Please open your Bibles with me to the gospel according to Mark chapter 1. Our text this evening will simply be the first verse of Mark chapter 1. Serves as an introduction to the book of Mark, an introduction to the prologue, the first 11 verses of Mark. We'll be looking at a few of those verses the next time. But for this evening, we'll just be looking at verse 1. Let us give ear now to the reading of God's holy, inerrant, and life-giving word. Mark chapter 1, verse 1. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for revealing your word to us. We thank you that your word, that all of scripture, is profitable to us. We believe in the Holy Spirit. And so we would ask for divine aid in illuminating your holy word for us, that we might glean all that he has inspired, even in these very few words at the beginning of this gospel of Mark. Please help us in this task. Clear our minds. Give us a sight for Jesus. We would see Jesus, O Lord. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight this evening, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. In Jesus' name, amen. I've got some bad news. Those are dreaded words, if there ever were any, if you've ever been told them. And of course, it can range from being informed of some sort of a minor disappointment to things that are much, much worse. And we live in a world of bad news, it seems. The more media coverage we're given access to, the more bad news enters our senses. And the older you get, the more bad news sometimes seems to dominate our own personal news cycle. and that of greater things, national and world events as well. And sadly, all too often when you receive good news in this world, it's tempered by some mitigating factor or another, and we are all forced to admit that even the best news that we might receive in this world will ultimately turn out to be unfulfilling. Well, thanks be to God, there is truly good news to be heard and to be believed and to give us hope. And Mark gives us, in this opening verse of his gospel, unquestionably sure and certain good news. This is news that changes everything for everyone who hears and believes. Mark proclaims for us, even in this one short verse, the gospel Jesus Christ. This is, as I said, an introduction to the Gospel of Mark. Verse 1 serves as somewhat of a subtitle or a superscript to the book, but it also gives us the substance of the entire book of Mark. Sort of like you might have a chef who reduces a stock down into a sauce, and he reduces it down and evaporates the water, and it begins to concentrate all of the flavors of all the ingredients in that stock into a rich, concentrated sauce. That's what Mark is doing in this one verse. He's reducing the contents of his gospel into this condensed, tightly packed opening phrase, like a distillation of the gospel according to Mark. Of course, it introduces the opening verses, verses 1 through 11, where John the Baptist, the forerunner, is introduced and sums it up. But it also functions, as I said, like a topic sentence. What I want to do this evening is simply take, if you will, a magnifying glass to this first verse of Mark's gospel and see what he has packed together for us in this grand statement. Here at the very outset, Mark lays his claim and states his case for the only hope that you and I have. Here is hope. Here is good news. Here is good news in a person, the person of Jesus Christ. Here is the gospel. What Mark is telling us is that the proclamation of the reality that salvation comes only through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is a message to build up God's people in faith and godliness. The gospel, according to Mark, is a message that makes disciples, and it is a message for disciples. Mark is writing as a pastor to build up a people in what may be very dark times. I want to unpack what Mark does as he presents this message to us. The first thing I want to show you is that the gospel is entirely of God. The gospel is a gospel of God, and it is a gospel entirely of God. The very first word Mark uses to introduce this book is not accidental. There is weight to this word. Of course, in our English Bibles, the first word is the. That word is not in the original Greek. The first word of Mark's gospel is beginning. Other books of the Bible begin this way. There's no article before introductions of other books in scriptures. And there are Old Testament connections that Mark intends for his readers and hearers to notice. The book of Genesis is the most obvious example of this. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. John's gospel will end up starting the same way, drawing the reader and the hearer's mind to the beginning of the world. Hosea, the prophet, and other prophetic books, of course. But Hosea, the prophet, is an excellent example of this in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. This opening of the prophecy of Hosea begins with the exact same formula and the exact same word. beginning of the word of the Lord to Hosea. Michael Kruger says it like this, by placing his writings in the context of the Old Testament prophetic books, the author of Mark indicates that he too is bringing a message from the Lord. So Mark's readers and hearers would be familiar with this formula indicating that someone greater than Mark was speaking. God was delivering a message. Mark is saying, give ear to the word of the Lord. James Edwards says this, Mark doubtlessly chooses this as a reminder of God's activity in