Well, good morning. Welcome back to our Bible talks. If you tune into these regularly, you'll know that it's been quite a while since we had a Bible talk. If I remember correctly, it was actually seven weeks ago. Lord willing, we're going to resume today and keep doing these every week for who knows how long. But it's my goal here to do this once a week to get together with you to read the Bible, to pray it back to God. And like I've said many times before, to model how you could have a very enjoyable, engaging, edifying time just reading the Bible. We don't here use curricula, we don't really pore over commentaries or anything like that, but just thoughtfully reading the Bible and thinking through what is God saying to me through this and then praying that back to God. That's been our pattern here for quite some time. And Lord willing, we're going to start today in the gospel of Mark. Now, just to explain where I've been, I think, you know, if you tune into these regularly, you know that I am also a Navy Reserve chaplain. I took that ministry on myself a while ago. I think the Lord led me to take it on. But as sort of a missionary opportunity, one of the things that I've been convicted about as pastor here for a long time is that I have very little interaction with non-Christians. You know, my parishioners are largely Christians. My co-worker is a Christian. And interactions with non-Christians became fewer and fewer over the years. So I was thinking through, how can I make opportunities to spend time with non-Christians to tell them about Jesus? And through a long series of events that I won't recount here, the Lord opened up this opportunity to serve as a chaplain with the Navy Reserve. And so far it has proved to be a pretty interesting ministry opportunity, different than I expected, but better in some ways than I expected. Well, for the last six weeks I was in Rhode Island going to naval officer training school, and I won't rehash here all that I've said to my church. Last Wednesday I kind of told a bunch of stories and talked about how it was, so I won't repeat that here. But it was a very difficult, challenging experience, made a lot of good friendships, learned a lot through it, but I'm glad that it's over. And I look at experiences like that. It's almost like short term missions trips. You know, sometimes pastors go on short term mission trips. They might spend, you know, a month or two in India or something like that, visiting missionaries, blessing a seminary or something like that. I look at what I'm doing with the chaplaincy similar to that. It just so happens that I'm a military officer, but primarily I view myself as a missionary trying to advance the Great Commission. But that's where I was, and that's why I don't have a mustache. Obviously the military's got some pretty strict rules about facial hair, can't have a beard. And you normally can have a mustache, but at this particular training I was attending, I couldn't have a mustache, so that's why it's gone. I'm not quite sure yet whether I'm going to grow it back yet. My kids want me to, but we'll see what happens. Again, for the sake of time, I won't go into all the the whys and wherefores regarding facial hair. But anyway, that's why I look like I do, and that's where I've been the last six weeks. I would ask that you would pray for me in this ministry, that God would use me to advance the Great Commission, that I'd get to know unbelieving people, love unbelieving people, tell them about Jesus, identify Christians. There are a surprising number of Christians in the military. My impression is there are there's a higher percentage of Christians in the military than in broader society. I don't know why that's the case, but also my desire is not only to evangelize non-Christians but to disciple those who know the Lord Jesus. So I pray that the Lord would give me opportunities to do that. Well anyway, like I said, today we're going to pick up in the Gospel of Mark. We finished a series most recently through the Psalms, we did 15 weeks in Psalms, and now we're going to work through Mark. Now I'm not sure how long we're going to stay in Mark. If you know my pace, I go relatively slowly. We go basically verse by verse, walking our way through a passage, and Mark's, you know, 16 chapters. So I'm thinking about maybe quitting after chapter 4 or 5, chapter 8, we'll see how it goes, go back to the Old Testament for a while, and then return to the Gospel of Mark and finish it out. But we'll just sort of play it by ear and see how it goes. But for the time being we'll be here in the Gospel of Mark. Today I want to read and discuss Mark 1 1 through 1 13. We'll see if we can get through it. But before we look at God's word, would you pray with me? Let's pray. Almighty God in heaven, thank you for how kind and merciful you are. You are a gracious God, a merciful God, a God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and mercy. And it's out of that merciful heart that you gave us Jesus, our Savior. We praise you for the way that he lived the life we should have lived, died the death we deserve to die, for the way that you raised him again victorious and for the way that he now gives eternal life to all who believe on Him. Lord, do bless now this new study of the gospel of Mark. Illuminate us by your spirit. Guide us. Give us conviction. Give us encouragement. Give us greater faith. Help me to make comments that bring out the meaning and the intent of this passage. Through Jesus we pray. Amen. All right, let's pick up in Mark 1.1. We'll read on through verse 13 and see what the Lord has to say to us through it. Mark 1.1. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, 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. The spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to him. We'll pause there. I can tell as I'm reading through this that we're probably not going to get through all of this this morning. So we'll see how far we can get. Beginning in verse 1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now let's talk about that word gospel a little bit. This is a word that's sadly often misunderstood, even in Christendom. You hear the idea all the time that the word gospel means good news. Raise your hand if you've heard that before. Gospel means good news. That is, at best, a severe oversimplification. The word basically means almost like epic news, like the kind of news that, say, World War II is over. You might have seen those old newspapers, you know, VE Day, VJ Day. This massive, world-changing, epic news. That's what this word means. The term gospel is actually used before Jesus to refer to the coronation of a new emperor. When a new Caesar came on the scene, it was the gospel, the proclamation that we have a new emperor in town. Now, why is that important? It's important for a couple of reasons. First, we never want to oversimplify the Bible, but second, the gospel, yes, it's good news to those who believe, but to those who will not believe, it's terrifying news. I think it's 2 Corinthians that makes this point, that the gospel is a savor of life to those who believe, but a savor of death to those who will not believe. And that's how we need to realize, that's how we need to understand this term, gospel. Massive, life-changing, world-changing, paradigm-changing news, but to those who believe it, it's wonderful, but to those who will not believe it, it is terrifying. Because, you know, tying this into the rest of the Bible, to those who believe on Jesus, we have full forgiveness of sins, reconciliation to our creator, the sure and certain hope of heaven, the sure and certain hope of resurrection from the dead, every spiritual blessing, That's obviously wonderful, amazing news. But again, to those who will not believe, to unbelievers, to the devil, to his demons, it's terrifying because what it's saying is that your kingdom, devil, is coming to an end. You will be damned along with all of your people eternally. You'll suffer eternal conscious torment. That's all bound up in this idea of gospel. So is it good news? Yeah, but it's a whole lot more than that. It's the news that the universe has been changed, the world has been changed, and it's all tied into Jesus the Christ. Now let's talk about Jesus the Christ. I know I've mentioned some of this before, but Jesus is his name, Christ is his title. Okay, Jesus is his name. It's actually the Greek version of the Hebrew term Joshua. So if Jesus were, you know, living in Old Testament times, his name would have been Joshua. If you take that and sort of turn it into Koine Greek, it's Jesus, but it's the same idea. Jesus is Joshua. Now, Christ, like I've said before, is not Jesus' last name. You know, we here in English have first names and last names. I am Timothy Raymond. First name Timothy, last name Raymond. That is not how Christ functions in the Bible. Christ is a title, and again, it's really just the Greek equivalent of Messiah. Just to back up a little bit, hopefully you know that the Old Testament's written primarily in Hebrew, a couple chapters of Aramaic here and there, but primarily in Hebrew. New Testament is written in Greek. With that comes some translation issues. The idea of the Messiah in the Old Testament, which is prophesied a lot of different places, is the Greek idea of the Christ. So whenever you come across Jesus Christ, realize that's just saying Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus, Messiah, Messiah, Jesus. Now, what's the Messiah? Well, the Messiah is that wonderful, perfect king promised all throughout the Old Testament. And really, the Messiah is basically the theme of the Bible. If you wanted to summarize the theme of the entire Bible in one word, it would be the Messiah. prophesied all throughout the Old Testament, and there's really tons of messianic prophecies all throughout the Old Testament. Many, many more than I ever realized. I grew up thinking that Your Old Testament saints were saved by sort of a vague, cloudy faith in Jehovah, and that they really didn't have much of a sense of Messiah. I've come to discover that is totally wrong. There is a very clear sense of Messiah from the very beginning. You know, you've got Genesis 3.15, God is going to send this serpent crusher who's going to stomp on the head of the serpent. You've got the promise to Noah that one of the descendants of Shem will actually be God dwelling in the tents of Shem. You've got all these promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that in your seed, singular, all of the families of the earth will be blessed. You've got the prophet that's greater than Moses. You've got the temple sacrificial system where you've got the perfect lamb whose blood is shed, and without the shedding of that blood, there can't be any forgiveness of sins. You've got the promises to David that one of David's descendants will be the king of the entire universe. I mean, we could keep going. hundreds of prophecies, promises, shadows, types, and they're all pertaining to this Messiah. He's going to be a suffering servant who's going to be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, but he'll also, his body will not see decay. He will not remain in Sheol. He'll be the unique king of the Jews, descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but he'll also be the king of