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Reading from God's Word, Mark
8, verses 34–38. When he had called the people
to himself, with his disciples also, he said to them, Whoever
desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up
his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his
life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and
the gospels will save it. For what will it profit a man
if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will
a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed
of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him
the Son of Man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of
his Father with the holy angels. Amen. Father, I thank you for
the gospel of Mark, and I pray that as we dig into this gospel,
you would enable me to faithfully communicate some of the contents
of this, and for each one of us to grow in our love for your
word and our appreciation for the uniqueness of this gospel.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen. You might wonder why God gave
us four Gospels, since there is quite a bit of duplication
between the various books. Mark is already—91% of Mark is
already contained in Matthew, so why do we need Mark? And 53%
of Mark is contained in Luke. Why do we need these duplications? Well, by the time we get to the
end of all four Gospels, I think you're going to appreciate that
each Gospel was written to a unique audience, has a unique impact,
has unique ways in which it's drawing out different facets
of Christ. And you're going to be seeing
we really do need all four Gospels. Matthew, was written to a Jewish
audience, and it is absolutely saturated with Jewish customs
and language and idioms and Old Testament prophecies. And because
a Jewish king had to have a lineage from David, and it had to be
the right line of David, there had to be genealogies for Christ. Mark doesn't have a genealogy
because it does not serve the purpose of the book of Mark. Though Matthew shows other aspects
of Christ's person and work, its emphasis is to show that
Jesus was the king of Israel and to get the Jews to embrace
Jesus as their king. Mark is not written to Jews,
it was written to Gentiles, specifically to Romans, which makes sense
since Mark was very involved with Barnabas and Paul and their
first missionary journey to the Gentiles. Even though he wasn't
able to make it all the way through that entire journey, he had to
come back to Jerusalem. Barnabas invited Mark on another
missionary journey with Paul and him, and Paul said, no, no,
that's not going to happen. Valuable as Mark was, and I will
give you evidences that Paul did indeed value Mark as being
a powerful instrument in God's hands, he realized that Mark
could not endure the kind of rigorous missionary work that
he was engaged in, and so There was a bit of debate on there,
but this was Paul's calling. And so Barnabas worked with Mark
on his own missions trips to the Gentiles in Acts 15, 36 through
51. And we will see later that Mark
had already been working with the Gentiles in Rome long before
his trip, the first trip with Barnabas and Paul. Though Mark
was a Jew, he had already been honing his skills to be an effective
minister to the Gentiles. And you can see this in so many
different ways. I think he was one of the original
70 prophets, lesser apostles, that Christ had sent out in Luke
chapter 10. We might get to that a little
bit later. And we'll get to the rift between Paul and Barnabas. Not between Paul and Mark, but
between Paul and Barnabas. and show how that ties in with
the dating of the book. But my point here is that the
Gospel of Mark was perfectly designed to reach the Romans.
It uses Roman time, Mark 6, 48, Mark 13, 35. Actually, I won't
take the time to go through all of these references, but it uses
Roman time, translates words that Romans won't understand,
explains Jewish cultural issues that would be very difficult
for the Romans to make sense of, has a special emphasis upon
suffering and martyrdom, I think, to prepare the Romans for the
very soon suffering and martyrdom that they would be facing as
well. Though the Old Testament is quoted
as authoritative Scripture, Mark does not spend the time that
Matthew does painstakingly showing how Jesus fulfilled all of the
expectations of the Old Testament, the expectations of the Jews.
So there's only one time that the gospel of Mark says, so the
Scripture was fulfilled, which says. Otherwise, he just straight
quotes the Scripture. But because of Mark's emphasis,
he devotes an unusual amount of time far more than the others,
but an unusual amount of time talking about Christ's ministry
to non-Jews, to various Gentiles that He healed in the earlier
chapters, and then He devotes three chapters to describe His
ministry among the Gentiles in Tyre, and Sidon, and through
the whole region of Phoenicia, then through the Decapolis, and
then Caesarea Philippi. Proportionally, three chapters
out of 16 is pretty significant. It is Mark, the Gospel of the
Romans, that particularly shows Christ's love for the Romans. In addition, Ochtemeyer, Smith,
Decker, and others have pointed out that Mark went to pains in
communicating well with his Roman audience because he used Latinisms
that are very unique To the the Greek that was being spoken in
the the capital city of Rome and in Italy at least during
the time of Mark later on some of those caught on elsewhere
But these include not only Latin words, but also Latin syntax
and idioms. You see, Mark wrote his gospel.
He's seeking to reach Romans for Christ, but he's also ministering
to Roman Christians who were in a different culture. And I
think this teaches us that we really are authorized biblically
to adjust our language when we're talking to unbelievers or even
When we're talking to Christians and other cultures, when I was
making all of these trips to Asia and to India in the past,
I could not use American jokes. They just would fall flat. Could
not use any American idioms or illustrations. It had to be adapted,
and it was hard work to do that. Well, God enabled Mark, by inspiration,
to do a masterful job of communicating across cultural barriers, so
much so that some liberals question whether Mark could have written
this. But it is the unanimous testimony of the early church
that he did so. And Roman citizens would have
connected with this gospel much more easily than they would have
with the gospel of Matthew. This book portrays Jesus as a
man of action. It skips the earlier years of
his life and it just immediately plunges Jesus into an incredibly
busy public ministry. One of the characteristic words
used in Mark is the word immediately. In the majority text, the Greek
word eutheos occurs 40 times. That's half of the 81 times that
the word occurs in the entire New Testament. It's just one
of many ways in which Mark makes this a very fast-paced story. And so where Matthew portrays
Jesus as king, Mark portrays Him as servant. Luke portrays
Him as man, as the second Adam, and John portrays Him as God.
Now, I hasten to say every gospel portrays Him as God as well,
but we're talking here about a special emphasis in each book. And my second point in your outlines
fills out this picture of what is unique to the gospel of Mark.
