So we're beginning a new series today, The Gospel of Mark. I'm really excited about that. Let me give you a brief introduction to the book before we dive into it. So there's actually, in the Bible, there's four gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If you think about the Bible, most characters in the Bible get one witness, one person tells the story. There's a few exceptions and you get two parallel stories, but nothing else like this. There's nothing else in Scripture like where you have Jesus you have four full accounts of his whole life. And so I guess when God comes to earth he gets four witnesses telling the story. So Mark is one of them. Mark is the shortest gospel. And let me tell you, his name is John Mark. You'll see him referred to elsewhere in Scripture. As we go through this series, we'll fill you in more. But what's interesting is he's not one of the 12 disciples, right? So then what's he doing writing a gospel? It's kind of weird. You'd think like the guys that spend all the time with him would write the gospels. Well, who's a major disciple who doesn't have a gospel? Yes, very good. Well, now you know who, where all the source came for this one. So it came from Peter. You could call this the Gospel of Peter, but we don't because he didn't write it, Mark did. But he got all this information from Peter, likely in Rome. So that's the history of it. So if you will, look at Mark chapter one. We're gonna do the first half of the chapter, and then we'll pick up the rest of the verses as we get to it. I mean, if you do have one of those Bibles you're getting, it's on page 488, is where you should be. All right, and I didn't open my Bible to it, so here we'll all find it together. Mark chapter one, this is God's inerrant and infallible word. It can't error, and it has no errors. God's word. Mark chapter one, verse one, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face. He will prepare your way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now, John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, after me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased. Well that completes our reading of God's word for now, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this gospel. We thank you that you've given us four accounts and we're excited to look at one of them together. So Lord, I pray as we set out on this journey together to learn more about Christ, we pray that your Holy Spirit would enable me and others who preach to do so successfully, successful as you determine success, as you have purpose in their lives. I pray that you would accomplish those even this morning. We pray in the name of Christ, amen. Kids, I have a question for you. Who is George Washington? Don't answer that out loud, but just think for a second. Who is George Washington? Now, I think the answer I'd probably get would be somewhat historical. He was the first president of the United States. Some basic facts. Maybe he was a general or some things like that. Now, adults, also don't answer this out loud. What if I were to ask you, who is former President Trump? Or who is President Joe Biden? Or who is Vladimir Putin? So if I asked those, I'm guessing the answers I would get would have more emotion than talking about George Washington. Fair? Right? Is that true? So what about Jesus? Who is Jesus? Is your answer going to be more like Washington? Here's some basic historical facts. Lived 2,000 years ago, died on a cross, rose again. Or is it going to be more like all those other characters I mentioned? There's a little bit more emotion with it. That's what we're looking at this morning. The reality is, is Jesus was way more controversial than Trump and Biden. It's true. In the first century, he was way more controversial. So this morning I want to try to get us past Sunday School answers and kind of the historical facts because we're going to, many of you are very familiar with all the stories of this. Some it's going to be new and I'm excited for you. I really enjoy reading the Bible with people that don't know all the stories. But for you that we'd get past just these basic historical answers because it really matters. It matters where we'll spend eternity. How we answer this. Who is Jesus? So if you look on page seven you see the outline. Who is Jesus? Three answers. He is Jesus Christ the Son of God. Two, he is greater than Satan. And three, he necessitates a response. We'll begin with that first one. Jesus Christ, the Son of God. All right, so as Mark begins his gospel, in these first set of verses, he's gonna give four witnesses. So not the four witnesses of the gospels. He has four that he wants to start with who he jumps right in. One thing you're gonna learn about Mark is he's fast moving. He jumps right to the meat of what's going on. I'm kids. Do you know what a judge does in a courtroom? A judge has to make a verdict, and so he'll listen to witnesses. So witnesses come and tell him, here's what I saw happen. Here's what I saw happen. And so Mark wants to give us four witnesses to convince you of who Jesus is. All right, so that's what we're doing. Who's the first witness? It's Mark. Mark himself, look at the first verse. He says, he packs a lot in