all nations, the king of kings and lord of lords. The Old Testament includes all of that, and that's all of what it means, in part, to be the Messiah. So here, when Jesus is born, this humble child of Mary, an adopted child of Joseph the carpenter, he is the Messiah. He is that long-promised king of kings that the Old Testament's been talking about. All of that is bound up in this first verse. So can you see why the gospel of Jesus Christ really is epic news, world-changing, universe-changing news? This Messiah that's been promised for thousands of years is finally here, and He's Jesus, the, again, son of a humble Galilean peasant girl, Mary, and His adopted father, Joseph. Now, notice there it says, Son of God. We don't have time to talk about all of this, but I think there's sort of two senses in which that should be taken. First, he's the Son of God in the sense that he's God the Son. He's God incarnate. He's not, you know, there is a sense in which all believers become sons and daughters of God. That's the entire doctrine of adoption, and that is precious. You know, you go to something like Galatians 4, Galatians 5, we are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. Praise God for that. But Jesus is the Son of God in a different sense. He is God the Son. He's never had a beginning. He's always been equal with God the Father, equal with God the Spirit. That's what it means in part to be the Son of God. But that second person of the Trinity takes on flesh and dwells among us. He's born as a human baby. So he's got a fully human nature and a fully divine nature in one person. Like Colossians, I think it's three says, all the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in him. and all of that is bound up in this idea that this is the gospel of Jesus the Messiah who is the Son of God, eternal God taking on flesh for us in our salvation. Let's pick up in verse 2. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold I send my messenger before your face. Now pause there. Now if you know your Bible well, you'll note that the prophecy that Mark quotes here actually doesn't come from Isaiah. Do you know where it comes from? It actually comes from Malachi, I think Chapter 3 or 4, you'll have to check me on that, but I can't remember. Either Malachi 3 or 4, Malachi makes this prophecy that before the great and awesome day of the Lord, before the Lord God Jehovah comes to earth, the Lord will send a messenger to prepare the way. Now that might make you wonder, why then does it say as it is written in Isaiah the prophet? You see that in verse 2? This comes from Malachi. Why does it say Isaiah the prophet? Well, this actually has to do with the Jewish way of organizing books into scrolls. For the sake of time, we won't get into this now. But we know from, you know, ancient archaeology in the Talmud and whatnot that the different books of the Old Testament were united into scrolls. They didn't use books like this. They definitely didn't have little paperbacks like we have today. But one scroll might cover, you know, the major prophets or the minor prophets. Truth be told, it wouldn't include all of the major prophets. The major prophets are huge. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. So there would probably be one scroll that would contain some of the major prophets and some of the minor prophets. But what I'm trying to say is that a lot of these books were bound together in one scroll. They wouldn't have one little tiny scroll with Obadiah on it. It would be Obadiah plus, you know, Zephaniah and so forth, all bound together on one scroll. These scrolls were incredibly expensive, by the way. What they were usually was really thin lambskin, you know, and then handwritten. Obviously, the printing press didn't exist back in, you know, Jesus' day. So incredibly expensive. So it makes sense that they could bind these books together in one giant scroll. And the scroll that included both Isaiah and Malachi put together was often called the Isaiah Scroll because You understand how books work oftentimes we call a book what it is based on sometimes the first chapter or the first section You know, it's kind of like some of our hymns. Some of our hymns are oftentimes entitled based on the first phrase, you know, how firm a foundation. The song says a whole lot more, but we call it how firm a foundation because that's the first line. So also some of these scrolls, when multiple books were bound together in that scroll, were called the Isaiah scroll, even though more than Isaiah is in it. Hopefully this is making sense. But this explains why when Mark says Isaiah says this, it's actually Malachi. If none of that made sense, please ask me. You know, put comments on the Facebook page or on the Sermon Audio page and hopefully I can get to them. But that's what's going on there. Now, coming to this prophecy of Malachi, like I said, Malachi prophesied that the Lord God Himself is coming. And go back to that prophecy in Malachi. I should have looked it up. But the prophecy says the Lord God, Jehovah, is coming. But before Jehovah comes, a messenger will come. Now, in the flow of this passage, who is the messenger? The messenger is John the Baptist, clearly, and we're going to see that in a minute. If that's the case, if the messenger comes before the Lord, Jehovah comes, and if John the Baptist is the messenger, who then is Jesus? Do you follow the logic here? Very clearly Jesus is fulfilling that prophecy that the Lord God Almighty will come to earth. You might not realize this, but the Bible shouts Jesus' deity everywhere. I'm particularly concerned about this because I used to do a lot of evangelism with