First of all, it's by far the shortest gospel. For Roman men
of action, this was a plus. You can read the entire Gospel
of Mark out loud in one and a half hours. Okay, it's a very, very
quick read. And yet, despite being short,
this is a book that is loaded with action. And especially with
miracles, far more miracles proportionally than any other gospel. Just as
an example of the ratio of miracles to teaching, there are 24 miracles
in Mark, and there's only five parables. Okay, so you can see
the emphasis there. And again, it shows that Mark
was portraying Jesus as being very busy and being about his
father's business and serving the world. Now, of course, these
miracles had other purposes as well. I don't want to downplay
those. They demonstrated that he had
power and authority that no Caesar ever could have. Power over disease
and disability and demons and nature itself. They showed that
the kingdom had come. but they do emphasize that point
as well. Second, as I've already mentioned,
the book of Mark is fast-paced, extremely vivid, and action-packed. And commentators talk about all
of the incredibly vivid language that is used, even when they
had those people that they're feeding, and they're sitting
in groups like lily pads out there, the language that's used
in the group, very, very vivid. And people have pointed out that
the Romans were tell-it-like-it-is kinds of people. And Mark, in
speaking to them, speaks with candor about the amazement of
the disciples and how the disciples didn't have a clue what Jesus
is talking about. And he speaks about the Emotions
of Christ and the compassion of Christ and it presents all
of these men as real men and women With all of their failings
now all of the Gospels portray them as real men But this one
does so in particularly vivid ways Another unique feature is
the percentage of the book that is devoted to the Passion Week
in Mark 8 verse 31 Jesus started telling people that he was about
to be crucified and From that moment on, you can just see over
and over, Jesus is setting his face like a flint to die on the
cross. He tells them, I'm going to be
crucified, I'm going to die, I'm going to be resurrected.
He is entering into the fray very self-consciously. And for
soldiers, Jesus would have been a man of heroism who was, even
knowing he was going to die, he's doing his duty, his servant's
duty. And 36% of Mark's narrative is
devoted to the Passion Week. So that's chapter 11, verse 1,
all the way through to the end of the book. Another feature
is that of all of the gospels, this one is the most strictly
chronological. Now, obviously, it doesn't include
Jesus's earlier years, just the three and a half years of his
ministry. But those would be the years that Romans would have
probably immediately connected with. And let's spend a little
bit of time on the central theme of this book, that Jesus is the
servant of the Lord that is prophesied in Isaiah 40 through 53. Now,
I want to emphasize, sometimes people say he's just presented
as a servant. No, not just any servant. He's presented as a
very specific servant, the servant of the Lord in Isaiah 40 through
53, who is both God and man, very unusual servant, in that
passage. And so, eight times in this book,
Mark, not surprisingly, emphasizes the fact that Jesus is the Son
of God. And I'm going to take you through
some of those. The very first verse of the book
says, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And then he quotes from Isaiah
and Malachi to prove the same point. Caesar claimed to be the
Son of God. Okay, that was not uncommon for
Romans to believe the Caesar was the Son of God. But he was
a pretender. The only Son of God who had the
right to be the ruler of the universe is Jesus. And this gospel
will make it very clear. He's not a pretender. He really
was divine. He reigned over man. Now take
a look at verse 1, excuse me, verse 11 of chapter 1. God the
Father Himself identifies Jesus as being His Son. Immediately after the baptism,
that's what ushers Him into His ministry. It says, Then a voice
came from heaven, You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased. Now, commentators point out that
this is an exact parallel to God the Father speaking to the
Son in Isaiah 42, verse 2, where sonship and servanthood are linked
together very, very tightly. So, this is a servant son. Somehow,
this divine being has a very humble servant attitude. He's not like the spoiled sons
of the Caesars, and he's certainly not like these Caesars Some of
those Caesars, you know, had supposed miraculous legends that
were connected with them to prove that they were God. But there
were no, you know, there were no credible witnesses, and compared
to the rending of the heavens here, and His power over demons,
and His power over nature, the Caesars looked like pathetic
fakes. Take a look at chapter 3 and verse 11 for the next mention
of the fact that this servant of the Lord was the Son of God.
which, by the way, Romans would have had no problem with the
idea of God incarnate. They had messed up ideas. This
book is going to correct those ideas, but they didn't have a
problem with that concept. Chapter 3, verse 11, And the
unclean spirits, whenever they saw him, fell down before him
and cried out, saying, You are the Son of God. Notice the word
whenever. This testimony from the demons
happened over and over again. They recognized who he was. They
recognized that he was the Son of God. Now, did demons make
humans bow before Caesar and declare him to be God? Yes. But
here, it's the demons themselves that are scared to death of Jesus.
They're bowing. They're forced to bow before
Jesus. They know the difference. Look at chapter 5, verse 7. This
describes the time that Jesus ministered to a Gentile who was
possessed by a legion of demons, and starting to read at verse
6. When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him, and
he cried out with a loud voice and said, What have I to do with
you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore you by God that
you do not torment me. Not only did Jesus have power
over demons, they were frightened by Him and declared that He was
God, the Son of the Most High God. So, none of these declarations
are in any way contradictory to the central theme, He's the
Servant of the Lord, because the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah
40 through 53 was divine. In chapter 9, verse 7, God Himself
descended upon Jesus in a cloud, transformed Christ's body and
His clothing so that it shone bright as the sun, and said,
This is my beloved Son, hear Him. So once again, the Father
is declaring, This is the Son of God. Chapter 13, verse 31,
Jesus told His disciples that His words would never pass away.