history. In the beginning, God created the world. So too, the age of the gospel is manifest when the son of God becomes a human being in Jesus Christ. Here is the beginning of a message that God is doing something and God is saying something about what he is doing. Rooted in the Old Testament revelation as we'll see in the future from the next few verses, but here is the dawning of something new. A new work. A new message from on high, William Lane says this, the word beginning has rich biblical overtones which lend an awesome ring to the opening phrase and serves to recall that it is God who initiates redemption on behalf of men. Mark is introducing a new, a momentous stage in redemptive history and it is the redemptive activity of God and God alone. John, of course, the forerunner, is about to be introduced in the next few verses as the one preparing the way for the Lord. And we're going to see even more Old Testament roots. But here is the beginning. God is on the move. Beginning also has a connotation here of much more rather than a temporal sense of a timeline, it has a sense of preeminence and weight and importance. It's first in terms of origin, if you will, or first in terms of principle, matters of first things, if you will. James Edwards says, beginning thus identifies in the initial word of the gospel, the authority from whom the gospel derives, God himself. the author and originator of all that is. Beginning signals the fulfillment of God's everlasting word. The gospel isn't a new story. The gospel is the beginning of the fulfillment of a very old, old story. The gospel is a powerful act of God. It is not something you and I do. It is something God alone has done. And that brings me to the second feature of the gospel according to Mark. And it is this, the gospel is a proclamation of good news from God. When we hear Mark say, uh, the beginning of the gospel, we might be tempted to hear, Hey, I'm starting to write my gospel because we're used to the term gospel as an indicator for the genre of the kind of book we're looking at the gospel, according to Mark, the gospel, according to Matthew, et cetera. That's not the way Mark is using that term. Of course, later, in fact, very early in the second century, that term did take on that meaning to describe a genre of biblical literature, but that did not exist prior to Mark writing this. This was rather a message. This is almost certainly, of course, Mark's gospel would become known as Mark's gospel because of his inclusion of this word in the first verse. But when Mark begins this way, that's not what he's saying. He's saying, here's a divine announcement. Here is the foundational apostolic message, the beginning of the good news. George Ladd says this, this is no mere historical record, but good news. And the good news is Jesus Christ. And of course, the word that's translated gospel in our English Bibles, the Greek word is euangelion. This was not an unfamiliar word to Marx readers. The Roman audience, and to which he was most certainly writing, would have well been familiar with the term euangelion. It carried a lot of weight in the Greco-Roman world. In that culture, you could say it meant something like joyful tidings. It was most often connected with the emperor cult. So something like the birthday of an emperor, or a military victory, or a new successor to the emperor's throne would be announced throughout the empire as a euangelion, a joyful tiding. It was meant to give confidence and hope to all of the citizens who heard the good news. William Lane says it like this, our English word would be an evangelist, where we get the word evangelism, of course, an evangelist and historical event, which introduces a new situation for the world. One such evangel, or euangelion, a gospel, if you will, was discovered from the year 9 BC regarding Caesar Augustus. It was marking his birthday to be the new beginning of the civil year. They were gonna start changing their calendar to correspond with the birthday of Caesar Augustus. Here's what the gospel said. It is a day which we may justly count as equivalent to the beginning of everything, if not in itself and in its own nature, at any rate in the benefits it brings. In as much as it has restored the shape of everything that was failing and turning into misfortune and has given a new look to the universe at a time when it would gladly have welcomed destruction if Caesar had not been born to be the common blessing of all men. Another definition included here was that the birthday of the God, small g, Augustus, was for the world the beginning of joyful tidings, there's our word, which had been proclaimed on his account. I have known some folks who make a pretty big deal out of their own birthday, but that is another level altogether. So Mark takes a term, which is weighty in the culture, And he takes it to another level. He injects this term with a supernatural force. This is no announcement of some worldly victory of an emperor or a kingship that will one day inevitably fade into the dustbin of history. No, no. Much more, this is an announcement of good tidings that actually and truly changes reality. William Lane says, Mark announces Jesus's coming as an event that brings about a radically new state of affairs for mankind. And that this announcement, this gospel is a living word of hope from the lips of an appointed messenger. There's also an Old Testament connotation to this term that Mark's readers would have been familiar with. Isaiah uses it like this. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns. Later in the prophecy of Isaiah, he would go on to say, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn. For Mark, the good news, the evangel, the euangelion was the fulfillment of all of the old Testament hopes. that the gospel will be ultimately the full and final salvation of all of God's covenant people. Here is the grandest announcement of the final hope, and it's bound up in a person who will redeem Israel from all evil. This is a distinctly forward-looking, end-of-all-things sort of perspective that this word includes. in the Old Testament. This announcement, this message itself brings in a new state of affairs that will inaugurate the final blessings, that will start the process of the end result of all the final blessings for God's people. Again, William Lane says this, beginning with the inauguration of Jesus's public ministry, Mark announces Jesus coming as an event that changes everything, a radically new state of affairs. I want to probe my own heart and your heart. Do we feel that way about the gospel? That reality, that literally reality is different. We live in a different world because of the gospel. Do I behave this way? Do I speak this way? Do I think this way? Does it consume me in such a way that I really live as if there's a radically new state of affairs? There's also a New Testament Christian use of this term that Mark has in mind. Of course, from the very earliest days, the New Testament church, this term, again, as I said, rather than a designation for a particular book of the Bible, this was a designation of the true apostolic message in all of its fullness. This is a message, this word gospel, it embodies the foundational apostolic message to and for the church. And it's a proclamation. of salvation that has come only through a person, Jesus Christ. See, Augustus, the Caesar, couldn't deliver on any of the hopes that were pinned on him from some small G gospel. The delightful irony, though, is that during the reign of that very same Caesar Augustus, one was born who would fulfill all the hopes that were ever promised to all of God's people. In the Greco-Roman world, these gospels were somewhat common. They were always used in the plural, but Mark writes here, not to be missed, the gospel. Salvation has come, and that salvation is in Jesus Christ alone, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. That brings me to the final feature of this verse, and that is the content of the gospel according to Mark. Why and how can I really stand up here and tell you that there is such certain and true good news? Because it sounds almost too good to be true. It is because, as we have seen, God has acted God has proclaimed that He is acting, but more specifically, God has acted and He is proclaiming that He has acted in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Put another way, the Gospel is about, or rather, the Gospel is a person. The Gospel is God's message about God acting in the person of God's Son. In Jesus Christ, the Gospel has arrived person. Mark is going to present the question at various points throughout his gospel from the lips of various characters in his gospel. Who is this? And here in the very first verse he answers that question for the reader. Who is this? This is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mark in Phrasing it this way gives us three names that I want to look at that inform us about the gospel realities that the entire rest of the gospel according to Mark will begin to unpack and unfold. He gives us three names. First, it is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus. There's a lot packed in that name. It's very familiar to us, of course. It rolls off our tongue without even a thought. It's a common Israelite name even in the day. But it was a name that was full of Old Testament hope. A name that went back into Old Testament redemptive history. It's a name that means Yahweh saves, Jehovah saves. Jehovah is salvation. Many Israelites would name their sons Jesus in remembrance of the great hope that they were awaiting that would come from the Messiah. But what did the angel tell Joseph about the baby that was to be born to Mary? You will call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. This Jesus is the one through whom Yahweh is salvation. This is the one who is the answer to all of the hopes of God's people long awaited. The forgiveness of sins. He will save his people from their sins. In the very next chapter of Mark's gospel, in chapter two, there's a whole episode with the gentleman that they lowered down through the roof that was paralyzed and he couldn't walk. And Jesus says to him, your sins are forgiven. And everyone says, who does he think he is? And you might think to yourself, if you were a spectator, you know, I think the guy wanted something more than forgiveness. He's come down through the roof. as a crippled man, but there Jesus displays the authority by healing the man in order to show that he had the authority to forgive sins. What was that man's greatest need? What was the man's greatest need? It was not to be freed of his crippling condition. It was to be rescued. forgiven of all of his debts. I wonder if we become callous to that. The fact that we stand up here and we say, I believe in the forgiveness of sins. That's not Christian jargon. That's heaven or hell. And that's where I was headed, apart from the full