cults, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. I don't do it so much anymore, in part because I got a little bit frustrated that things were never going anywhere. The Mormons would come to your door and you'd talk to them for hours and hours and hours and never make any headway. After doing that for a few years it got kind of frustrating, so truth be told I kind of gave up. Maybe I shouldn't do that, maybe I should take it back upon myself. But through that experience I got very concerned with seeing the deity of Jesus all over the Bible. Sure it's in those verses that say, you know, John 1, 1, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. You know, Colossians 2, the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in him. There are explicit verses that clearly teach that Jesus is fully God. But far more than that, Jesus' deity is absolutely everywhere through the fulfilled prophecies, through his works, through his words. Really, it's everywhere. And this is one of the places, in addition where we see Jesus full deity, that he is the fulfillment of that prophecy that Jehovah God himself is coming to earth because John the Baptist is that messenger who prepares the way before Jehovah comes to earth. Am I making sense? Well let's talk about John a little bit. It says in verse 4, John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Now, we here at Trinity are a Baptist church, and with that comes a somewhat unique understanding of baptism. We do not baptize babies. I've never baptized a baby, and honestly, I don't even consider it a baptism. I consider it just more like getting babies moist. Baptism we do not see as a replacement of Old Testament circumcision. That's what our baby baptizing friends often say, you know, our Presbyterian Methodist friends. What they often say is that just like they circumcised babies in the Old Testament, we baptize babies in the New Testament to demonstrate they're part of the covenant community. I don't buy that argument at all for several reasons. First, the Bible never says that baptism replaces circumcision. Instead if you look at a passage like this during this time where John's baptizing circumcision is still going on So it's not like a time came where the people of God said, okay I know we circumcised for thousands of years. We're gonna quit that and replace that with baptism No, you've clearly got a number of years here where baptism and circumcision are both taking place and you think about Jesus he would have been both circumcised as a little baby and and baptized here by John. So the idea that they replace one another doesn't really seem to fit. What's more, clearly the baptism here is a sign of repentance. Circumcision didn't really function that way. You didn't get circumcised on the contingent of repentance, you got circumcised as a little baby whether you repented or not. You think about Abraham, Isaac, he circumcised Ishmael, he circumcises Isaac, there's no real repentance going on there at all, whereas New Testament baptism really is to be an outward sign of your inward repentance. So we just do not see any connection at all between baptism and circumcision. Sure, they're both from God, and I guess in that sense they're similar, but they're really not equivalent ceremonies whatsoever. Now, where does circumcision come from? You could really dig back into the archaeology if you wanted to, but realize that baptism actually springs up before Jesus. We think it ties into what the Jews practiced called mikveh dipping. To explain a little bit there, if you were a Gentile and wanted to convert to Judaism, there were several ceremonies that you had to go through. You know, be circumcised and whatnot. But in addition to that, they had a thing called mikveh dipping, which really was a baptism, similar to what we do. They put you in a tank and dip you under. And, you know, if you've got Jewish friends, you may have even seen this sort of thing, dipping in the mikveh. That ceremony seems to come before Jesus, and John sort of adopts that to indicate that this is the sign now of who's really repentant. Now, it's interesting, at this point in Salvation history, John is largely baptizing Jews, which will become important later on. If you've read the Gospels, you'll know that the Jews often thought they were right with God purely by their Jewishness. Just because I'm biologically descended from Abraham, I'm right with God. But John and Jesus, but John especially is going to say, no, just because you're Hebrews does not mean you're right with God at all. God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones if he wants to. You need to repent and believe the gospel. after you've repented and believed the gospel, be baptized to demonstrate that you've repented and believed the gospel. So for these reasons, I don't see it at all connected to circumcision. Instead, it does seem to be more like what Baptists teach, that it's an external sign of your inward repentance. If you've turned from your sin and trusted in the Lord Jesus, Baptism is the right way to make that public. And by the way, it was sad that this last Sunday we had to cancel our baptism service. We were going to baptize two or three people, I can't remember, in the local river, which I love doing, but we had to cancel it due to thunderstorms. But Lord willing, we're going to reschedule that fairly soon. And say you attend Trinity and you've never been baptized, I challenge you that it's perhaps time for you to consider being baptized. You know, if your faith is in the Lord Jesus, your sins are forgiven. And baptism does not add to that, doesn't make you more saved, doesn't make you more right