And in the next verse, He told them why. He's the Son of the
Father. Chapter 14, 36, he called God his father. And I think one
of the most powerful declarations that he was divine is in chapter
14, verses 61 through 62. So he's being tried by the Sanhedrin. And when the high priest asked
Jesus, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? Jesus answered,
I am. And you will see the Son of Man
sitting at the right hand of the power and coming with the
clouds of heaven." Well, they immediately accuse him of blasphemy
because he's quoting from Daniel 7, where the Son of Man was recognized
by the Jews of Christ's day as being a divine being. So he's
the Son of Man, Son of God. He's both man and God. And while
the Jews rejected Jesus as in any way being a God-man, The
Roman soldier at the cross, after seeing all of the supernatural
darkness and the supernatural earthquake and all of these strange
happenings, he was totally convinced. He said, truly, this man was
the Son of God. Mark 15, verse 39. Uniquely,
portrays this Roman as being convinced, convinced of this
fact. And I give those references not
to say that being the Son of God is the central message, but
just to show that this is the kind of servant he's talking
about, the servant of the Lord from Isaiah. But this brings us up to the
next point. Unlike Caesar, this Son of Man
did not need man to affirm Him. Unlike Caesar, this son of God
was so unbelievably humble that he embraced his call as servant
of the Lord, fully doing and only doing the will of the Father. Scattered through all the passages
that I read to you earlier is another theme that contrasts
Caesar, who was the fake son of God, with Jesus, the real
Son of God. It's what some people call the
secrecy motif of Mark. His humility throws through this
and he does not need anyone's acclaim. Let me just give you
some examples. In chapter 1, verse 24, a man with an unclean
spirit identifies Jesus as the Holy One of God. Jesus rebukes
the spirit and commands him to be quiet. So the demon knows
who he was and they feared him, but Jesus didn't need or want
their testimony. He didn't need their help. Mark
1 34 says he did not allow the demons to speak because they
knew him. We read in chapter 3 verses 11
through 12 that this occurred every single time he cast out
demons They fell down before Jesus and cried out you are the
Son of God Now since he cast out a lot of demons, that means
there's a lot of testimonies that he's the Son of God but
What was Christ's constant reaction? Verse 12 says, but he sternly
warned them that they should not make him known. Now, Romans
would have wondered why Jesus would be secret about the fact
that he really is the divine son, because the Caesars, who
claimed to be the son of God, they welcomed it. They're trying
to build temples to themselves. They welcomed worship, and other
people are building temples to themselves. But Jesus did not
need that fake acclaim. His kingdom was an upside-down
kingdom that exhibited God's power through loving service. And he was the exemplar of this
service. And to secrecy, Jesus commanded
of demons. He also commanded of humans that
he healed. In Mark 1, 40 through 45, Jesus
healed a leper. And listen to what he says in
verses 43 through 45. And he strictly warned him, and
sent him away at once, and said to him, See that you say nothing
to anyone, but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer
for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded as a testimony
to them. However, He went out and began
to proclaim it freely. Now, liberals have come up with
all kinds of strange and wacky theories as to why Jesus was
being secret in the Gospel of Mark. But if you understand that
Jesus was opposed to the political Messiah of the Jews, as well
as to the messianic state of the Gentiles, it makes perfect
sense. in the Servant of the Lord songs in Isaiah 40 through
53, which is the background to so much of Mark. It points out there was absolutely
a number of things that were absolutely a kingdom that was
totems of the world. I think by way of application,
we need to ask ourselves, which kingdom do we represent? The
self-seeking kingdom of man or the God-centered kingdom of the
Lord Jesus Christ. This Son of God was not insecure
like Caesar. He did not need a claim like
he did. He was content for the Father
to get the glory. This King came in weakness but
demonstrated an inner power that nobody could conquer. And every
detail of the Gospel of Mark is designed with that Isaiah
40 through 53 as background. What I want to do right now is
I want to take you through an outline of the whole book so
that you can see this is the master outline, the servant concept
that helps to explain this book. Well, before I do that, let me
just give you some more of the secrecy things that I apparently
skipped over. Mark 7, 31 through 37, he does
the same thing with humans that he did with demons. He heals a deaf man, charges
him to speak to no one, he blatantly disregards it. Mark 8, 22 through
26, does the same thing with a blind man. He tells him, neither
go into the town nor tell anyone in the town, so it's secrecy.
Then he asks his disciples who they thought he was, and in verse
29, Peter rightly says, you're the Christ. So that is a very
important theme of the book, that Jesus is the true Messiah,
not Caesar. So why does verse 30 say, then
he strictly warned them that they should tell no one about
him? Here they know he is the Messiah
of the Old Testament. He is the God-man, but he says
don't tell anybody about them. There's a lot of reasons that
evangelicals give, but I believe a central one is that his kingdom
was not going to come as a result of human support, political support,
religious support, financial support, any other kind of support
from below. This is a kingdom that invades
from heaven and grows through supernatural power. And when
you have grown up in a statist empire like Rome, you need the
gospel of Mark to undo faulty thinking about what God's kingdom
truly is all about. And Mark systematically destroys
ideas about kingdom life. Just one more example. Look at,
and I'll go ahead and read all this. Look at chapter nine, verses
one through 10. This is Mark's version of the
Mount of Transfiguration. And the disciples' reaction is
a very typical reaction of humans. They want to build three tabernacles,
one to Jesus, one to Moses, and one to Elijah. And that's kind
of weird, actually, that they would put Jesus on the same level
as Moses and Elijah. But by building tabernacles to
Moses and Elijah, they are elevating, worshiping, honoring the wrong
things in life. So this would have been really
a powerful story for the Romans who were particularly prone to
this error. So let me read the account, and
I think you can see for yourselves why Jesus commanded them to keep
this secret. Even though he's going to use
his disciples as tools and ambassadors in the last verses of Mark to
extend his kingdom, he wants to first of all make it clear
his kingdom is not dependent on his disciples, not at all.
