Mark by R.C. Sproul

This book is essentially a collection of sermons working through the Gospel of Mark verse by verse. It’s a sort of light touch commentary.

It does what it says on the tin really well. If you want someone to preach the entire Gospel of Mark to you in book form, look no further than this one. Each passage is included in the text together with, as you’d expect, sermon illustrations and points for application throughout.

I want to say this is a good book, but to be honest I’m not really sure who I’d recommend it to. It’s certainly not an academic work and doesn’t try to be a detailed exegetical commentary, but the sheer scale of it I think makes it a but daunting for a casual read. Perhaps it would work well as part of a daily devotional or something.

Sproul does well not to repeat himself too often so it can work simply as a book to read. In short, if this sounds like the sort of book you’d like to read, I think you would.

I got this book for free from Reformation Trust Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

The Virgin Mary

Image via Wikipedia

Right. For some reason I stumbled onto a Roman Catholic website the other day, and ended up finding this forum. Here’s the question that one R.C. user posed, based on Mark 6:3 (‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joseph, and Jude, and Simon? are not also his sisters here with us?’)

Mary was a virgin when she had Jesus, but had children by normal childbirth later. How can we pray to the virgin Mary when she did not remain one?

If you’re interested, have a click through the little discussion that ensues. If you’re not interested, here are my issues with this question and the assumptions behind it:

1. The R.C. church teaches that Mary was a virgin her entire life based not on anything concrete, but solely on something one pope said once, Pope Pius IX to be exact:

The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

2. If Joseph and Mary were married but she died a virgin, this seems to be a bit of a miracle in itself.

3. The only concern the guy quoted above seems to have with Mary being a virgin is that he can’t pray to her any more. And what does the Bible say about praying to Mary? 1 Timothy 2:5:

there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

Simple question, sorry to be patronising: if there is one mediator between God and men, and that one mediator is Jesus, why not speak directly to the one mediator? There being one mediator means that there are not two mediators, which means that Mary is not a mediator between God and men. By praying to Mary (or anyone else) we are either speaking to someone who can’t hear us, or someone who can’t speak to God – what a waste of time, and what an insult to Jesus and his completed work on our behalf.