with God or anything like that. But this is the God-ordained way to make your faith public. to make it public that you're now gonna walk in God's way, do things God's way, follow Jesus. And if that's not taking place in your life, let's begin a conversation. Email me, call me, text me, something like that. Because I love baptizing people, and again, this is the biblical way to make your faith known. And as you can see, John's doing this to Jews to indicate that their repentance is sincere, but that brings us to the Question about Jesus in verse 19 or verse 9 and maybe we'll close up with this. Why was Jesus baptized? Let's let's look at verse 9 in those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan Now, if, like I've been saying, baptism was a sign of your repentance, what in the world is Jesus doing getting baptized? Jesus, if you know anything about the Bible, He's totally sinless. He does not need to repent. He's the Son of God. He's God in the flesh. Yes, like Hebrew says, He's tempted in all ways as we are, but without sin. He's not a sinner by nature. He's not a sinner by choice. He is flawless. So why in the world, then, is He getting baptized by John? Few answers to this question, and none of them are because he's a sinner. First, again, this seems to be the way in which God is going to proclaim to the world that Jesus is the Messiah. And I get this partly from the Gospel of John. In the Gospel of John, if you follow the argument there, what John says is Part of what's going on with Jesus baptism is when the dove comes down and the voice from heaven says this is my beloved son That's part of what God is using to proclaim to the world that Jesus is the Messiah So one of the reasons why Jesus gets baptized is as a proclamation that this is the unique Son of God the promised Messiah Another reason why Jesus gets baptized, there's this curious phrase in the Gospel of Matthew, you'll remember if you've read Matthew, that John initially tries to delay Jesus. He says, no, Jesus, I can't baptize you, you should baptize me. Do you remember that? But Jesus says, no, we need to do this to fulfill all righteousness. So evidently, baptism at this point became part of the God-ordained way to be righteous. Not to be righteous in the sense of being saved and made right with God, but if I'm going to walk in God's ways, if I'm going to demonstrate that I do know God, the way in which I do that is through baptism. So, in part, I don't fully comprehend myself what that means, but in order to fulfill all righteousness, to do what God wants me to do, I, Jesus, even though I'm the sinless Son of God, must obey and be baptized by you, John. A last reason why I think Jesus is baptized is to show his unity with sinners. Now I want to be really careful here because Jesus is not a sinner at all. And yet through his incarnation he comes down and walks among us to purchase our salvation. He experiences the temptations we experience, the afflictions we experience. And think about what incredible humility that is, that this is eternal God who's never had a beginning. It's never needed to eat, never needed to sleep, never needed rest or anything like that. You know, eternal, almighty, infinite God. And yet he takes on a human body and realize that Jesus' human body, it could be hurt. It did need to eat and it did need to sleep. What amazing condescension that is. So part of what's going on in the New Testament is the eternal God is showing his Sympathy with sinners his condescension to fellowship with sinners again He's not a sinner himself in any way shape or form But he's willing to come down to us and and to walk in our shoes to buy our salvation He's gonna fight our battles for us and I do think part of that to illustrate his unity with sinners Even though he's not a sinner himself, but to illustrate his unity with sinners and his condescension to save sinners He's baptized like we are baptized as well, those of us who believe. And it's interesting, we think that we ought to be baptized like Jesus was baptized. You could talk about infant baptism and adult baptism forever, but part of the reason why we don't baptize babies is due to the manner in which Jesus was baptized. If you look at verse 10, Immediately he came up out of the water. What does that seem to suggest? It seems to suggest he went down into the water. This is not just like a sprinkling of a little water on a baby's head. This seems to be an immersion in water. And like Jesus was immersed, we follow in his footsteps and are immersed in water and raised out of the water, similar to when Jesus was raised from the dead. Now, having said all of this about baptism, do I believe that there are Christians who don't believe in our view of baptism? Of course. Most of my best pastor friends don't practice adult, you know, and I shouldn't say adult, it's post-salvation baptism, post-faith baptism. We'll baptize people, you know, 12, 13, that sort of thing. But the idea is, have they put their faith in Jesus? Have they repented and believed? That's really the difference between our baptism and baby baptism. But you don't need to believe in baptism like we do in order to be a Christian. If your hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness, you are my brother or sister regardless of what you believe about baptism. But I'm simply arguing for why we believe what we believe based here on Scripture. A couple more comments before we move on. Notice when it says, after he came up out of the water, the heavens were torn open and the spirit descended on him like a dove. Notice that word torn open there. It's a really curious phrase. It's curious because it's not what you