The Inside of the Cup: A Devotional Based on Mark’S Gospel

By "Gerald C. ""Jeb""" Monge

The Inside of the Cup is a daily devotional. Its purpose is to help the reader gain a greater understanding of the Gospel according to Mark and to nurture his/her faith.
There was great confusion about what it meant that Jesus is the Messiah. The long-standing conception of the Messiah was that he would bring in a new age of King David. The people longed for a political emancipator and glorious ruler. Instead Jesus was a commoner. He was vulnerable. That is the great meaning of the Incarnation which even the Twelve disciples did not realize until after Jesus resurrection.
What does it mean that Jesus is the Christ? What does it mean in your life that he is your Messiah? Jeb deals with questions like these, and the discussions lead to broadening and strengthening your faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477295595

"Gerald C. ""Jeb""" Monge

Jeb Monge is retired and living in northern Minnesota among the forests and the lakes. His two companions are his two dogs: Reggie and Jake. Jeb has had a career in the Lutheran ministry and as a business executive. His experiences in both fields have enabled him to test his theology in the world. He specializes in translating the Bible from the Hebrew and the Greek and writing devotionals. His goal is to help people nurture their faith on a daily basis.

Book preview

The

Inside of

the cup

A Devotional based on Mark’s gospel

Gerald C. Jeb Monge

US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2012 by Gerald C. Jeb Monge. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

All Biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/05/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9560-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9559-5 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Dedicated to the memory of my parents:

Harold L. and Mildred I Hovick Monge.

They have not only encouraged me in my faith and knowledge of the Bible,

but they have been living examples of what it means to be a Christian.

INTRODUCTION

I have studied the Gospel according to Mark since 1965—for forty-seven years at this sitting. I continue to study the remainder of the Bible and also other disciplines. I have translated Mark’s gospel numerous times. Obviously, I love this book.

Mark was the first gospel to be written. The Twelve Apostles went out preaching and teaching throughout the Middle East. These messages were retold in the churches they founded for the next 35 years. Finally, around 68 AD the gospel was formally written down and attributed to John Mark, also called Mark.

Matthew, Luke and John were formally written by 100 AD. They used Mark as the primary source, plus there was another group of sayings called the Quelle which in German means ‘source.’

The four gospels are basically the same, but different Apostles were telling the story of Jesus in their own way, and they had different audiences. Therefore the gospels are not identical. Mark was addressing Christians in the Roman Empire. Matthew was talking to Jewish audiences. Luke was telling the story of Jesus to gentiles, that is, non-Jews, and finally John wrote a more theological description of Jesus. The message of Jesus which is called the ‘gospel’ and means ‘good news’ comes through all of the books very clearly.

In this devotional based on Mark’s gospel, you will come to see that the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ includes his teaching and healing. But the most profound message you will receive is that Jesus himself is the Gospel. This will be discussed throughout this devotional.

I recommend the following procedure in your devotional.

1   Open your Bibles and read the passage on which the devotional is based.

2   Think about the passage for a minute or so.

3   Then read the devotional.

4   Take 2 or 3 days to repeat this process.

5   Do not be afraid to underline the Bible passages. Also, use the margins to make notes of what you are thinking as you are reading. These notes will be invaluable.

6   The important thing is to begin right now. There is an ancient Greek saying: Begun; half done. It was the first verse I translated in my Greek studies. I have used the saying throughout my life. Beginning a task is half the battle. So, remember: Begun; half done.

What you can expect in participating in this devotional and using this procedure is that your life will begin to change for the better. The Holy Spirit will be deeply involved in your life. He will direct and guide you each day. He will also fill your heart with courage. Your faith in Jesus Christ will continue to grow. You will begin noticing changes as soon as you begin the devotional. Begun; half done, and the LORD be with you.

An important thing in the procedure: Give the Holy Spirit time. You cannot rush through this process and expect any significant change in your life.

Gerald C. Jeb Monge, BA, MDiv, ChFC

Devotional—Mark 1:1   The beginning of the gospel

Mark begins his gospel with the words: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is a dramatic statement, in spite of seeming to be an ordinary introduction.

Beginnings are difficult. Consider the birth of a child. Pain and suffering for both mother and child. The first day of school is exciting, but it also involves leaving home, a place of security, and going into an unknown. Beginning a new business involves much anxiety and takes a lot of courage. And so Mark is telling us the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ is including not only excitement about being freed but also involves the fear of not knowing what is going to be involved.

When I was baptized, my parents brought me to God’s House. Dad stretched me out over the baptism font to have water poured over my head. The pastor spoke words from the Bible and pronounced the Holy Spirit to be upon me and my life. It seems to be similar to the impregnation of Mary, Jesus’ mother. The Holy Spirit came over her, gave her the courage to give birth to and raise the baby Messiah. The hopes and dreams of the people were that they would again be freed from foreign domination and be allowed to determine their own lives.