Okay, so Mark 9, beginning at verse 1. And he said to them,
assuredly I say to you that there are some standing here who will
not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with
power. Not the kind of power that the
Romans believed in, You know, that's political power. That's
what they were proud of. This would be a heavenly power that
transforms everything on earth, even has the power to transform
bodies and souls. Verse two. Now, after six days,
Jesus took Peter, James and John and led them up on high on a
high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before
them. His clothes became shining, exceedingly
white like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. And
Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking
with Jesus. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, Rabbi, it
is good for us to be here, and let us make three tabernacles,
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah, because they
did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid. That's
probably the time to keep your mouth shut when you don't know
what to say, right? But that was not Peter. But notice that
God is not impressed with man's help, man's praise, man's voice. Listen to the rebuke in verse
7. Suddenly, when they had looked
around, they saw no one anymore, but only Jesus with themselves.
Now, as they came down from the mountain, he commanded them that
they should tell no one the things they had seen till the Son of
Man had risen from the dead. So they kept this word to themselves,
questioning what the rising from the dead meant. See, once the
resurrection had happened and the followers had been winnowed
down to just a few, God was going to cause this kingdom to grow
from a tiny mustard seed into a huge plant that would indeed
fill the earth and reverse everything that was lost under Adam. Christ's
kingdom would eventually rival the Roman Empire's Pax Romana,
the piece of Rome that they claimed to bring. It would rival the
extent of the Roman Empire even at its height. His kingdom would
not only embrace the universe, it would embrace everything inside
of us. Our thoughts, our motives, everything. Only the supernatural
power of heaven could accomplish this. But what is the most remarkable
thing about Mark is that this divine being, who is a king over
a universal kingdom, has the humility to embrace servanthood. This whole book is such a rebuke
to pride. and stinginess, and self-seeking,
and hoarding, and laziness, and materialism, and all of the other
things that men tend to find meaning in. This too is the opposite
of Caesar. Caesar made the whole world selfishly
serve him. Not, he's the selfish one, right? They gotta serve his selfish
interests. There's not a lick of selfishness in Jesus in this
book of Mark. The theme verse of the whole
book is Mark 10, verse 45, And after rebuking his disciples,
because they came to him, they said, you know, I'd like to be
at your right hand or at your left. I want to be the greatest,
you know, in your kingdom. He said, man, that's not the nature
of this kingdom. So he's contrasting the nature
of pagan kingdoms with the nature of his kingdom. So let me read
Mark, yes, 10, chapter 10, verses 42
through 45. But Jesus called them to himself
and said to them, You know that those who are considered rulers
over the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones exercise
authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among
you. But whoever desires to become great among you shall be your
servant. And whoever of you desires to
be first shall be slave of all. For even the son of man did not
come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom
for many. You can underline that verse
45. That is at the heart and core
of what the whole book is all about. This is clearly an upside-down
kingdom with a king totally different than any other king and followers
of his kingdom that are totally different than the followers
of any other kingdom. As the next point states, all
the upside-down aspects of the servant of the Lord in Isaiah
40 through 53 are true of Jesus in Mark. It's remarkable how
saturated Mark is with that section from Isaiah. You could really
say that that section structures Mark. Now, we're not going to
have the time to trace all of the evidence, but let me just
give you a few so you get the idea. The servant songs of Isaiah
start in Isaiah chapter 40 with a voice crying in the wilderness
saying, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert
a highway for our God, etc. In other words, it starts exactly
where the book of Mark starts with John the Baptist preparing
the way for Christ's kingdom. and rebuking them, telling them
they need to repent of all their man-made ways of thinking about
the kingdom, just like Isaiah did. So there are parallels that
you see between Isaiah and Mark. Then Isaiah goes on to describe
the baptism of the Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus. This is in
chapter 42. I'll just read you the first
four verses. Behold my servant whom I uphold, my elect one whom
my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him.
He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. He will not cry
out nor raise his voice, nor cause his voice to be heard in
the street. A bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax
he will not quench. He will bring forth justice for
truth. He will not fail nor be discouraged till he has established
justice in the earth, and the coastlands shall wait for his
law. Wow, that's exactly the same upside-down kingdom that
Mark talks about. It doesn't use Roman power or
any other kind of human power to accomplish its will. Instead
of crushing, It heals, it lifts up, it exalts. Instead of forcing
conformity, it wins people to the truth. It will never be discouraged
or give up until justice happens by grace rather than by brute
force. So it's not the sword that conquers
people's hearts as in Islam, it's the cross that conquers
people's hearts. And so as you go through the
servant of the Lord passages in Isaiah, you see Mark written
all over them. Let me outline Mark now. I skipped ahead earlier. Let
me outline Mark now on its emphasis of different aspects of the servant
of the Lord passages. It's on the back side of your
outline. You'll see right in the middle, there's a five-point
outline of the whole book. Mark 1 verse 1 through chapter
2 verse 12, we have the presentation of the servant of the Lord. So
he's presented to us by Mark in verse 1. He's presented then
by the Old Testament prophets Isaiah and Malachi in verses
2 through 3. Then he's presented by John the Baptist. Then he's
presented by God the Father speaking out of heaven. And then by his
triumphant power over Satan, demons, disease, and disability.
In other words, he's clearly presented as being who Mark says
that he is. Mark 2. Verse 13 through chapter
8, verse 26, we have the opposition to the servant of the Lord. Now,
this was not unanticipated. Isaiah said, this is what you're
going to expect. And Mark is trying to convince
his readers not to be surprised that they are receiving opposition.
Hey, if Jesus received it, you're going to receive the same opposition
too. And this opposition is a testing
of the authenticity of the kingdom life that we have within us.
