Mark Chapter 3

Mark 3:1-6 ~ The Hardness of the Heart

What happened to their hearts? They had been hearing the good news from Jesus Christ time after time after time to the point where their heart responds to the Lord and they develop a condition. Do you realize that a person can develop callousness? That they can reach the point where they cannot be sensitive to the things of the Lord anymore? Everybody's heart is being conditioned by hearing the word. Either being receptive to the word, or developing a resistance and a callousness towards the hearing of the word.

Mark 3:7-12 ~ The Confession of Demons

People are going to be drawn away from Christ, from the faith. And be seduced by experiences, which are not spiritual, but have stimulation to them. Many are following emotionally stimulated experiences under the guise that it is the power of the Holy Spirit. We have to be careful. We have to see that demonic forces are in and around the church ready to deceive us and produce doctrines. The false doctrines always follow the experience because the doctrine is made to justify any emotional experience that we might have as being spiritual. So it is important to see them in that order: seducing spirits and doctrines of demons. The seducing comes first and then the doctrines of demons come second.

Mark 3:13-15 ~ The Choosing of the Twelve Apostles

The only reason that people come together is because of the Holy Spirit. They have nothing in the flesh or in the human to come together for. That is what we are going to see in our study of the apostles, which should be an encouragement to us. They are people who the Lord chose. They themselves would not have chosen the other people that were in the group. Their personalities differed, their attitudes differed, even their beliefs differed. But the Spirit has chosen them and God's Spirit has drawn them. And believe me, the twelve apostles were no different than you or I except God chose them to function as apostles. He put His Spirit in them to be apostles, and that is the only thing that made them apostles. It was not their choice. They did not earn it.

Mark 3:16-19 ~ The Characteristics of the Twelve Apostles

Now you put all these people together with Jesus for three years walking over the hillsides. They would never have come together had Jesus not chosen them and called them out. These are not people who would personally choose the other people to be with. It is because of Christ. So it is with the body of Christ. The Lord is not always going to put us with people that we are going to get along with. Our personalities are not always going to be alike. If you are looking for the Lord's will, do not look at it from a fleshy standpoint, look at it from a spiritual standpoint. It is important to realize the only thing that we have in common is Christ. It is only because of Christ that we come together.

Mark 3:20-30 ~ The Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit

Jesus was telling them to be careful. If you reject the Holy Spirit's testimony to you, and you keep refusing the persuasion of God's Spirit, and you do not surrender your life to Christ, that is what you are going to have to answer for when you stand before God.

Mark 3:31-35 ~ The Correction Concerning Family

Jesus did not teach irresponsibility toward family, He taught priority. We cannot please God and man. We must realize when Jesus came, He called people to follow Him, to be born of His Spirit, and to submit to His Spirit and be part of His Spiritual family.