2.12-22

Community Building

• Welcome new participants.
• Review the themes of Marking Your Mark and any opportunities to practice what we discussed last week: touch any lepers? Bring any friends into Jesus’ presence?...

The Text: Mark 2.12-22

• Ask some who enjoys reading aloud to read these verses.
• What impacted us from Lou’s sermon on these verses?

Discussion Questions:

• Review the context of these stories: do you see any connections back to what we’ve discussed so far in Mark?
• Make some basic observations: who, what, where.
• List everything Mark tells us about Jesus in these stories.
• Compare Jesus’ call to Levy with his call of the first four disciples.
• Who all is affected by Levy’s repentance and belief? How?
• What is the substance of the scribes’ question? How does Jesus answer this concern?
• Discuss fasting, its significance and purpose.
• Why does Jesus say he and his followers are not fasting? Does this make sense? What does Mark want us to understand about Jesus by including the comments about the bridegroom, torn clothes, and wineskins? 

Application reflections

• Try to put yourself into the mindset of the Pharisees. In Jesus’ time the Pharisees and their legal experts (the scribes) where highly respected non-professional religious leaders; they were influential in the rural areas among the common people. They were extremely serious about observing God’s law and extraordinarily disciplined about living pure lives before God and in their communities; they were nationalistic, loved their country, and dreamed of national restoration. From this mindset, what would you think of Jesus’ choice of dinner companions, and his neglect for important spiritual disciplines like fasting?
• When was the last time you spent quality time with the ‘wrong’ crowd. What happened?
• Does being in Jesus’ presence, participating with him in experiencing the kingdom of God among the ‘sick’, overshadow the importance of spiritual disciplines?

Pray