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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 The Beginning of the Gospel

02 A Day in the Ministry of Jesus

03 Controversies

04 Parables

05 Miracles Around the Lake

06 Inside Out

07 Teaching Disciples Part 1

08 Teaching Disciples Part 2

09 Jerusalem Controversies

10 The Last Days

11 Taken and Tried

12 Tried and Crucified

13 The Risen Lord

I'm Cameron DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

We're on a third lesson now going through the book of Mark and we're on a chapter entitled or lesson week title controversies and I'll tell you 1 controversy that springs to mind is just reviewing what we're going to be covering this time is that it's going to be controversial how you're going to possibly fit all that you could fit into this week.

And you're gonna have to, I imagine, have to focus on some things and pull out other things.

And we don't want to have any controversy, but you had to know whenever the life of Christ was the topic at hand, there's gonna be weeks where there's just so much to talk about that it's gonna be hard to pick and choose.

Yeah, it is gonna be a little controversial too.

The methodology, not that the content also, but actually have 4 talking points this week.

There's controversy right there in itself.

All right, well, we're off to a roaring start here.

Let me have a word of prayer and you can walk us through those 4 talking points this week.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you for the opportunity you give us to study your word, to know you, and by your grace become like you.

Help everything that we discuss to be clear and help every Sabbath school class to be a wonderful Bible study experience for everyone involved.

Okay, well this week's lesson is actually reviewing, according to Sabbath Afternoon's lesson, 5 stories that illustrate Jesus' teaching in contrast to the teaching of the religious leaders.

You've got 5 stories, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

When you read the opening line, did your heart just sink?

Well, you know, so I already had to choose 1 not to do.

And or to conflate it with another and so now you have So I added a talking point which means so we probably need to clarify because we've talked to people before that say, you guys talk so fast on there.

Well, you know, we're trying to get stuff.

Here's a good thing about, you know, this day and age with YouTube and what have you, you can choose the playback speed and you can slow it down if you like.

But I want to, I'm saying that to say I'm not expecting that everybody would use my 4 talking points and we've made that point before.

Even if you will use the talking points, You may say I'll use 3 of those 4, but there were 4 things that jumped out at me that I thought were worthy of it.

So we're just going to do talking point number 1, and basically we're looking at Mark chapter 2 and then part of chapter 3.

Talking point number 1, faith is the evidence of things not seen, primarily from Sunday's lesson.

Talking point number 2 is Jesus' ministry was strategic.

That is drawn primarily from Monday's lesson.

And as this is a narrative and we're walking through, you'll see that this is kind of just going through the course of the quarterly this week.

Talking point number 3 is the Sabbath was made for man.

So I kind of conflated Wednesday and Thursday together a little bit or Tuesday and Wednesday together.

I'm sorry I believe no no Wednesday and Thursday were the sandwich stories, which we'll get into further.

And then talking point number 4 is the cause of God is priority 1, and that is taken primarily from Thursday's lesson.

So, Without any further ado, let's talk about faith.

So we go to chapter 2 of the Gospel of Mark, we have the healing of the paralytic man who, in fact, if you'll read verses 3-5, Mark 2, 3-5.

Then they came to him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by 4 men.

And when they could not come near him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was.

So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying.

When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, son, your sins are forgiven you.

Okay, so I probably should interject here.

Like I have preached entire sermons on this account.

So this makes this quarterly, especially hard.

This particular, you're going through, like you said, you're going through the Gospels, and the Gospel of Mark, there is no shortage of stuff that you can draw out.

And so you may each illustration, each story is a sermon or a study in itself.

Yeah, there's a lot in this story that I could draw out, but the 1 thing that grabbed my attention, and the lesson highlighted a little bit, was this idea of Jesus seeing their faith.

Now, specifically, the Bible says that when the friends brought the paralytic to Jesus, he responded when he, quote, saw their faith.

And very literally, the way that happened is when he saw the man being lowered down through the ceiling.

In other words, that's the thing that was happening that the Bible is pointing to, that that's how he saw their faith in those actions.

What it made me think of, first of all, the lesson brings this idea up that evidently from this passage faith is something you can see.

And you can see it because it's always manifested in action.

It's going to pour out in some kind of response.