and free pardon through the one named Jesus, who will save his people from their sins. Is that a relief to me? Is that a relief to you? Or do you catch yourself thinking that, oh, that's sort of something I just take for granted. The very name Jesus ought to remind you and me that our greatest need was not and is not what we might be tempted at times to think it is. Sometimes I think my greatest need is for my problems to go away. The name Jesus Yahweh saves is a reminder that my greatest problem is that I was a guilty sinner. Hell bound son of Adam. Jesus, what a friend for sinners. Or Fannie Crosby put it this way, the vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus, forgiveness receives. Or the old gospel song, have you heard the joyful sound? Jesus saves, Jesus saves. Does the reality of the free and full pardon of your sins have any impact on the way we worship? Do I act as if I have some sort of a right or a claim on forgiveness and pardon? I'm so prone to apathy when it comes to the greatest problem I ever had and ever will have. We ought to come into worship in the words of the hymn writer. Hear. would I taste afresh the calm of sins forgiven. Mark also says this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's another name that we are so accustomed to using that it's easy to minimize the meaning behind it. It's come to be, in a sense, in the early years of the church, it's come to be, in a sense, a part of the proper name for Jesus. Jesus who? Jesus Christ. It is not his last name. It's primarily and originally a title, and it is a title with deep and weighty Old Testament roots. Christ, of course, is the New Testament equivalent to the Old Testament Messiah. It comes from the root word meaning to anoint. It is Jesus the Christ, or in other words, Jesus the anointed one. And there's a rich and multifaceted theological significance to this idea of being anointed in the Old Testament. Let me list just four features of this anointed one. First of all, being anointed indicated an authorized separation for the Lord's service. To be anointed meant you were being set apart for a particular work. Secondly, anointed ones were spoken of as being anointed by God Himself. They were the Lord's anointed. God is the one who is the authorizing agent doing the anointing. Thirdly, there was divine enablement that came along with the anointing. Fourthly, This anointing was associated with the hope of the coming deliverer of God's people. There was a coming, righteous, spirit-filled ruler who would lead and deliver God's people. Or as another scholar put it, the anointing gave the one anointed a position of power and the right to exercise that power. Jesus, the Christ, was the one anointed by God Himself, the one authorized by God and set apart to do a particular work, and it was the work of redemption. He was God's appointed agent, if you will, of the divinely authorized, anointed by God Almighty, with all of the authority of God Almighty behind that anointing, and He was divinely enabled. Jesus, the one anointed by the Spirit, The one who had the spirit beyond measure such that he might be that long-awaited deliverer and redeemer and rescuer of God's people. In fact, in what was most likely Jesus' first sermon, he quoted Isaiah 61, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me. Jesus knew that he was the Christ He was the great and final anointed prophet and priest and king. He was the anticipation of all of the hopes of the old covenant people. Jesus Christ is the gospel and Jesus Christ is where every strand of the Old Testament comes together. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Think about John 17, when Jesus is praying on the eve of his crucifixion. In verse 3, he says that great line, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. And then he goes on to say, I have accomplished the work you gave me to do. Here was the Anointed One on the eve of the great accomplishment of His life, the great work of the Mediator and the Redeemer, sent by the Father, commissioned to do a work, and equipped by the Spirit to carry out that work. And what were His words on the cross? Those marvelous words, it is finished. Mark gives us one final name, and it is the grandest yet, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is what James Edwards calls Mark's blue chip name for Jesus. This is the chief artery of Mark's gospel. That Jesus is the divine son is the cornerstone of the gospel according to Mark. We're going to see this confirmed by the father at the baptism of Jesus. We're going to see a glimpse of it at the transfiguration of Christ when a bit of that divine glory comes through just for a moment. And we're going to see it again When demons themselves recognize this divine Sonship, we know who you are. You are the Son of God. And here at the very outset, Mark declares his lofty Christology, if you will. Many will misunderstand throughout the telling of this story. Many will miss the deity of Jesus. But make no mistake about it, Mark says, this is the Son of God. The gospel is about Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is the eternally begotten, the second person of the Trinity, the almighty, the creator God himself, anointed by God, and yet he is God, God the Son. Mark's gospel, of course, will highlight this Sonship in a very distinct way through Christ's servanthood. Mark will portray Jesus, the Son of God, as the servant of the Lord, the suffering servant, the