would expect. The other gospels, they talk about the heavens opening, the heavens parting. Why do you think it uses the term torn open? It's interesting, the only other place in the gospel of Mark where this term torn open is used is when Jesus dies on the cross and the curtain of the temple is torn open. Remember that passage? And what seems to be taking place here is that Jesus' ministry is so amazing, so remarkable, it's almost as if with him the the barrier between heaven and earth is sort of ripped apart so that you know heaven is you know God's dwelling we can't see him we can't climb a ladder to heaven we can't build a tower of Babel to heaven we can't get the spaceship and go to heaven you know we're here on earth but through Jesus ministry that that separation between heaven and earth is sort of diminished and even torn open so that now God and man can fellowship like we were designed to in the Garden of Eden. One of the things that you see in the Garden of Eden is that God came down and walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. After sin, that's done. The interaction between God and man is very, very different. But with Jesus' ministry, something of Eden is partially restored, and it's a foretaste of the kind of fellowship that we'll have once Jesus comes again, and we'll see him as he is, and we'll be like him, and the glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas. You see that sort of hinted at here with the heavens being torn open with Jesus Baptism. Let's close up with verse 11. Again, we talked about the idea of the Son of God, eternal God for us in our salvation, taking on flesh. And you'll see that the Father is pleased with the Son. There's nothing the Son could do that could make the Father more happy. He's delighted in the Son. And again, this is the Son that the Father's had from all eternity past. It's not like Jesus becomes the Son of God at this point. He's always been the Son, but now he's the Son of God incarnate. And the father is well pleased with him and his obedience. One final thought that I'd encourage you to think through. When we trust in Jesus, we're united to Jesus and all of his benefits. And one of the arguments that Ephesians makes is that now God loves us with the very love with which he loves his son. We stand in the same position that Jesus stands in, not in the sense that we become God, we'll never become gods, but we become adopted children of God, loved with the very same love with which God the Father loves Jesus the Son. Therefore, what this means is that if your faith is in Jesus, God is looking at you and saying, with you, my beloved child, I am well pleased. On your best day, you know, when you're hitting your devotions and going to church and giving to the church and telling your neighbors about Jesus, God is saying, with you, my son, I am well pleased. But on your worst day, you know, when you kick the cat and you got a headache and you got grumpy at work and maybe you said some words to your spouse that you shouldn't say, because you're united to Jesus, God is still saying, with you, I am well pleased. Now, certainly that should move us to repent from our sins and to return back to our Father. But nonetheless, God loves us with the very same love with which He loves His Son. And therefore, continually in Jesus, He's saying to us, with you, child, I am well pleased. That's an amazing thought. And let that really get into your bloodstream. Because if you really get the love that God has for you in Jesus, that will motivate you to love and good works like nothing else. More so than shame, more so than fear, more so than pride. Gratitude for God's love in Jesus will motivate you to love and good works like nothing else. Remember what Jesus said to that woman that washed his feet with her tears, those who are forgiven much, love much. And if you really get that God is looking at you, child, God is looking at you, if your hope is in Jesus and saying with you, I am well pleased, you let that get into you, that will motivate you to love and good works like nothing else. So maybe ponder that throughout today. How can we pray this back to God? A lot we could pray here, and I can see I'm already out of time. This is gonna take a while to get through, Mark. But praise God that he sent us this Messiah, this one that's been prepared for us from before the creation of the world. Praise God that this Messiah is God himself in the flesh for us and our salvation. And praise God that he was willing to fulfill all righteousness. For had Jesus sinned, you know, think about that. Had Jesus sinned, he could not have been the spotless sacrifice to take our sins away. But praise God that he obeyed God in every way for us even unto death on the cross. Let me pray these things back to God and we'll be done. Let's pray. Well, Lord God, it is great to be back doing these Bible talks, back in your Word. We do thank you so very much for your Son, Jesus. He is the Messiah promised from Genesis 315 all the way throughout the Old Testament, the Son of God who became man for us in our salvation. We thank you for the way that he did fulfill all righteousness for us in his baptism. We thank you for the way that he really is the the bringing together of heaven and earth, the ladder between heaven and earth. And to be connected to Him is to be connected to you. Lord, bless this study as we work our way through the Gospel of Mark. Open our eyes and our hearts. Help us to really get what Your Word is talking about and to embrace it with faith. Use this time to renew our minds and to make us like Your Son. It's in His name we pray. Amen. Thanks for tuning in. Have a great day.