Chapter # 6 Paragraph # 6 Study # 1
March 22, 2022
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
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Thesis: The final demonstration of the truth that Jesus wished for His disciples to "get" was His temporary creation of "Kingdom" conditions in Gennesaret.
Introduction: In our final study of Jesus' walk upon the surface of the sea, we noted that Jesus responded to the plight of the disciples without regard for the fact that their hearts were yet "hardened" so that they did not gain the proper insight that the feeding of 5000 men was designed to provide. Jesus was intent upon the shattering of the "hardness" of their hearts, but, in order to do that, He discounted it at this time because there was a "crack" in that hardness created by their absolute inability to row their boat to Bethsaida. "Hardness" is a condition generated, in part, by the determination of men to maintain their attitude of "independent ability" to "do" the will of God. This "hardness" is a result of an incomplete development of "repentance" in that fully developed "repentance" consistently applies the twin issues of "repentance" across the entire range of life's "performance" issues. In God's dealings with men, He initially summons them to an embrace of the general concept of "repentance"unto a general "forgiveness of sins". Then, having given them a foundation for life by "justification", He summons them to "specific" instances of "repentance" throughout their daily lives; thus, He generates a gradual development of "complete repentance" in which men gradually jettison their attitude of "independent ability" until they live in a consistent "humility of dependence".
That God is not "put off" by the hardness of men's hearts when they have responded to the general embrace of the concept of "repentance" is, in the record of Jesus' "getting into the boat", clearly demonstrated. This is the good encouragement of this text/context. However, the down side to this text/context is the fact that "hardness" forces those who are yet "hardened" to have to face serious hammer blows in their experiences in life in order to ultimately shatter that hardness. Seldom are these hammer blows "pleasant experiences", but often they are relatively mild, depending upon how tenacious is our determination to maintain our attitude of "independent ability".
The strong winds of opposition (coming upon the heels of the command that the disciples give the people something to eat) created a larger crack in the hardness, and Jesus' awareness of that moved Him to get into the boat.
In this next paragraph, we are going to see Jesus exposing His disciples to yet another demonstration of His willingness to pursue "repentance" by way of a different kind of "hammer blow": the kindness Paul mentions in Romans 2:4.
- I. Mark's Focus Upon The Arrival Of The Boat At Gennesaret.
- A. Is marked by four elements of Mark's words.
- 1. First, Mark chose to use the qualifying participle translated as "when they had crossed over".
- a. As a qualifying participle, the word indicates a preliminary 'happening'.
- 1) Jesus had given them instructions to get into the boat and go to Bethsaida.
- 2) This "qualifier" indicates that we should give some thought to the fact that what Jesus had commanded them to do was now done.
- a) This means the issues of their inability to fulfill the command; Jesus' walk upon the sea; their terror-driven assignment of a demonic identity to Jesus; His revelation of His true identity; His getting into the boat; their reaction; its root in a lack of understanding of what they were supposed to have understood from the feeding of the 5000 men, and that lack being driven by their "hardness of heart".
- b) This also means that we (the readers) should not go any further in the text until we have given these things some serious consideration.
- b. As the qualifying participle, we need to be aware, at least, that Mark's choice of this particular word is deliberate in its "association" with the only other time he used it.
- 1) The word is relatively rare in the New Testament (six uses: two by Matthew ((one of which is an exact parallel to Mark's use in this text; two by Luke (one in his Gospel and one in his record of the Book of Acts -- neither of which parallel Mark's/Matthew's uses); and two by Mark (one in the prior text of 5:21 and the one in this text).
- 2) Given the number of times that Jesus and His disciples used a boat to go from one place to another, the rarity of this use of "cross over" is significant.
- 3) Mark's particular use is enlightening.
- a) His first use is found in the transition from the record of Jesus' dealings with the demoniac who was possessed of, apparently, more than 5000 demons and the record of the Jairus/woman-with-an-issue-of-blood events where the major emphasis is upon "faith" (of which, in this account, the disciples were in serious deficiency) in Jesus' ability to completely dominate physical-world problems.
- b) This second use is between the feeding-of-5000-men/walking-upon-the-sea events and the indiscriminate healings in Gennesaret.
- c) The fact that the earlier record blends the twin issues of Jesus' absolute authority over the spiritual realm and His absolute authority over the physical realm and has an apparent link to this current record with both the number (5000) and the disciples' identification of Jesus with a "demon" means that we should see this "crossing over" as a re-emphasis upon the major over-all thesis that people ought to "be believing" what the events declare.
- d) This makes the issue of Jesus' "getting into the boat" in spite of "hardness of heart" a serious statement regarding what it means for Him to be a "compassionate Shepherd".
- 2. Second, the main verb of the initial part of this record is "they came" (used in 599 texts of the New Testament), and it is recorded in terms of the phrase "upon the land".
- a. The "upon the land" phrase is presented as a picture of the boat sitting "upon the land".
- b. This "upon the land" picture is significant in its association with the final verb in the opening sentence, translated "moored".
- 3. Third, their "coming" was "into Gennesaret".
- a. This is interesting in that the original destination was Bethsaida, which is close to, but not actually "in" Gennesaret.
- b. Added to this "interesting tidbit" is the fact that Gennesaret is only found in three texts of the New Testament and two of them are in "parallel accounts" of the same event (Matthew/Mark) [the third one being in Luke and referring to the "sea of Galilee" by the terms "lake of Gennesaret" (5:1)].
- c. The significance of Gennesaret is two-fold.
- 1) The name is derived from the Hebrew word for "harp" and the area contained a "hill" which had the form of a harp in its topographical form.
- a) This, at least, injects the issue of a "harp" into the narrative.
- b) The reality of David's dealings with Saul when he was tormented by an evil spirit by playing upon a "harp" is, thus, at least a hint as to why Mark switched from Bethsaida to Gennesaret: there are "soothing tones" involved in Mark's record.
- 2) The place was, at this point in history, the richest section of the entire region of Judea/Galilee: it was the epitome in the first century of "a land flowing with milk and honey".
- a) The record is jarring.
- i. The riches of "the land" were supposed to be available to the people who were to inhabit the land and partake of its riches on the basis of covenant faithfulness.
- ii. The massive number of physically impaired people testifies to the absence of covenant faithfulness.
- b) That Jesus healed "all who touched Him", indiscriminately, signals the massive "grace" ("grace upon grace"; "where sin abounded, grace super-abounded") that was made available to those dwelling in those regions.
- i. Thus, the "soothing tones" of physical health were added to the richness of "the land".
- ii. This is a declaration of Jesus as "qualified" to be the King of the imminent Kingdom because of His overt abilities (feeding 5000 men; walking upon the sea; and healing without difficulty).
- 4. The final verb is seriously mistranslated: "moored to the shore".
- a. The verb so translated is rare, even in the secular literature: Mark is the only use of this word in either the Greek of the New Testament or the Greek of the Septuagint.
- b. Its rarity makes its meaning difficult.
- c. The word signals the bringing of a boat to a place of refuge.
- d. The voice of the verb is "passive", indicating they were "brought" to this place: this is in significant harmony with John's record of this event in 6:21 -- "...and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going").
- e. There is this possibility: Mark was presenting Jesus as bringing the boat to rest upon the land, and, in so doing, he was introducing the issue of The Flood by which the Ark delivered its inhabitants when it was "brought to rest upon the land" [this would, then, be a picture of Jesus setting forth the new beginnings, after judgment, so that the message, "The Kingdom of God is at hand" has been demonstrated].