If you cannot stand up to the opposition, it's evidence you
have not yet tasted the power of Christ's kingdom. And it encourages
us. Nothing can successfully resist
the power of the servant of the Lord. Even death cannot stop
his purposes. We face death totally convinced
if we die, it's advancing his kingdom. There is nothing Satan
can do to oppose that. In Mark 8 verse 27 through chapter
10 verse 52, we then have the instructions that the servant
of the Lord gives concerning the nature of this upside down
kingdom. It's a kingdom that starts small and grows. It's
a kingdom of service, not lording it over others. It's a kingdom
in which infants and children play a part. It's a kingdom where
riches do not buy influence, and generosity is more important
than hoarding. In short, it is a kingdom that
is the diametric opposite of the Roman Empire. In Mark 11,
verse 1 through 15, verse 47, we have the rejection of the
servant of the Lord. Also anticipated in Isaiah, you
know, discussion of the suffering servant there. There should be no surprise when
the world rejects Christ's kingdom. In fact, you read Mark, Jesus
makes it quite clear, that's the only thing the world can
do until they receive God's grace. Now, I think Romans would understand
a kingdom's going to be opposed. They're used to being opposed,
right? Nobody likes to be conquered. But the weird thing about Christ's
kingdom in these chapters is once they are conquered, they
love Christ. They're willing to lay down their
lives for Christ. So again, it's a different kind
of a conquering. The gospel is the power of God
unto salvation. Anyway, the suffering servant
passages in Isaiah are fulfilled to a tee in Jesus. They are such astounding prophecies
of every detail of Christ's suffering and crucifixion that Jewish rabbis
to this day avoid that section. They don't like to read him in
their synagogues. It just looks too much like Jesus. Dangerous. It was dangerous, actually, to
Romans and all power religionists, because it's the cross, again,
that conquers hearts, not the sword. Now, the last section,
Mark 16, 1 through 20, you've got the victory of the servant
of the Lord through the resurrection and through the Great Commission.
Now, all of the specifics of those prophecies lived out in
Jesus. I can't go through all of them, obviously, but Jesus
is said to have no, the suffering servant, no deceit in his mouth.
Well, Jesus is a tell-it-like-it-is kind of a person. He did not
play politics. He tells the truth. Isaiah 48 portrays Jesus as being
fully God. In fact, why don't you turn with
me? This is my favorite verse in the whole Bible on proving
the Trinity. It's Isaiah 48, verse 16. I love this verse. I think it's just as clear a
description of the Trinity as any New Testament verse is. So
it's a prophecy of Jesus who has already been described as
the first and the last, which the New Testament also describes
Jesus as the first and the last. And this first and the last says,
Isaiah 48, 16, come near to me, hear this. I have not spoken
in secret from the beginning. From the time that it was, I
was there. And now the Lord God and his
spirit have sent me. New King James, capital me because
it's a reference to Jesus. Now, let me just explain something. I've explained before when Lord
is all capital letters, that's Yehovah. Well, when you have
in the Hebrew Adonai Yehoah, they do the reverse. They do
all capital letters for God being Yehoah. That's just a convention
that the new King James uses. So literally, the Hebrew says
that Yehoah says Adonai Yehoah and his spirit have sent me.
What could be a clearer description of the Trinity? Yehoah and his spirit send the
first and the last to minister as the servant of the Lord, and
he himself is God." Three persons, one name. Three persons, one
God. Now, not all commentators accept
that. There are a lot, even evangelicals, that say, well, this must be
Cyrus that's speaking here. It seems weird, but it must be
Cyrus. No, it's not Cyrus. The New King James is right when
it capitalizes the me. I follow Gil in saying it's the
pre-incarnate Christ speaking. And we see the same thing in
the gospel. When he gets baptized, what happens? The Spirit comes
upon him, the Father speaks from heaven, and they commission Jesus
to carry out his commission as the servant of the Lord. It's
exactly the same thing. as in Isaiah. And yet the same
divine being is said to be in the womb of a woman in Isaiah
49, 1, called by Yehoah in the womb to be fully human, to represent
Israel as his body. That's why people get confused.
It seems like Israel. Well, Israel is his body. And
Isaiah 53 and other passages show a sinless and yet suffering
substitute who bears the sins of his people. He's tortured,
he's crucified, and yet totally victorious. And so the whole
way of salvation that is explained in Isaiah is being fulfilled
in Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. So it is good news indeed. And
the next sub-point just indicates that he did this because he wants
the Christians to imitate Jesus by having the same loyal servant
heart and by facing suffering victoriously as he did. So the
bold, confident way that Jesus faced death would be an inspiring
example for the Roman Christians, I think, who would soon be facing
death. And I probably should have started
with the next point. This is out of order. the author,
the date, the place of writing. From earliest times, there has
been no doubt whatsoever about the author of this book. The
unanimous testimony of the church has been that it was John Mark.
Mark is mentioned 10 times by name in the New Testament. John
was his Jewish name. Mark was his Roman name. And
the evidence seems to suggest that he came from a pretty wealthy
family. God is not against wealth. Wealth
can be used to advance God's kingdom. And Mark certainly did
that. Even his mother's house must
have been quite the huge mansion to be able to house the church
in Acts chapter 12. Though we cannot know for sure,
most biographers infer from the data that we have that Christ's
Last Supper was held in that same house in Mark chapter 14. In Mark 14, his dad was still
alive. By the time you get to Acts 12,
his dad had died, and now it's just said to be his mother's
house. Most biographers say that Mark, a young man, in Mark 14,
51, followed Jesus out of that house where the last supper occurred
and accompanied the disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane.
So most assume that Mark 14 describes him when it says this. Now a
certain young man followed him, having a linen cloth thrown around
his naked body. And the young men laid hold of
him, and he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked." Now,
enough on Mark. We'll deal with dating a bit.
