Mark 3

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¹Jesus went to the Jewish meeting place again on their rest day, and saw a man with one hand that was no good. It was all dried up and useless.

²Some Jewish law men wanted to make trouble for Jesus, so they watched him there. They wanted to see if he was going to help the man with the dried up hand, and make it better on their Jewish rest day. If he did that, they were going to say, “He worked on the rest day, so he broke the law.”

³Jesus knew they were thinking like that, and so he said to the man, “Come here and stand in front, I want everybody to look.”

⁴Then Jesus said to the Jewish law men, “What does our law say about our rest day? Is it right to do good things on our rest day, or is it right to do bad things? Should I make this man better or should I hurt him?” The Jewish law men said nothing.

⁵Jesus looked at those men. They didn’t care about people, they only worried about their law, and this made Jesus really angry, and it made him sad too. Jesus said to the man with the useless hand, “Hold out your hand.” The man put his hand out and straight away it was better. It wasn’t dried up any more.

⁶Then the Jewish law men went away and had a meeting with another mob of Jewish leaders. That other mob were good friends with the big boss called Herod. At that meeting they tried to work out a way to kill Jesus.

⁷Jesus and his followers went away to the big lake and a big mob of people followed them.

⁸These people came from a lot of places. They came from Galilee country, from Judea country, and from the country called Idumea, and some people came from Jerusalem city, and others came from the country near the towns called Tyre and Sidon, and some people came from the other side of the Jordan River. All these people heard about the things that Jesus did and they wanted to see for themselves.

⁹Jesus made lots of people better that day and a lot more people wanted to touch him to get better too. A lot of people pushed up close to him, so he said to his followers, “Get a boat ready for me. I might need more room. If they push me too much I will get up on the boat.”

¹¹Some of the people had bad spirits living inside them. Every time those people saw Jesus, the bad spirits pushed them down to the ground and they shouted out, “You are God’s son.”

¹²And every time they shouted out, Jesus growled at them and told them to stay quiet. He said, “Don’t tell anyone that I’m really God’s son.”

¹³One day Jesus walked up a hill and called out to some of the people to follow him.

¹⁴Then Jesus picked out 12 men that he wanted to be his close followers. Jesus told them, “You mob will walk around with me and live with me, and after that I will send you out to tell people God’s good news, and God will give you the power to send bad spirits out of people.” He called them his close followers.

¹⁶These are the names of the 12 men that Jesus picked out, – Simon. Jesus gave him another name. He called him Peter. – James and John. They were Zebedee’s sons, and they were loud men, so Jesus gave them another name. He called them Thunder men. – Andrew, – Philip, – Bartholomew, – Matthew, – Thomas, – James. He was the son of Alphaeus, – Thaddeus, – Simon. He was a man that really loved his nation and was ready to fight for it. – Judas Iscariot. Some time later he changed sides and helped the enemies of Jesus to catch him.

²⁰Jesus went into a house and a big mob of people gathered there to him. There were so many people that Jesus and his followers couldn’t even get a feed.

²¹Somebody went and told his family about him. They said, “He is mad.” So his family came and tried to take him home to look after him.

²²Some teachers of the Jewish law came from Jerusalem and they were watching Jesus too. They said, “The boss of all the bad spirits, called Beelzebul, is living inside Jesus, and he gives Jesus the power to force bad spirits out from people.”

²³Jesus knew the law teachers were rubbishing him like that, so he called out to them, “Come here and listen to me.” Then he told them stories to teach them. He said, “Do you reckon Satan, the boss of the bad spirits, will fight against his own mob of bad spirits? That doesn’t make sense.

²⁴Listen to me. If a tribe splits into 2 mobs that fight against each other, that tribe will get weak and finish up.

²⁵In the same way, people in a family, if they fight each other all the time they will split up and will stop being a family.

²⁶So, if Satan is fighting against his own mob of bad spirits, he will get weak and will have no power. So he will not do that. You have got it all wrong.

²⁷Listen to this picture story. A man wanted to take some things from a strong man’s house. First he tied up that strong man. After that he took all the strong man’s things. Well, in this story Satan is like that strong man, and I’m like the man that tied him up and now I’m taking my people away from him.

²⁸I’m telling you straight, people might do bad things and say bad things against God, but later, if they are sorry for those bad things, God can say they are not guilty.

²⁹But if somebody says bad things about the Holy Spirit they are always guilty. God will blame them and punish them for ever.”

³⁰You see, the Jewish law teachers reckoned that Jesus had a bad spirit in him. That is why Jesus talked so straight to them.

³¹The mother of Jesus and his younger brothers came to the house where he was teaching. They sent somebody in to tell Jesus to come out and talk to them.

³²There was a big mob of people sitting around Jesus listening to him. The people said to him, “Your mother and your younger brothers are outside looking for you.”

³³Jesus looked around at the people sitting there and said, “Do you want to know my real family? You look right here now. These people here are my real family.

³⁵My real family are the people that listen to God and do what he says. They are my relations, my brothers, and my sisters, and my mothers.”