Jesus is coming to us in the same sense in baptism, having the water and Word passed over our heads and filling our minds and souls with his presence. The ancient Greeks conceived of the soul to be a divine part of us which determines our spiritual lives. The ancient Jews, our soul-mates in the faith, thought of the soul to be the entirety of our being, our total selves. I like a combination of the two concepts: The Holy Spirit is within us, and it is indwelling in our entire being.

Jesus is coming to be Lord of our entire lives. He comes and frees us from the power of the Devil. In our society we tend to downplay the Devil. C. S. Lewis wrote Screwtape Letters to help us comprehend the presence of the Devil in our lives in this century. Norman Mailer, a best-selling author, died a year ago. A couple months before he died, he was interviewed on Book Span. The interviewer was asking about his novels about war, society, etc., and he explained how he got involved in the various topics. The final question was: Do you believe in the devil? His response was: With a capital D. Throughout his studies of life in the twentieth century, he believed without a doubt that there was a Devil. He added: Devil with a capital D.

Mark begins his gospel with the word beginning. We will discover what a radical change this involves. It is radical because Jesus will cause a revolution in our lives. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will bring a newness to us which is frightening and thrilling. This will be a joyful and wonderful journey for all of us.

Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, take our lives and fill them with your Spirit. Amen.

Devotional—Mark 1:1   The beginning of the gospel—

continued

Gospel was a next concept. Gospel means ‘good news.’ Good news for the Jews in Jesus’ day was freedom from political and religious persecution. The Romans were heartless, much like the pharaoh whom Moses confronted, and the religious leaders seemed to increase guilt and impose further taxes on the members of the church.

Freedom is what they sought, and we are no different. We long for freedom. We do have a limited freedom in our country. The concept of law is ‘mutual limitation.’ I will not drive 100 miles per hour through your neighborhood, and I expect you not to do that either.

Freedom is also limited in that only a few people determine our concept of what is good for our country. The wealthy, in every form of government, have the greatest influence on the policy-makers, so their desires have more impact on the representatives who make the laws than the remainder of us do. In Jesus’ day, the Emperor in Rome decided what was good for everyone, and he called that ‘gospel.’

We also seek freedom. Human nature has not changed since the story of Adam and Eve. We are controlled by our self-imposed fears. What if I do this or that, will I succeed or fail, will I be accepted by my family and friends? How can I be freed from the guilt over past mistakes? Will I be able to cope with the unknown future? The list is endless. Our minds do not forget. Everything we ever do or think is recorded in them. Freedom from our psyches is needed in every culture and in every period of history.

What is the gospel you are seeking? How will that be good news to you? Whatever it is, St. Mark will be writing about it in these sixteen chapters. You will be absolutely amazed at how this gospel is relevant to you! It is exciting!.

Prayer: Lord, we seek freedom. Help us understand how we can be freed, so we may use the talents you have given to us. Amen.

Devotional—Mark 1:1   The beginning of the gospel—

continued

The final words of the first verse of Mark’s gospel are Jesus Christ. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Mark has already given you the conclusion. He should have not written Jesus Christ until he completed his writing. But he teases us by giving us the answer.

What does Jesus Christ mean to you? He is the Lord whom we seek. He is the center of our lives. It is he who forgives us and gives us eternal life. We have stated those words all through our lives and throughout the past two millenia. They are so common to us that I wonder if we do not forget what they mean. I realize that I need to stop and think about what Jesus Christ means to me.

The gospel involves Jesus of Nazareth, just another Galilean: a member of the northern part of the Holy Land, an ordinary, unimportant person. He worked with his hands, that is, he was a carpenter or a stone mason or something like that. Jesus was also a specialized day-laborer. He depended on finding work everyday. No long-term contracts. No on-going salary. He left the house in the morning, went to the places where he might find work and went about asking if he could help.

It was no different from the Israelites wandering for forty years in the Sinai wilderness who depended on God each day for enough food to last them through that day. The next day they waited for God to supply them for food. The day-laborer spent his life the same way. He depended on God to find him work each day from which he would bring home the income earned. That is why he understood the parable he taught about the day-laborers.

Mark also includes the designation Christ in Jesus’ name. It was the Apostle Paul who began combining the two names. Calling Jesus Jesus Christ became the common way of referring to him.

Christ is the Greek for ‘anointed.’ Messiah is a Hebrew term. The Jews were longing for the Messiah to come. The world in which Jesus came was a Greek-speaking world. Actually in the day to day transactions they spoke Aramaic throughout the Middle East. But since the time of Alexander the Great the official language of the Middle East was Greek. Now this occurred even though the Romans had conquered the Mediterranean world a hundred years earlier. Confusing? Definitely, but it needed to be said to help eliminate any confusion in the future.

