This is the gospel of Mark, Mark For Beginners, the subtitle is Mark,
the Urgent Gospel, and I'll explain that in a minute. Lesson number one in this
series and we're going to do a little introduction and background. I call this
gospel the urgent gospel because, a couple of reasons: one, it's the shortest
of the four gospel records. Probably was the first one written and we kind of
see that, because if you read Luke you'll see that 350 verses in Luke were
taken directly from Mark. And Luke says he studied different records and
he's put a history together, so part of that gathering of information must have
come from Mark's Gospel. Mark spends absolutely no time whatsoever explaining
Jesus's family background. It's amazing, all the other writers they
give the birth and the prophecies. In John, in the beginning was
the Word and the Word was with God, and this whole long philosophical thing
Mark jumps right in verse one, Jesus, the Divine Son of God, period. We got
that out of the way, let's keep moving on. He's a man, he's driven
and I mean, he's driven. It's as if he's kind of in a hurry to begin
making a witness for Jesus as soon as possible. Before getting into the text,
as always when we're studying a text of the Bible, I like to do a little bit of
background information. There were two major periods in the first century in
which the gospel was circulated, and it was circulated in two different ways.
First of all, it was circulated, what we call the oral period from about 33 to 60
A.D. During this time the gospel was preached orally and transmitted by the
word of mouth by the apostles and disciples, you see that in Acts chapter eight
verse four. Some of Jesus' sayings were circulated in short form, like tracks,
like little information tracks we give in
the racks there, well some of His sayings were transmitted like that at
the beginning, or they were carved. Some of his sayings were
carved into bowls or they were carved into church meeting places on the wall
or on the doorpost. That was the oral period. And then
there's the written period 60 to about 180 A.D., as a demand for
more permanent records grew, the Gospels were provided, of course, by God, to meet
this need. The number of eyewitnesses was declining and so their witness needed to
be recorded for future generations. Remember I've said this before when we
were studying Thessalonians, remember that the early church believed that
Jesus was going to return in their lifetime, in their generation, and so they
didn't, they didn't feel the need to record everything. Why record
everything, why record anything for the next generation, He's coming back in our
generation, but as they began to die off and as the Apostles were
martyred and so on and so forth, they began to see the wisdom of recording
this material. So 60 to about 100 A.D., the majority of the Gospels and
epistles were written, copied, and kept. The Gospel of Mark is one of these texts,
written between 60 and 70 A.D. Some pinpointed somewhere about 64 A.D., which
makes it a very early writing. Now, we claim that the Bible is inspired or
authored by God for several reasons, again, this is just prep material, here.
For several reasons, we've done this in other classes, but I just want to, for the
record, kind of review this very quickly. We, as Christians, claim that the Bible is
inspired, because the Bible makes this claim of itself, right, in John 14:26
Jesus says, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My
name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance, all that I
said to you." Jesus, in advance, is saying that what the Apostles are going
to say in the future, they're receiving from the Spirit,
that He, Himself, sent. Then in Second Timothy 3:16. Of course, "All
Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof,
correction, for training in righteousness." And the key word there is all scripture.
All of it, not just some of it, all of it is inspired. And then in Second
Peter, again, familiar versus Peter says "But know this first of all, that no
prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy
was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke
from God." Again passages, all right, where I'm trying to demonstrate that the Bible
says of itself that it's inspired. It isn't someone that came along one day
and studied the Bible and said, hmmm after reading the Bible I've come to the
conclusion it must be inspired. Well, you've come to that conclusion because
as you're reading through it, it says that of itself and the choice that you
have is to believe that or not to believe it. And then, of course, why
we believe that it's inspired, as I say, it makes that claim of itself. Another
reason we believe that the scriptures are inspired: fulfilled prophecy.
Interesting to note that the Bible is the only holy book that contains
hundreds of prophecies that were fulfilled. There are plenty of holy books
that are studied by scholars, the holy books of the
Hindus and the Muslims, they all have holy
books, but none of them have this feature called fulfilled prophecy, none of them.