And the text that came to my mind is Hebrews 11, verse 1, that says that faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen so something you hope for isn't seen and that's parallel the evidence of things not seen there are things that aren't seen there's an unseen eternal world reality mm-hmm But what the Apostle says there in Hebrews 11 is that faith is the substance and the evidence of those things we can't see.

So faith is in that whole interchange, faith is the thing we can see.

Interestingly, so what faith is, has that trust in the things we can't see, the faith itself is a thing we can see.

And it's kind of, you know, as I read different commentators on this, it was interesting that they would often point to the substance of the faith, you know, in other words, my faith in this thing, or my faith in that thing, or my faith in this person, what have you, which I'll touch on in a minute, but what Paul says in that passage, and I think what we're seeing in the Gospel of Mark, is that the faith itself, in other words, when you see another person's strong conviction that brings them to whatever corresponding action, that in and of itself acts as an evidence to other people.

Like how can you have such a confidence in which...

Like if you know there's a destination and you're out with a team and you're...

And you know you haven't seen it yet but you know it's out there but somebody says I know where this is and they start walking that direction you're like well I'm gonna walk with him because he's now you're following his lead.

Even though you can't see the thing, you can see his faith in his actions.

And even I was gonna say confidence comes from the Latin confide, which is with faith.

It's, it's, but the faith itself is, is an evidence to the people experiencing and others.

What I have here in our notes is the Bible tells us that faith is an evidence of things we can't see.

A person's confidence in eternal things serves as an evidence given by God, because the Bible says God gives everyone a measure of faith, we don't naturally have faith, that eternal things are real.

When you see a person that is taking, having a convicted, taking convicted actions on this eternal unseen world, that's an evidence God gives us.

Again, how can somebody have such confidence?

And now, I mean, as I was thinking about this, you can say, well, there's a lot of people that are delusional and they have confidence in, fine.

But I also believe the scripture is making a point that God gives to every man a measure of faith and that that faith that that somebody else has in something serves as an evidence to us.

Well, yeah, and in the story Jesus sees it, like here Jesus sees their faith, and so it's clearly, it is an evidence of something that they had this faith, and so he responds in turn because he knows by what, by seeing their actions, he knows they have faith.

They have demonstrated the evidence of that faith.

And again, the follow-up point to that is that faith is visible.

There's no such thing as true Bible faith that isn't, you know, this is a point that I believe is being brought out in this passage.

If your faith doesn't produce some kind of corresponding response Then it's not that real faith the Dr.

Albert Barnes in his comments on on the Hebrews 11 1 verse made this point he says faith is what enables us to feel and act as if unseen things were real or which causes them, the unseen things, to exert an influence over us as if we saw them.

A belief that there is such a place as London leads us to act as if this were So if we have occasion to go, you know, there's a place maybe I've never been there.

I've heard about it Never how do I know, you know, I've seen pictures or whatever, but you know, you go back to where there wasn't in Barnes's Day Maybe all the where you got people traveling and YouTube videos what have you.

The point is you still there were things you hadn't seen but your faith in that thing prompted you to an action.

This is what we see here in the healing of the paralytic man that faith has corresponding actions to it.

Series

Talking Points 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

03 Controversies

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Talking Points 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

09 Jerusalem Controversies

29m

Talking Points 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

02 A Day in the Ministry of Jesus

29m

Talking Points, 1st Quarter 2021: Isaiah

11 Waging Love

32m

Talking Points 4th Quarter 2025: Lessons of Faith from Joshua

11 Living in the Land

29m

Talking Points, 3rd Quarter 2021: Rest in Christ

03 The Root of Restlessness

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Talking Points, 3rd Quarter 2021: Rest in Christ

06 Finding Rest in Family Ties

28m

Talking Points 4th Quarter 2025: Lessons of Faith from Joshua

07 Ultimate Loyalty - Worship in a War Zone

30m

Gospel First

49m

Talking Points 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

05 Miracles Around the Lake

29m

Emmanuel Institute Bootcamp

1. Orientation: Intro to Prophecy

2h 43m

Talking Points, 3rd Quarter 2020: Making Friends for God

13-A Step In Faith

29m

Talking Points 1st Quarter 2023: Managing for the Master Until He Comes

07 Unto the Least of These

29m

Sound Doctrine