After Jesus’ resurrection, the Apostles realized that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, and that his salvation was much more than being freed politically from the Roman oppression. This led the Apostles to create the first creed which was simply Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the Son of God. He is the Messiah/the Christ. He has come and will come again. He has freed us from the past and present and fills us with his Spirit to give us courage now and direction for the future. Therefore, we are freed from our past sins, freed of the sins we make each day until we return to God in Heaven.

Mark is telling us a lot in this first sentence: The beginning of the gospel/good news of Jesus Christ. Each devotional will help you understand and experience the wonder of that message.

Advice: read and reread the verses and devotionals. The more you do, even for several days on one devotional, the deeper it will sink in, and the more you will experience this good news. Heaven is not just some date in the future when we die or at the end of time. Heaven begins this moment when we realize that Jesus is the Christ.

Prayer: Help me to experience the good news that Jesus is the Christ more each day of my life. Amen.

Devotional—Mark 1:2-8   Preparation for the coming of the Messiah

Next Mark refers to two Old Testament prophecies: Malachi and Isaiah. The message is that God is sending someone to prepare his people for the coming of the Messiah. John the baptizer was to come and do the preparation. There should be no doubt when Jesus does come that he is the Messiah.

How God prepares us for the coming of the Messiah into our lives is the same as what John the baptizer taught: Repent, confess and be baptized. Routine? Of course, it is. God is not playing a game with us. What I like about God is that he communicates to us without puzzles to solve. His message is clear. Repent. That means you are to consider your life. Do you have sins that bother you and cause you to feel guilty? These sins imprison us. They take away our freedom. They nag at our conscience.

In our world we downplay sin. That was something the people in the past believed. There is no such thing as sin. Yet we all live with guilt. When you think about the gifts God gives us which makes us different from the other creatures is that we are able to think, to conceive thoughts, to analyze them, to decide which of them is good or bad. Also, we are the only creature who is able to communicate with words. The other creatures do communicate with sounds and behavior, but they are not able to communicate using words. Words are unique to us.

Along with words, we have memory. When we say or do a thing, we are able to remember all of these actions. It is memory which drives us crazy. We never forget the wrongs we have done to ourselves and to others. It is because of memory that we need to examine our lives. That is repentance: thinking over what we have done and not done.

In the book of Leviticus, a book which will cure any case of insomnia, sin is described. Sin in and of itself is the result of breaking off our relationship with God who is our source of power and strength. When we go it alone we succumb to the temptations around us. At times we intentionally sin against God or others. We also unintentionally do that. Then there are times when we sin, and we don’t even realize it. Finally, we sin but we are completely aware that we have done so. We will see examples of all of these sins in this devotional.

When we realize that we are sinners, then we are to confess our sins. In Sunday worship we give a confession in general with all of the other worshipers. What is also needed is to personally confess our sins to our pastors. We list each of our sins. Then we tell our pastor exactly what we have done. Then he/she forgives us. It is then and only then that we are freed from the guilt of our individual sins. Then we are freed to live. Our sense of forgiveness is as complete as our confession in person to God’s representative and is as complete as we confess each and every sin which bothers us.

Baptism is the formal removal of our sins and the formal giving us our name, Child of God: one who is loved by God. At the entrance to the sanctuary is the Baptismal font. In it is water, baptismal water. Each time we stop, dip our fingers into the water and cross ourselves, we renew our baptisms. Each time we do this we are reminded—there is our memory again—that we are God’s beloved child and that he forgives us.

The Old Testament Jews along with Jesus realized that baptism is a daily affair. Each day we repent, confess our sins to God and are forgiven. Each day involves sinning: not trusting God to strengthen us to live abundantly. We need to consciously renew our baptisms. It is a conscious habit which breathes new life into our worn-out bodies and souls.

Preparation for the coming Messiah is a daily affair and not one we do once a week or when we are baptized as infants. It is a delightful and freeing habit or ritual.

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for receiving and accepting us into your presence. Thank you for assuring us that we can confess our sins to you and that we will be forgiven and freed to live fully again. Amen.

Devotional—Mark 1:9-11   Jesus’ baptism

Why was Jesus baptized? He was God, and he was perfect, that is, sinless.

The question needs to be asked again: Why was Jesus baptized? Well, he was also human. He was fully God and fully human. Being human means that we are separated from God. God is in heaven, and Jesus is no longer with him, so he voluntarily entered the world of humankind, and that realm is sinful, i.e., separated from God. But he perfectly obeyed God, and therefore he was sinless. Yet, Jesus was in the world of separation