They have laws and rules and poetry and descriptions of God and the afterlife
and how the world was created. Yes, they have those features, but they don't have
the feature of prophecy and certainly not fulfilled prophecy. I mean, just take
one example to demonstrate that, the
prophet Daniel prophecies 600 years ahead of time what the four
major world powers would be in succession. How do you do that? You
can't do that unless God is doing that. You could make a guess
for maybe 20 years down the road, you see some Empire beginning to build
and you make an educated guess. Their going to be the next.
But 600 years down the road, the fourth world power, and then of course the
kingdom of God coming during that fourth world power, that's pretty precise stuff.
So only the Bible has that. The only way to have so many fulfilled prophecies
if the book itself has a supernatural source and as Christians we believe that
God is the source of the Bible. And then one other thing, the quality of the book
itself. Sixty-six books written by over 40 different authors, many of whom, many
which didn't know each other, over a period of 1,600 years, no
contradiction, no mistakes, only one story is told. Nowadays you get
a couple of reporters covering the same story and then they write their
stories and you get all kinds of contradictions, they can't agree
on the story. This idea here of the quality of the book, again, not possible
without divine guidance. And I always say well if it's man-made, how come man has
not created something else like it with all of the technology that we have today
and all of the education that we have today, why haven't we been able to
reproduce something like it. We haven't. So there are other reasons as well, why we
believe the scriptures are inspired. The witness of the risen Christ,
of course, the impact and longevity of this one book over 2,000 years, but I
just mentioned the few basic ones. So when you take all of the reasons
together, they can only be explained in one way, they lead to only one logical
conclusion and that is that the Bible is not just an ordinary book or a holy book,
but rather, it is a text inspired and produced by a superior being. And
we, as Christians, believe that that superior being is God. So it's
important to lay that foundation because we're studying the book of Mark as an
inspired work. The Bible was inspired by God, but God used
men to record His thoughts and words and the history of His people in their own
style and in their own language. And one of these men was John Mark, who's book of
Mark, is one of these Gospels. Interestingly, the book of Mark says
nothing about its author. Paul, I am Paul, I'm writing to you,
this is my signature, he names himself, and Peter. But there's no reference
to the author here. Nothing about its author, but early church tradition
points to John Mark, who was the son of Mary, not of course Mary the mother of
Jesus, another Mary, common Jewish name, who was a wealthy Jewish woman. Lived
with her family in the city of Jerusalem. She was a friend of the Apostles and it
was to her house that Peter went after he was released from jail. Remember when
the angel released Peter from jail he went to Mary's house, well that Mary was
John Mark's mother, Acts 12:12. John Mark was the cousin of Barnabas, who
was very active in the early church and it was through him that Mark met and
began to work with Paul the Apostle. Mark's association with the Apostles
covered more than a 30-year span. So very briefly I'd like to just kind of cover
that, again, just give us some background. From 30 to 40 A.D. his
association with the Apostles begins with his mother who was, he and his
mother among the first converts First Peter, chapter 5, verse 13. Her home was
used as a meeting place for the Apostles and early disciples, we saw that in Acts
12. Some believe that he was the young man who ran away naked in the garden.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, in Mark chapter 14 when Peter cuts off
the ear of Malchus, the servant, right, and then the guards are taking Jesus
away and there's a young man there, we'll read that when we get to that chapter,
there's a young man there, wrapped in a sheet and the soldiers grabbed the sheet
and it says he ran, the young man ran away naked. Such an obscure, weird thing
in the, just dropped in the middle of the description of Jesus'
time in the garden and Judas betraying him and all that
drama, and in the middle of this, you have this almost comical scene of a young guy
running through the night with no clothes on. Who was that
young guy? Well, many scholars believe that young guy was Mark. It's the only
self-reference that he makes about himself in there. Otherwise,
why do it. From 40 to 50 A.D. Saul and Barnabas deliver money for the poor in
Jerusalem and they take Mark along with them and they go back to Antioch, the
jumping-off place for the first missionary journey. We read about that in
Acts chapter 12, verse 25. Saul and Barnabas take him along on their first
missionary journey, Acts 13, kind of a helper an intern. And then
we find out that he loses, John Mark loses interest, and he returns to
Jerusalem, doesn't complete the trip. And this, of course, causes him to lose favor
with Paul, not so much with Barnabas, because they're relatives, but
with Paul. And when Paul decides to go back and visit the churches that they
had established Barnabas is game to go with him and wants to bring Mark and
Paul says no, no, no, he abandoned us before, we're not taking this guy with us
and there's the dispute between Paul and Barnabas to the point where they kind of
broke off association and Barnabas took his cousin Mark and they went one way
and Paul took Silas and went off on the next missionary
journey. So that's some of the action between 40 and 50 A.D. Between 50 and 60
A.D., Mark is restored to fellowship with Paul, and Paul calls on him for help and
even commends him to the church as a faithful servant, Colossians chapter four,
verse 10 and Philemon verses 23 and 24. A wonderful story there. We can talk
about Barnabas, what a facilitator he is, what a peacemaker he
is, helping to rehabilitate John Mark's reputation in the church and I like that
story that there's Paul and Barnabas and they have a fight and have a dispute and
they, yeah well, you go your way, let's agree to disagree.