fulfillment of the great hope of the prophecy of Isaiah, the anticipated substitutionary atoning sacrifice. Jesus will describe himself in such terms, the one who came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, Mark 10.45. James Edwards says this, the surprise and the key to understanding the Son of God in the Gospel of Mark in particular is His suffering. The Son has come to suffer. The Son has come to do the will of the Father, obedient even unto death and the death of a cross. That suffering servant that Isaiah looked forward to. That one who accomplishes that glorious forgiveness and salvation through the blood of his cross. And the amazing thing, the mind-blowing thing that Mark, right at the outset of his gospel, makes clear, unmistakably clear, is that this suffering servant of the Lord is the Lord. This should put us on our knees in trembling and thanksgiving. Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me? And to be sure, Mark's gospel will, in a very particular way, paint a vivid portrait of the humanity of Jesus. He will vividly describe the emotional life of our Lord in a way that perhaps no other gospel writer has. We're gonna see Jesus in a state of disappointment. frustration, indignation, marvel, astonishment, anger, distress, sorrow, even despair. Mark will describe Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as one who was tired and needed to take a nap on a cushion in the back of a boat. And yet this all-too-human, truly human Messiah was also the eternal Son Almighty God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. That is astounding. And Mark says it right here at the outset. Two natures of Jesus, the Messiah, the true human body and soul. And yet fully divine, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. Marvel at the mystery of the gospel of Almighty God. Verse one really isn't a complete sentence. In our English Bibles, most of them, I believe, have a period at the end of it, but it's really not a complete sentence because the next verse really should start out just as. In other words, there's a pause here, but I think we ought to come to a full stop, just like the period in our English Bibles, and we ought to stand in awe of what Mark just said. at the great incomprehensible, truly incomprehensible reality of the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus of Nazareth. The creator himself has entered creation. Who can comprehend such a thing? He's taken to himself a true body and a reasonable soul to accomplish the redemption of God's people. And why did he do this? Because he loved us. As I mentioned at the outset, Mark's statement in verse one functions sort of like a thesis for his entire book. And of course, the claim at the very beginning that Jesus is the son of God is one of the themes, in fact, the main theme of Mark's gospel. And it also forms a sort of a bookend. Here at the beginning, we have the claim that Jesus is the son of God, but only by the end. Only by the end are we going to get the full, vivid portrait of this Son of God, this Servant of the Lord. There's a climactic confession by a Roman centurion in chapter 15, verse 39. You see, for Mark, as he writes this book, it's only only at the cross that the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, can be truly understood and known. For Mark, the portrait of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is not complete until we get to Calvary. James Edwards says, at the cross, Jesus is revealed as that suffering Son of God whose rejection and suffering and death reveal the triumph of God. could have imagined such a thing. Salvation comes through the Son, but only through the suffering Son, for you and for me. The Gospel, according to Mark, of course, as we said, is a proclamation. And that proclamation, that good news, is a person. It is a divine person, the Son of God. It is a saving person. It is Jesus. It is the anointed, majestic, ruling person, Jesus the Christ. And it is the suffering person. And Mark offers his readers, he offers me, he offers you true, objective, certain hope. And he does it in the unlikeliest of ways, the suffering of a bloody cross. This, this herald, this announcement is such that the only hope for all of humanity is bound up in the reality that salvation has come through the sufferings and death of the Son and the Servant. Of course, I said Mark raises the question throughout, who is this? That who is this is the suffering servant of the Lord. The bloody cross and the empty tomb. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is the life-giving hope. For Mark's readers, for you, And for me, my sins are gone. Can you imagine such a thing? My hope is secure. Can you imagine such a thing? And Mark writes for us the old, old story of Jesus and his love, but he tells it in such a way that it might be an ever new and an ever renewing source of strength and nourishment and comfort and hope for your soul and for mine. May God help it to be so. Thanks be to God for the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Amen. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for true and certain good news in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, Lord, would you help this not to ever become old, but to be ever new, ever comforting, ever encouraging, and ever motivating. Help us as we consider these things even going forth into your week and your world in the days ahead. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.