When I preached on Matthew, I mentioned that the order that we have of
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is the order in which they were
written. But if you've done much reading on the web, or videos
and things like that, you're gonna see that the majority of
evangelicals today, at least scholars today, I'll call myself
not a scholar because I think this is wrong, but the majority
of scholars today say, no, no, no, no, Mark is clearly the first
one and the other gospels borrowed their information, copied their
information from Mark, otherwise how could they get it word for
word the same as Mark? Kind of a weird presupposition,
but anyway, They claim Mark's first, Matthew and Luke were
written next. Liberals go even further and
they say that because they don't believe in predictive prophecy,
that all gospels had to be written after 8070. What are we to think
of this? Well, just from the statements
of the Bible alone, I think we can ditch the liberal ideas of
a late date My book on Canon demonstrates from internal evidences
that a late date is absolutely impossible and why every book
of the New Testament was finished by 8066. But which one came first? The church used to say it was
Matthew. In the last four decades, a lot of evangelicals have followed
the liberals in saying Mark was written first. And you might
think, who cares? What difference does it make?
It's scripture, right? We just enjoy reading it. But
it is a big deal. It is a huge deal. A lot of people
don't realize that you must embrace liberal presuppositions before
Mark and priority can even make sense. Back in the 1980s most
evangelicals would totally agree with me So it's not very many
years ago that they would agree with me on that. I'll just give
you one story to illustrate Why they considered this to be important
back in the 1980s Robert Gundry was one of the first evangelicals
to adopt mark and priority wrote the commentary of Matthew and
on Matthew, and the Evangelical Theological Society was more
conservative back then. They actually censured him and
kicked him out of the society for holding to Mark and Priority. They considered it incompatible
with Evangelicalism to hold to Mark and Priority. That's how
important they considered it to be. And the reason is Mark
and Priority, if you're going to be consistent and live it
out, the presuppositions that drive people to that will undermine
Christianity. So if you see organizations like
Bible Project, commentaries, even sermons that claim Mark
was written first, you need to realize it's a herd mentality
following liberal establishment scholarship. And believe me,
it is not an inconsistent issue, at least if you're consistently
living out the presuppositions. Praise God, most of these evangelicals
are not consistent. David Laird Duncan, Gary Derrickson,
Etta Lineman, Robert Thomas, many others have shown how destructive
the presuppositions of Mark and priority are to Christianity
as a whole. I'm not gonna get into all the
complex reasons why, but let me quote from Derrickson. He
says, the anti-supernatural foundation and non-evangelical assumptions
that form the basis of the denial of Matthew's priority and authorship
must be recognized and avoided by evangelicals if they are to
remain true to Scripture's inspiration and authority. to permit this
theological drift within evangelical churches, colleges, and seminaries
poses a threat to the vitality and future of evangelicalism
as witnessed in the decline of mainline denominations. Etta
Lineman is correct in her warnings that evangelical adoption of
critical methods, such as redaction criticism, ultimately leads to
the same liberal conclusions, since those methods were designed
to prove the evolutionary theory of religious development and
deny divine inspiration. The danger arises from accepting
the presuppositions of modern scholars and their theories.
And again, I'm not going to go into all of the reasons for why,
but I believe that Matthew was written in 8040, possibly earlier,
but in 8040. Mark was written in 8045, possibly
earlier. There's one church father believed
it was written five years earlier. but pretty convinced of 8045. Luke was written in 8057, and
the Gospel of John was written in 8065. By the way, even liberals
lately have been forced to agree that all of the books of the
New Testament have been written prior to, there are more and
more liberals that are accepting this. One of the first liberals
to concede this was Robinson and his book, Redating of the
New Testament. I disagree with a lot. He's still liberal, OK?
You cannot take everything he says in that book for a fact. But I just mentioned that, that
the evidence is so overwhelming that even liberals are conceding
this point. I do want to point to the top
two pictures in your outline. on the front side to clue you
into another embarrassment to liberals. Top picture represents
a stunning archaeological find. It is a papyrus fragment found
in a Qumran cave that is a perfect match for Mark 6, 52 through
53. By the way, a lot of people don't
realize this, but a number of other New Testament fragments
have been found since that time. I'm not going to get into those.
But the top two pictures in your outline represent that fragment. I've read boatloads of arguments
against this identification and for this identification, but
if you overlay the words on this fragment over the actual text
of Mark, like that second picture does, they fit. And they do not
fit any other document known to modern scholars. Since the Qumran community was
expelled from the area in 8068, this would mean that the document
that was left in that cave had to have been written prior to
8068. How much sooner? Well, before the fragment was
even identified, Both conservative and liberal
scholars unanimously dated the fragment to somewhere between
50 B.C. and A.D. 50. Could not have been
written after A.D. 50, they say, because of the
style of the script. They believed it had to be before
them. Okay, so there was no controversy
with the dating of that fragment. But later, when Hosea O'Callaghan,
and even later Carsten Thiel, identified it as being a part
of the Gospel of Mark, a firestorm erupted with many scholars who,
by the way, were not familiar with papyrology at all, claiming
that this is impossible because Mark was written later. Okay,
this contradicts our presupposition, so it can't be right. But even
Wikipedia states, as of this past Wednesday, States this the
results of the 1991 symposium demonstrated that most papyrologists
agree with them based on papyrologist Herbert hungers 22-point analysis
and president of papyrological Association or Selena Montevichi
statement that there can be no doubt that 7q5 is a copy of Mark's
gospel And since then, there are more and more Jewish, atheist,
agnostic, Roman Catholic, and Protestant persuasions that have
shown that it's just overwhelming, the evidence that this is a fragment
of the Gospel of Mark. Now, if that's true, It would
mean that the parchment dates to A.D. 50 at the very latest.
