers; to have told him that royalty, "when assumed to content oneself, is a monstrous tyranny: when assumed to fulfil its duties, and to conduct an innumerable people, as a father conducts his children, a crushing slavery, which demands an heroic courage and patience". Let us honour the courtier who dared to speak such truths."

If the canker of the age can be traced to any single source, it is to the Princess herself. Its sycophancy had its apotheosis in every word said or written to, or said or written of, and meant to be seen by, the sovereign. An abject form of Mark 6:20

When George Fox arrived in Edinburgh in1657 , he was summoned by the magistrates, examined, and then ordered to leave Scotland in a week's time. "I desired them to hear what I had to say to them, but they said they would not hear me. I told them Pharaoh heard Moses and Aaron, and yet he was a heathen and no Christian, and Herod heard John the Baptist; and they should not be worse than these. But they cried, Withdraw, withdraw!"

References.—VI:20.—W. C. E. Newbolt, Church Times, vol. xxxii1894 , p219. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No347; vol. xxvi. No1548. VI:26-29.—G. Salmon, Non-Miraculous Christianity, p155. VI:30-44.—W. M. Taylor, The Miracles of Our Saviour, p268. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. Mark I-VIII. p262. John Laidlaw, The Miracles of Our Lord, p74.

A Desert Place

Mark 6:31

Few sentences in the New Testament are more pathetic than this: "There were many coming and going, and the Apostles of Jesus had no leisure so much as to eat". Jesus had sent them away to do their beneficent work upon the bodies and the minds of men. They had done it; and now they had come back and gathered about Him to tell Him of all that had befallen them. Jesus listened with an interest mingled with joy and pity. He knew that for the happy prosecution of the work of life men need not only enthusiasm but strength. And so when their tale is told, He simply says, "Come by yourselves apart into a desert place, and take a little rest". And in words of simple pathos, the Evangelist adds, "For crowds were coming and going, and they had not even a chance to eat". Mark 6:31

There are two ways of looking at life, and there are two ways of living. The one attracts but does not; satisfy. The other satisfies while it attracts. The former, which is the natural, is broad and shallow. The latter, which is the spiritual, is not less wide, but it is deep. In the one case the man begins with observation and ends in criticism, spending himself in busy activity till there is nothing left but self-disgust In the other an ever-growing sympathy expands into the life and love of God.

I. The life of prayer—the only real and true life—is one that springs from a profound sympathy with the universe, which sees in the great order of which we form a part not only the length and the breadth, but also, and much more vividly, the depth.

The man of prayer is he whose work in the world is the stronger because it manifests the sense of God's nearness; who, always busy, is yet ever at rest; about whom the casual stranger feels that there is a background, a hidden life, a fountain of living water from wells of salvation that our father Jacob gave us not.

II. And the men of prayer teach their brethren that which is the hardest, while it is the truest lesson of life, how to die.

Why is it that we are so slow to learn the secret: of Jesus? When He has bidden us watch and pray; when He has begged that for His sake we will give Him one last hour; He comes and finds us sleeping, for our eyes are heavy and the flesh is weak.

And yet it is just for these supreme moments that Christ came into the world. He came, that out of the deep of our human character He might cry to the Father in that perfectness of unbroken communion, wherein prayer gathers itself up into words that are the expression of a life—"Thy will be done". Not once nor twice in that career of tireless activity did He go away and pray, "saying again the same words". For Jesus" life meant not to do but to be, not to live but to die. Jesus Christ did most for the world when He was doing nothing. The finished work of Christ is not the bustle of a great activity, but the peace of a surrendered life.

—J. G. Simpson, Christian Ideals, p183.

Mark 6:31

We must know how to put occupation aside, which does not mean that we must be idle. In an inaction which is meditative and attentive, the wrinkles of the soul are smoothed away. The soul itself spreads, unfolds, and springs afresh, and, like the trodden grass of the roadside or the bruised leaf of a plant, repairs its injuries, becomes new, spontaneous, true, and original.

—Amiel.

"A Mark 6:34-35

See P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life, pp350 f.

References.—VI:34.—R. W. Church, Village Sermons (2Series), p91. C. S. Robinson, Simon Peter, p211. VI:34-43.—Mark Guy Pearse, Jesus Christ and the People, p23. VI:35-44.—Archbishop Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord, p217. VI:36 , 37.—J. C. Edghill, Church Times, vol. xxxvii1897 , p641.

Mark 6:37

Once, when asked by the rector of his church to subscribe to a fund for erecting ten new churches in Manchester, Cobden replied: "The first and most pressing need of the poor is for food; all other wants are secondary to this. It is in vain to try and elevate the moral and religious character of a people whose physical condition is degraded by the privation of the first necessaries of life; and hence we are taught to pray for our daily bread before spiritual grace.... Until this object [i.e. the repeal of the Corn Laws] be attained, I shall be compelled to deny myself the satisfaction of contributing to other public undertakings of great importance in themselves, and secondary only to the first of all duties—the feeding of the hungry. It is for this reason that I am reluctantly obliged to decline to contribute to the fund for building ten new churches. My course Mark 6:49

I. The Misunderstood Christ.—Why was it the disciples "cried out"? Why was it that when they saw Him they were troubled? This is the answer. They took Jesus for other than He was.

Multitudes are troubled by Christ, hate the very name and thought of Christ, because they cleave to their sins and have said to evil—be thou my good. But while admitting all that, I do not believe it wholly meets the case or accounts for the prevailing indifference or hostility to Christ.

Men are indifferent to Christ, not to say hostile to Him, because of the false ideas they have of Him, because of the distorted representations given to them of Him. They imagine, somehow, that He will empty and impoverish life for them. They do not realize that wherever He goes He carries joy and brightness with Him, and always transmutes life's water into wine. And so it comes to pass that multitudes reject their Best Friend, and face life's temptations and trials without Christ's succour; and try to bear life's sorrows without Christ's comfort, and go down into the valley of the shadow of death without His presence to strengthen them.

II. The Welcome Given to the Real Christ—The disciples were troubled by the phantom Christ they thought they saw, but when He spoke to them, and they realized it was Jesus Himself, they received Him willingly, gladly, eagerly into the ship.

When men see the real Christ their hearts are drawn to Him. This Christ without fleck or fault Himself, but identifying Himself in His love and pity with our sinful race—compassionating men, helping men, hoping for men with an indomitable hope, and dying for them in the might of His sacrificial love—men have no fault to find with this Christ. The Christ of the schools may not attract them very much; the Christ they see in the average Christian may even repel them; but the real Christ always wins admiration, worship, love.

—J. D. Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxii1907 , p257.

References.—VI:50.—W. Gilbert, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxx1906 , p68. A. Maclaren, Creed and Conduct, p15. VI:52.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No1218. VI:54 , 55 , 56.—H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv1898 , p193. VI:56.—A. MacKenzie, ibid. vol. lii1897 , p166. VII:8.—Charles Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii1895 , p145. VII:9-13.—J. H. Bernard, From Faith to Faith, p181. VII:12.—H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiv1908 , p216.