The Bad Guys in Mark's Gospel ...

... are the disciples.
Whoa.
What do you think of that?
We've just reached as a homegroup Mark 8:1-26, as we approach the section I'll be leading the teaching on in a few weeks time. We focused today on how sinful the disciples are. But I've been noticing it everywhere. Twice they feed large crowds and twice they don't understand about the loaves (6:52; 8:21), they try to stop other people from being involved in the mission of Jesus (9:38-41), they won't let children come to Jesus (10:13-16), they argue about who's greatest, try and bagsy the best places in heaven and eventually they all abandon Him before the cross, Peter nosediving spectacularly from "have-a-go hero" to being petrified (pun completely intended).
But right now I am blown away by Mark 8:18: "having eyes do you not see and having ears do you not hear?" Compare that with Mark 4:11-12, in which Jesus says that the secrets of the kingdom have been revealed to them but the parables are for the outsiders who ever seeing do not perceive and ever hearing do not understand. The disciples, for all the time Jesus has spent with them and invested in them, are too hard of heart (8:17). If you combine Jesus' critique of the heart in 7:20-23 and His experience of the hearts of the disciples, carefully brought together in chapters 6 to 8 of Mark alongside healing miracles among the unclean Gentiles, you have as clear a narrative case for the doctrines of total depravity and of regeneration (need of) as you could ever get.