All by itself, this is an embarrassment to previous liberal claims. Since
copies are always younger than what was copied, unless this
is the original document that Mark wrote, which I've got plenty
of evidence it could not be, on other grounds, this would
mean that the Gospel of Mark had to have been written before
A.D. 50, which lines up with what
conservatives had earlier said, A.D. 45, at the latest. Why is this significant? Well,
obviously, I love to see liberal unbelief embarrassed, so significant
for those reasons. But beyond that, it means that
Mark wrote his gospel at least one year, possibly more, at least
one year before Paul and Barnabas went on their first missionary
trip with him in Acts chapter 12, verse 25. Mark was already
a prophet who had written scripture prior to the debate and had been
powerfully used by God prior to that debate. It also means
that Mark had experience in missions and in work with Gentiles prior
to Acts 13. No wonder he was invited along
with Paul and Barnabas on that first missionary journey. There
is no evidence that Mark backslid as many people have guessed.
No evidence that he was fearful, as others have guessed. There
is no evidence that he was unfaithful, as others have guessed. If we
just stick with the text, we simply know that Mark left. He
left. And it's equally valid guess,
and it's only a guess, but it's an equally valid guess to say
that his constitution, his body in other words, was not able
to keep up with Paul's aggressive missionary trips. And one very
early church tradition says that he was a disabled person. Even
his fingers were disabled. And so that could very well be
the case. In any case, very few men could
keep up with the astounding schedule that Paul kept. Barnabas valued
both men, knew that neither man was a slouch, okay? In his debate
with Paul, I assumed that both sides, Barnabas and Paul, had
legitimate points. Paul realized that Mark couldn't
keep up with him on his kinds of journeys that he was engaged
in. He did not want to be slowed down. Barnabas realized that
Mark had already proven himself to be an indispensable tool that
God had raised up for missions. Their parting could very well
have been a godly solution, not necessarily a sinful alienation. Barnabas and Paul both held their
ground on valid points, and the Bible does not seem to censure
either one. And as a result of that providential
split, possibly even a godly split, there might have been
some sin involved in it, who knows, the work actually multiplied
rather than being diminished. And I think too many commentaries
read their disagreement through the eyes of modern mushy Christianity
that cannot tolerate heated disagreements. In any case, Mark became indispensable
to Paul long before people think that he did. They appeal to 2
Timothy, where at the end of his life, he says, okay, yeah,
Mark is useful to me. But already way back in AD 58,
when he wrote Philemon, he was on Paul's team. He was working
with Paul. Okay, so I think Mark has been
given, not given a fair hearing in some circles. And since Mark
was an associate of Jesus and an eyewitness of many of the
events in the Gospels, and may even have been one of the 70
prophets, that were sent out by Jesus in Luke 10, I think
there is no need to try to guess which gospel copied from which
other gospel. All of them had the facts, and
all of them were moved by the Holy Spirit to write an inspired
account that was inerrant, that perfectly dovetails with the
other accounts. There's no need to guess who
copied who. Not that it would be bad for them, the scripture
do copy earlier prophets, right? They quote from them by inspiration.
But there's plenty of evidence that there is no dependence that
one had upon the other. Now, before I end this message,
I want to explain why I believe the last verses of Mark do indeed
belong in the Bible. And I do admit that this is an
issue that divides very good people, and even some Reconstructionist
friends of mine, like Joe Moorcraft and Greg Bonson, are convinced
that these last 12 verses are spurious. But these last 12 verses
are part of the majority text, and I want to just give you some
reasons why you should have zero, absolutely zero doubt about them
being inspired infallible scripture. In my book on textual criticism,
I demonstrate that the Bible gives us 11 infallible presuppositions
by which we can evaluate how God has preserved His text. Modern
textual criticism that we were trained in seminary, against
our will, but we were trained in seminary, does not adopt any
of those presuppositions. They have adopted secular presuppositions
of modern textual criticism. But if you adopt those biblical
presuppositions, it is absolutely impossible to reject the last
verses of Mark. Impossible. So those who reject
them have unwittingly accepted the secular presuppositions of
textual critics. They're honest, good men, but
they've probably never studied this subject presuppositionally.
And so for me, this completely settles the issue. But I'm gonna
give you just a couple of other reasons. Well, four more. Second
reason is that everybody admits that if the last 12 verses of
Mark are spurious, then the gospel ends with a whimper. that's totally
inconsistent with the rest of the book. It ends with verse
eight, which says, so they went out quickly and fled from the
tomb, for they trembled and were amazed, and they said nothing
to anyone, for they were afraid. So, the end. Okay, they disobeyed
the angels who told them to go spread the news, and they're
afraid, they can't do it, and so they don't tell anybody. That's
how it ends. Okay, so even those who believe the last 12 verses
are spurious have to admit that either the true ending was lost,
contrary to Christ's promises, of his word being preserved,
or it ends abruptly and leaves one hanging. There is no smooth
ending at all. Third, out of the 1,700 Greek
manuscripts that are complete copies of Mark, only three known
manuscripts leave those verses out. Only three. One is Vaticanus,
another is Sinaiticus, and the third is a late 12th century
manuscript labeled 304. Now in addition to those 1,700
Greek manuscripts, the last 12 verses are contained in all surviving
2,000 or so church manuscripts. We call these lectionaries
because they're divided up into calendar readings. 100% of those
manuscripts have these last 12 verses. That means 3,700 Greek
manuscripts against three. That's not a solid basis on which
to reject these. Now, of course, these scholars
will appeal to church fathers And they'll appeal to other translations,
but God has not promised to preserve the church fathers. He's not
promised to preserve translations. He has promised to preserve the
Bible itself, which in this case is written in Greek. Okay. Fourth, the evidence shows that
the ancient Greek church all the way up through the modern
Greek church considered the last 12 verses to be authentic. But
so did virtually the rest of the church, with only a handful
of exceptions. If you want to read this, there's a big fat
book by John Bergen, Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel of Mark.
