Chapter # 11 Paragraph # 1 Study # 3
January 23, 2024
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
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Thesis: Mark continues to push the "identity" of Jesus as The King.
Introduction: In our last study we focused upon Mark's identification of the four places that figure into his narrative regarding Jesus.
This evening we are going to look into how he goes about continuing to build the case for Jesus as The Christ before His crucifixion.
- I. "And When They Are Drawing Near Into Jerusalem Into Bethphage And Into Bethany Toward The Mountain Of The Olives..."
- II. "He Is Sending Two Of His Disciples..."
- A. These two are unidentified.
- B. Both the "sending" and the "saying" are present tense verbs.
- III. "He Is Saying To Them..."
- A. What He "is saying".
- 1. "Go into the village which is opposite you..."
- a. The village remains unnamed (unlike those in 11:1).
- b. This is the last of seven uses of "village" in Mark's record: all of the former uses are also never named; there is a distinction between a "village" and a "city" (6:56) with that distinction being a matter of "size".
- c. There is a link in these references to "villages" to "places where Jesus taught" (6:6), "places where people can buy food" (6:36), "places where Jesus healed significant numbers of people" (6:56), "a place where Jesus healed a blind man in two stages" (8:23-26) where Jesus made it a point to keep the village from witnessing the event, and "the place where Jesus asked the 'conclusion' question regarding what people had decided about His identity" (8:27).
- d. In this last use of "village" by Mark, there is a deliberate intention by Jesus to make His identity known by conforming His actions to Zechariah 9:9, but Mark does not make this link in his record.
- 2. "...Immediately entering into it, you shall find a foal having been tied upon which no man has yet sat..."
- a. The fact that this "foal" has been tied at a place immediately inside the boundaries of the village is an indication of Jesus' access to information that no regular man could have (a parallel to this is in John's record regarding Nathanael -- John 1:45-51) and signifies that Jesus is operating out of the normal "humanity" setting).
- b. That He also knows the age of the "foal" and that no man has ever ridden it simply builds Mark's case.
- 3. "...loose it and bring it..."
- 4. "...and if anyone should say to you..." [there were those who said this].
- 5. "...what are you doing?"
- 6. "...say, 'The Lord has need of it..."
- a. This term, "Lord", is the same one as found in John the Baptizer's commission to "make the highway of the Lord straight".
- b. At this stage of the record (including 2:28 -- where the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath -- and 5:19 -- "report what great things the Lord has done for you") Jesus has already been established as that "Lord".