this. He says, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That word gospel there, one of the reasons that we actually name them, we see the gospel, Matthew gospel, is because of this verse. Mark starts it with the beginning of the gospel. This was a word that was used in the first century. It'd be used in political settings, in personal correspondence. So the emperor is born, and you call that gospel. It's good news, we have a new emperor. You win a huge military victory, they would use that word gospel in Greek. So it was a common word, but there, what is this good news? It's about Jesus. So Jesus is his birth name, right? When he was born, he was named Jesus. It means God saves. Jesus was a real man. Second word, Christ. Do you know what that means? Christ means anointed one, and so think Messiah. So in the Old Testament, through the whole Testament, it was saying, someone's coming, someone's coming, someone's coming, right? And that person is the Messiah. It's Jesus, okay? So he's saying he's a man and he's the Messiah, but then it says Son of God. That's the second person in Trinity. So right in this first verse, Mark is packed into that little handful of words, all of that, that he is fully man, fully God, and he's our Savior. Where does he go from there? He says, this is the beginning of the good news, and then he's gonna talk about John the Baptist, right? He's the forerunner. But even before that, what do you have in verse two and three? You have a quote from Old Testament prophets. So first witness Mark, second witness is Old Testament prophets. Look at that. He says, as is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face. He will prepare your way. Who's the your? Look at verse three. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, verse four, we learn that John the Baptist was in the wilderness. Okay, so he fulfills that. So he's preparing the way of the Lord. So whoever comes after John the Baptist is gonna be God, right? And then he says he'll make his paths straight. We'll come back to that piece, hold on to that. So the Old Testament prophets say that there will come someone who's John the Baptist, and whoever comes after that is God. Okay, so Old Testament prophets. This is just one verse he quotes. There's tons. If you're familiar with the Old Testament, the whole Old Testament is pointing forward to Christ in lots and lots of ways. Okay, so your second witness is Old Testament prophets. The third, we get to John the Baptist. Look at verse four. John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. and all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now, if you were an Old Testament Gentile and you wanted to become a Jew, you would undergo a cleansing ritual, something like a baptism, right? You need to be cleansed because you're a dirty Gentile and you wanna be a good Jew. Okay, follow? All right. Now, what is John the Baptist doing? He's saying, all you Jews, you need to come and be cleansed. That's like highly offensive. Can you imagine the Jews? They're like, no, that's the Gentile dogs who need cleansing. We're already clean. We're the children of Abraham. But see, this was, the whole Old Testament was supposed to prepare the way of Jesus. Right? All the prophets, everything. It just leads right up to it. And so that when Jesus comes, everyone's ready. Right? No. So the Jews are a mess. Judaism is full of hypocrisy, legalism, people trying to save themselves by their own good works. You've got Pharisees, Sadducees. Yeah, it didn't work so well. Right? Because man just seems to make a mess of everything. Right? So God, right at the end, sends John the Baptist to prepare the way and tell the Jews, you know what? You actually need to come repent. Kids, did you know when a king would go somewhere, he would send a herald before him? Right? So this is a guy that goes and makes sure everyone's ready. Like, okay, let's get all the trash out of the streets. Everyone, clean up your act and look like you're ready for the king to come. Okay? Because you don't want the king to come and everyone's like, who's that? Right? It's just, it's really embarrassing. All right? So he sends a herald first to get everyone ready. This is what John the Baptist is doing. He gets everyone ready. And then look at what else he says. Look right past that. Oh, kids, listen to this. Check out what he's wearing. All right, now, John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. Could you imagine someone eating huge grasshoppers dipped in honey? Gross. If you're in the wilderness, you don't have a lot of dietary options, okay? And, but what about, think about how often do we get wardrobe descriptions? How often in the Bible does it tell us what everyone's wearing? I mean, people are interested in that in good novels, right? They might give you some information. Rarely in the Bible. Why do we care what he's wearing? Here's why. Because that looks just like Elijah. That's exactly what Elijah wore. And so he's saying, this is like the new Elijah. And you'll see that parallel brought up in other places. Okay, so John is preparing the way. He's dressed kind of funny. He's a herald. and then look beyond that. So then he says, this is John's testimony. Remember, we're looking at witnesses. He's the third. He preached saying, after me comes one who is mightier than me. Okay, so someone's greater, he's preparing the way for. The strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. He's so much greater than me that I'm not even worthy to untie his sandals. I have been baptizing you with water. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Only God can do that. Only God can come and baptize people with the Holy Spirit. So he's saying that God is coming after him. Someone so much greater. Okay, so that's your third witness. That make sense? John the Baptist is saying, Jesus, if someone's greater than me, it's going to be Jesus, okay? So now look, this is really interesting. Look at verse 12. In the context of that, I'm sorry, verse 9. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee. Okay, this means nothing to us, but if you were a first century Jew, you're like, from there? Like that backwater place? That's like Podunk Central, right? Nazareth of Galilee. You'll see it comes up later. They're like, what? Nothing good comes from Nazareth. So this is very unexpected. We get more surprises because look what he does. It says, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Didn't John just say that I'm not worthy to untie a sandal? And so now this great man, I mean the herald doesn't come and do something very lowly to the, I'm sorry, the king. The king is greater than the herald, right? And that's what the herald says. John the Baptist says he's so much greater. So Jesus comes, surprise everyone, says, I'm ready to be baptized. What? A baptism of repentance, you know, because, but you have no sin. So what in the world is Jesus doing being baptized by John? Do you see the oddity of this? One of the things, one takeaway from this is Jesus came as a very normal person. One takeaway. Second takeaway is this, that Jesus fulfilled all righteousness. You see this in Matthew, that he was associating himself with his people. Right? And so the people of God need to be cleansed. And so Jesus came and said, I too will submit myself to this. You see this through the whole life of Christ. So we're trying to set you up as we'll go through this gospel. Jesus is going to be the model Jew. Another thing is interesting. There's a ton of connections between the Old Testament and the life of Jesus. Let me just give you a few. I can't, there's not time to give you many. All right, so who was, so Adam, the first man, how did Adam do in temptation? This is gonna come up in just a second. Actually, why don't we read the verses first? Look at 12 and 13. All right, kids, count how many verses this story takes, okay? The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness, this is Jesus, and he was in the wilderness 40 days, being tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to him. Kids, show me your fingers, how many verses was that? Yep, two. If you read Matthews, it would have been 11. If you read Lukes, how many would that have been? I think 13. So this is much, much shorter, right? Why did He do it so short? Something that's interesting here, there's a word I want to highlight. So we need to jump back. Look at verse 10. Do you see the word immediately? Verse 10 it says, He came out of the water and immediately He saw the heavens being torn open. I missed a witness. Oh no! There's four witnesses. We only did three. You want to know who the fourth witness is? Alright, so who are the first three? So we have Mark, right? Old Testament prophets. And then the third was John the Baptist. Who would be like if you really want someone good to be your fourth witness? Who might it be? Do you know who it was? It's God. Wouldn't it be cool to have like God say who you are? That's exactly what happened at 11. Look at that. So not only does the dove come down on Jesus, the heavens open. Like imagine you're being there, you hear this booming voice. This is my beloved son. Oh, that'd be cool, wouldn't it? In him, I am well pleased. So who gives testimony of who Jesus was? God himself, straight from heaven. So, I mean, Mark is really, like, who are you gonna argue with now? You've got his eyewitness testimony, you've got the Old Testament prophets prophesying ahead of time, then you've got John the Baptist, and then you have God himself. So we have those four. The word I was looking at there in verse 10 was immediately. Did you know if you count the number of times that word is in the whole New Testament, there's not time to do it, but I'll go and tell you. It's 12, 12 times that word is in the whole New Testament. In this book, you know how many times it's here? 42. 