Welcome to the Excel Stillmore podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson. I'm here to encourage you in your walk with God. Thank you for joining in.

Today's podcast is sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John Cunningham is a friend of mine and a brother in Christ, and he can help you with financial

decisions and future planning.

He's been a big help to me and my family, and I commend him to you.

You can reach him at 205-913-1720.

I am so thankful you're here, so let's get started.

Hey, thanks for joining in again. I'm really glad you're here. So I'm committed to something over the next three weeks, and I really hope I can convince you to be on board with me.

And really, I guess it kind of got kicked off last week. I really enjoyed going into that

Bible story in Genesis 11, looking at the things that God has revealed, and drawing out applications

that have daily value. And one of my personal commitments to ESM 2023 is doing more of that.

So around the same time I was recording that episode last week, I was doing a read through the

gospel of Mark. We have this daily Bible read thing going. We've been doing for a few years.

If you happen to be on Facebook, it is the Excel still more a chapter

a day group, where we're just basically embracing this idea that we'd like to read one New Testament

chapter a day until Jesus comes back. There are comments and discussion just about every day,

and we also do a little bit of Old Testament reading. But anyway, long story long, I've been

enamored once again with Mark's gospel.

He's so incredibly to the point, and he also uses this tremendous rhetorical device of

comparisons to make applications crystal clear. So recently, I've noticed several of those comparisons

in the opening chapters of that letter.

And what I would like to do is share those with you over the next three weeks.

Today we'll focus in on Mark chapter 2, a comparison between the Pharisees and Jesus.

...