He does a fabulous job of tracing all of the different translations,
versions, all of that kind of stuff. And it's huge. There's
like 1,000 manuscripts of the ancient Syriac Bible have it
in, 8,000 manuscripts of the Latin translations. The statistical
probability of these last for all verses being spurious, is
nil if you accept or interpret the evidence through the presupposition,
the biblical presuppositions in my book. Fifth, an examination
of the only three Greek manuscripts to leave it out shows that there
is something strange, weird, very strange going on. Vaticanus
has an unusual gap between Mark and Luke, a gap large enough
to fit the last 12 verses of Mark into that space. You do
not see similar gaps anywhere else in that document of the
New Testament. Why is there a gap there? The reason they don't
put gaps between books is because vellum was very expensive, so
scribes always used all of the spaces. So why this gap? Take
a look at the second picture from the bottom. of the front
page, it almost looks like something is erased from Vaticanus. You
can see fuzzy writing in the background there, can't you?
Anyway, James Snap, Jr. has done a reconstruction, this
is the bottom picture, of what might have originally been there
by using the scribe's own handwriting, using a clever cut and paste
technique. the next, you know, several columns
of Luke, he finds letters that will fit the last 12 verses,
and using that scribe's own writing, he fits them in, and it fits
perfectly. So, this shows that even Vaticanus
is not an unambiguous testimony against the longer reading. Second
manuscript, Sinaiticus, has the last lines of Mark written in
a completely different handwriting, showing that it wasn't even the
original scribe. It too has a gap, and you can
see a picture of that in your outline. So if the scribe that
finished Mark is not the scribe who did most of Sinaiticus, it
doesn't say anything about what that original scribe had before
him. And notice, again, the gap. Now, besides those two weird
gaps, there are other odd things that make Vaticanus and Sinaiticus
false witnesses. Everyone admits that those two
manuscripts disagree with each other over 3,000 times in the
Gospels alone. That does not make them best
manuscripts. Using biblical legal procedures,
you would say, they are both false witnesses on a grand scale.
So why do those two manuscripts have such a strong voice amongst
evangelicals in determining what the readings of Scripture are?
By the way, it's not just the last verses of Mark. Many of
readings you get in the NIV, NASB, ESV are based on just one of those manuscripts. Sometimes two. They give it an
A reading of two of those. Even if every other manuscript
is against it, they give it an A reading in the so-called oldest
and best. In any case, this means that
the evidence shows 3,700 Greek manuscripts against three, and
those 3,700 Greek manuscripts represent every geographic region
of the church. Now I feel like I have to give
this evidence to you because there is so much attack against
the scripture nowadays. We need to be aware of this.
Wilbur Pickering summarizes the massive amount of other evidence
saying this, as stated at the outset, with united voice down
through the centuries in all parts of the world, including
Egypt, the church universal has affirmed and insisted that Mark's
gospel goes from chapter 1 verse 1 to chapter 16 verse 20. Now,
my last reason is that if God has preserved his text, which
he promised to do numerous times and which every Reformed confession
says that he did, then you would expect it to exist in an actual
manuscript, not a theoretical reconstructed text. What do I
mean by that? Well, the U.S.B. and the Nestle-Allen
Greek texts that the ESV, NIV, New American Standard are based
on are purely theoretical texts where experts picked a word from
this manuscript, another word from that manuscript, and they
made a theoretical manuscript. By theoretical, I mean there's
not a single manuscript in existence, none whatsoever, that match word
for word the Gospel of Mark or any other book of the New Testament,
word for word what you have in Nestle's or in the UBS. It's theoretical. There is no manuscript that corresponds
to it. No manuscript that corresponds
to the Gospel of Mark or any other gospel out there, any NIV,
New American Standard, ESV. They're built on theoretical
text. This is serious. It's theoretical text. This is
not true for the majority text. The majority text for Mark, for
example, is word for word identical with numerous manuscripts spread
out over the entire geographic region of the church that could
not have been copied from each other. God has preserved His
word, every word. And to criticize these last verses
through other means, such as their being unbiblical and weird
and doctrinally unsound, is to criticize God Himself. Now it
may be unwitting criticism, but I think it is scary criticism
nonetheless. Does Acts, here's the question
to ask, does Acts record each of these predictions in the last
12 verses as actually happening? The answer is yes, and if it
is yes, then it's blasphemy to say that this is weird, this
is doctrinally unsound or anything else. Now, Paul did not deliberately
pick up a poisonous servant. That would be to tempt God. But
he did accidentally pick up a serpent in Acts 28, got bitten, and had
no harm come to him, as prophesied in these verses. He did speak
in tongues. He did cast out demons. He did lay hands on the sick,
and they recovered. These are all evidences that the kingdom
of God has come. And that what Christ had begun
to do in the Gospels, he continued to do through his church in the
book of Acts. And so from the first verse to
the last verse, Mark is a unified book that would have turned a
Roman citizen's life upside down and continues to turn our lives
upside down when by the Spirit it is internalized within us.
So it's my prayer we would grow to appreciate the Gospel of Mark
more and more. Let's pray. Father, we thank
you for your word. And even when there are debates
and disagreements, and strongly held disagreements, that there
is enough presuppositions and information in Your Word that
we can settle these doctrinal statements. And I pray, Father,
that you would help the Church of Jesus Christ to stand in the
old paths, to take seriously the universal testimony of the
Reformed confessions on the preservation of every word of your text, every
letter of your text, that we would have a confidence in your
word and never shy away from that confidence. I pray that
you would help us to have servant hearts that imitate the service
of Christ that was seen in the Gospel of Mark. And we pray this
in Christ's name.
Mark
Series Bible Survey
This sermon shows how Mark is crafted to reflect Jesus as fulfilling the Servant of the Lord songs in Isaiah 40-53.
| Sermon ID | 5192041283976 |
| Duration | 1:04:00 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Mark 1:1 |
| Language | English |
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