42 times. He must really like that word. It's like his favorite word. And normally when we say immediately, we mean like, like right away, right? And there is some sense of that, right? I mean, this is a fast-moving book, right? We're gonna just jump from thing to thing to thing to thing. There's something else going on here. And so I want to explain it because it's gonna keep coming up 42 times as you go through the book. Remember how I told you you need to hold on to that, make his path straight? Remember that piece back in verse 3, that prophecy? So it said that John the Baptist is going to make the path straight. If you were to read the King James Version of verse 10, instead of immediately, we'd use the word straightway. Not a word we use anymore. That's why it says immediately. But it's the same root word in Greek. Make his path straight. Straight away. Like straight away. He did this right away. The idea here is that the path was prepared for God. It's just like there's an inevitability about the life of Christ. Here's a shameless plug for a study Bible. If you don't have one, you need one. I've got one. It's very helpful. Let me read you the note about this verse. It says this. It says about immediately, its primary emphasis is not on speed, but rather the sureness and the inevitability of God's sovereign plan. Recalling the quote, straight, same root as straightway, has divinely prepared for Jesus's coming in ministry. So let's just reread verse 10, and I'm gonna substitute inevitably in there. So when he came up out of the water, inevitably he saw the heavens being torn open. It's this idea that it had to be so. That's the way Jesus' life was. You think about a highway. You've driven on a highway. They just blast through the mountains. They put bridges over the valleys, right? It's just a straight road. It enables you to go really fast. Country roads are like this, right? So most of our lives are more like this. You have to just go with the contours that you're dealt. But with Jesus, it was different. There was a way prepared for him. There were things that he was supposed to do, and it was like this highway. And so Mark is gonna look at this that way. He's gonna kind of blast through the life of Christ. Other Gospels give you a lot more detail, right? And so you even see this in these two verses I just read. Remember, only two verses about the temptation? Not 11, not 13, about Jesus being tempted. He goes into the wilderness right after he's baptized. He's tempted by Satan. And then he just moves on, doesn't he? We're on to the next story. You know, I think like all the demons and all the angels are like holding their breath. Like this is bigger than David and Goliath. This is the showdown of Satan and Jesus. That's how I like to think of like a boxing match, right? So Jesus steps into the ring with Satan, all right? And how's everyone else? What kind of record does this guy have? Oh, he's knocked out every human being ever. That's quite a good record. Started with Adam, it's continued right up to Jesus. No one has ever, ever walked away from Satan without giving him dissent. That's a pretty good record Satan has, right? So how's he gonna handle this? What's interesting is, imagine, to imagine a building, the boxing ring's gonna happen inside. You're standing outside, you see Jesus walk in, door's shut in your face. You're like, what? What happened in there? He just moves on to the next story. How do we know what happened in there? We could read the other Gospels. Here's the answer. We'll look more at 15 in a second, but look at this. So imagine Jesus comes popping back through the doors and says, verse 15, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe. Well, in a boxing ring, whoever comes out standing is the winner, right? So we know who won because Jesus is the guy that comes out and says, hey, my kingdom's here. I've showed up, right? This is really important because, oh, this is where I was going. Remember I said there's all these parallels with the Old Testament? Remember the first Adam? He was the first guy that got knocked out, right? So Jesus is sometimes called the second Adam. That's significant, right? So Jesus, that Adam, perfect garden of Eden, right? He's in there, he meets Satan, and he and Eve, right, they fail, right? So here's Jesus, he's been fasting for 40 days, not in the garden, he shows up with Satan, and he passes the test. He's the first one that ever passes. That's significant. There's a parallel, lots of parallels between Adam and Jesus. Also, you remember the Israelites? When they went into the desert, how many years were they there? Does anyone know? 40, yes, I heard it. 40 years. Okay, they go in the wilderness 40 years. How'd they do out there? Was it like just a big worship service? Not so much. Yeah, it didn't go real well. There was a lot of sin out there in that wilderness with all those people. Jesus, He goes into the wilderness for 40 days, kind of parallel to 40 years. How does He do? Perfect record. Okay, there's tons of parallels. You'll see all kind of parallels. I can only give you a couple, we don't have time for. But there's just tons to the Old Testament. Jesus, remember I said, the whole Old Testament set up the Jews to be ready for Jesus and to see like, oh, I get it. Check, check, check, check, check. He's checking off all these boxes. A lot of them missed it, we get to pick it up. All right, so Jesus comes out. He's leveled Satan. And where's it gonna go from here? Well, it actually brings us to our third point. If you missed, the second point was that he's greater than Satan. That's all that we just talked about. So point three, who is Jesus? He is someone who necessitates a response. Verse 14 and 15. Jesus necessitates a response. So you have all this. You have four witnesses. You have this boxing match with Satan. And then you have verse 14, 15. Now after Jesus was, after John was arrested, pause there. Okay, so this was like the cue for Jesus to get started. The guy preparing his way was in jail. His ministry was over. So then look what Jesus does. He came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. All right, let's just look at that phrase by phrase. First, the time is fulfilled. He's saying all that stuff in the Old Testament, it's now fulfilled, here I am, and we're getting going. All right, that's the first part. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Okay, this is significant. And he just leveled Satan. That was really, really significant. Right? We said that. No one's ever done it before. And this is like, this is Satan's kingdom. Right? This earth. Right? He's called the prince of this earth. And there's a story that'll come later we're gonna pick up that Jesus tells of a strong man. If you're gonna rob someone's house, you have to bind up the owner of the house, right? If the owner of the house is bound, then you can take all his stuff. If you don't, you're not gonna get any of his stuff. So Jesus uses that analogy because who's he bound? Satan. Now he just gets to plumage his world. What's he plumaging? He's actually rescuing people. He's rescuing you and me, right? His kingdom started there. That day, after he leveled Satan, and it's continued all the way up to Cane Bay right now. God's kingdom is advancing in Cane Bay. There's our church, other churches, and we're advancing. It's really cool. And that's what God, so it's continuing. But there's an expression you might hear. It's called, are ready, but not yet. Sounds weird. Already but not yet. Talking about the kingdom of God. His kingdom has already come. Is it here? Absolutely. Are there missionaries going out? Are people being saved? Are churches being started? Yes. Is Jesus ruling? Yeah, kind of. Right? So he's kind of ruling because his kingdom's here, but it's not right, is it? Does Cane Bay look like heaven? Nod your head no. It doesn't, right? There's still a lack of brokenness and sadness. There's sadness in us. There's sadness around us. There's people that aren't glorifying God, right? So it's already come, but it's not yet come in its fullness. It's a great line to learn. And people wonder this, well, is it here or not? Well, yeah, kinda. It started, this was the beginning, the inauguration of his kingdom, but it hasn't come in fullness. That's what we're waiting for. The end of the revelation says, come, Lord Jesus, come. You know, as you see the pain and the brokenness in you, around you, in your home, in your neighbor's homes, that we say, come Lord Jesus, come. The kingdom, in the Lord's prayer, I think even Brandon prayed this, right? That said, how's it start? Our Father who's in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It's not happening, right? Not yet. It started. And so that's what we're praying. Kingdom come more and more. We want, we want us to our lives, our families, our marriages, our kids, their lives, their marriages, their kids to be transformed that His kingdom would rule there. Right? And so His kingdom is coming little by little. Okay. You follow all that? That's what Jesus is saying. He says, Hey, my kingdom's here. and it's gonna advance. Repent and believe in the gospel. If you were there in Galilee, you could not give a historical answer to who Jesus was. Hey, who's that guy? Well, yeah, he's Jesus and he was born here. Like, he was very controversial. I mean, at this point, you basically have three choices. You either say he's a liar. The guy claimed to be God, he just made it up. He's a lunatic. He's special. He doesn't really understand what's going on. He's just claiming to be God. Okay, you have that option. Or he's Lord. You have to say, well, yeah, he really is who he says he is. He's God. You can't just have this like historic answer if you live there. So I ask you, who do you say that Jesus is? Don't give me the Sunday school answer. Who do you say that Jesus is? I can tell your answer by your life. Belief is always followed by action. Or let me say it more correctly. Authentic, genuine belief is always followed by action. Anyone know who King George III is? King George III. During the American Revolution, if I asked you, if you lived then, who is King George III? Your answer will tell me one of two things. Are you a loyalist? Are you a patriot? Right? He was the king of Great Britain during the Revolutionary War. And two, it was a decisive thing. When they asked you who he was, they were not looking for a history lesson. They wanted to know whose side are you on. You have to throw your lot in with somebody. Are you for the king or against the king? Make sense? If you lived in Germany during World War II and someone asked you who is Hitler, they aren't looking for a history lesson. They're asking you whose side are you on. Are you loyal to that man or not? And so I ask you again, who is Jesus Christ? Think about that. I mean, it is a divisive thing. Is he your Lord or is he not? When Mark is writing this, he's not trying to just give us information, he's trying to produce a transformation. So likewise, I do the same. My hope is that your lives will be transformed by the answer to this question. This is not academic. I'm not just trying to give you some more facts about a man that lived a long time ago. We come to our last couple of verses. We're gonna do 16 through 20 and end there. Passing along inside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea. And they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. It's an interesting thing to say to a fisherman. And immediately, inevitably, they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother. They were in their boat mending their nets. And immediately, or inevitably, he called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him. And followed him. What about you, what are you gonna do? You have a choice before you. Are you gonna follow him or not? Right, that call is still there. Jesus says, come and follow me. That's what he's asking. What will we do with it? You know, this is nothing like George Washington or King George III or other presidents or world leaders. This is very, very different. Do you know that when someone becomes a Christian, something really, two things cool happen, all right? You ready? First thing cool happens, all of your sins get transferred to Jesus. True? Yep. What happened? He, all his righteousness, remember he was fulfilling all righteousness his whole life? You get all that stuff. The big fancy theological word is double imputation. But it just means a big exchange, great exchange, right? Justification is you're trading, right? All right, so think about that. I wanna give you an implication of this, and this will help you as you read your Bibles, and particularly as we go through the Gospel of Mark. As you read this, this is not just like a history book. You see, George Washington, he is never gonna call you into his army. Don't worry, no matter what you say about Him or any of those other guys, right? Jesus will, and He has. All right, so as you answer this, but you have a part. If you're a Christian, so think about this. Remember at the baptism? It was really cool, wasn't it? Heaven opened up, God said, this is my beloved Son. Did you know that because of double imputation, which means you got His righteousness and He got your sin, that that is actually how He feels about you? Today we celebrate Father's Day, don't we? Happy Father's Day to all you fathers. Do you know the impact that you have on your children? Your words carry like extra super weight. It's true. You ask any kid, what dad thinks of me, what dad says about me is really, really weighty. And so we have God, Jesus, his father, saying to him, this is my beloved son. Now some of you had fathers who did a great job. They spoke into you truth, affirmation, encouragement. Fathers, I encourage you, do that. Do that with your kids. You have a power, use it for good. Do not damage your children. And some of you do have fathers who've damaged you, right? They basically were not encouraging, they didn't build you up. They said harsh things in their anger, or any other way. Some of them might not have been Christians. And so you, I wanna encourage you this morning, you have a father, and here's how he feels about you. You are his beloved child. He loves you. He's well-pleased with you because of Jesus, because of that great exchange. And so as you read about Jesus, you actually have a part in this because He's earning righteousness that you're gonna get. You're the beneficiary of all this. Does that make sense? And so I want to encourage you. Perfect on Father's Day, this is what the Father says about you, but not all of you, only those of you who have put your lot in with Him. Right, are you a loyalist to Him, right? Not to the Great Britain throne, but to Jesus. If you put your lot in with Him, if you ask Him, hey, I really, that exchange, it sounds like a great deal. Sign me up. Yeah, I'm a big sinner. I'd like to give you all of that, and I'd like to get all your righteousness. It's as simple as that. And then you follow Him, right? He said, follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. They live the rest of their lives doing that. That is His call on all of you. so that then you too will know a father, no matter what your earthly father was like, who says, you are my beloved child and you, I am well pleased. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you, thank you so much that that's how you feel about us. We are unworthy, I know my own sin. Lord, you have no reason to be pleased in me just based on myself. I know they feel the same way. But thank you for Jesus, who fulfilled all righteousness. You checked every box. He did everything right. that we can receive your love. I pray as we go through this gospel of Mark that we would see over and over who Jesus is. It's not gonna be some kind of theoretical history lesson, but something that highly impacts our lives and transforms our lives, encourages our hearts, and motivates us in how we act. Lord, I pray that you would accomplish that for your glory, for indeed, your kingdom is advancing. Come, Lord Jesus, come. May your kingdom come, may your will be done here in Cane Bay as it is in heaven. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.