Wonderful lesson for us, Barnabas didn't quit the church and Mark
didn't quit the church, they just stopped working with Paul for a time, but then
eventually they were reconciled. A very human thing happened and a very human
Christian thing happened to kind of reconcile these brothers together. And
then 60 to 70 A.D. Paul, near the end of his life, while in prison, mentions Mark
as a faithful co-worker, Second Timothy 4:11. And then later on we know that Mark
is associated with Peter the Apostle, he serves as Peter's secretary in recording
the events and teachings that Peter has seen and heard during his life as an
apostle First Peter chapter 5, verse 13. When you're reading Mark, you're
reading Peter. So over 30 years of service, finishing with a text dedicated
to him by Peter, which we now refer to as the Gospel of Mark. Let's look
at the gospel itself. We know that Mark was an eyewitness of what happened
during Jesus's ministry and the establishment of the early church. Early
church historians and writers tell us that he was Peter's secretary, as I said,
during the period before Peter's death in Rome 68 A.D., and Mark's work is a
record of what Peter said and saw and taught. Jesus's family, the Apostles,
and the early church all knew Mark and confirmed his presence and work in the
church for over 30 years. Very important, so that his work is accepted as
legitimate, as inspired. It means that he was a real person who lived and
worked with Jesus and the Apostles, not just a mythical figure, a real man.
Early church historians, who recorded the persons and the events surrounding the
beginning of the Christian age, they all confirmed that this text was written by
John Mark. Papias in 115 A.D, Clement 180 A.D., Origen 225 A.D., all these
early church scholars and fathers in their writings confirm that John Mark
was an associate of Peter and that he worked with Barnabas and that he did
write this thing. This is where we get confirmation for the information that we
have about Mark. His text, Gospel of Mark, was circulated while some of the
apostles were still alive; 64 A.D., not all the apostles were gone by then, they were
still alive. None of them disputed or criticized its content or its author. At
any time, any one of the Apostles could have said, this John Mark, he's a
fake, what he's writing, it's not good, but they didn't. We had no record of that.
The reason I say all of this is to show that Mark meets all the requirements to
be considered an inspired book and included in the Bible, because there were
lots of books that were circulating at the time about Jesus. Do you think we only
have 27 books that were written in the first century about Jesus Christ? No way.
There were many books and articles and periodicals, all kinds of things being
circulated about Jesus. So the task for the early church was to draw out
which of these books are the ones inspired, are the ones that should go
into the canon. The word canon means a measure, a correct measure.
The canon of the Bible are those books that measure up. That's
where that term comes from. A lot of books were written, but the criteria to
be included in the Canon - three. Again, not going to spend a whole lot of
time on this, because this is, this class is not about this subject
matter, but just as far as Mark is concerned, one who ever wrote the book
had to be an apostle or a disciple of an apostle. You have Luke right, he wasn't
an apostle, but he was a disciple and an associate of Paul, who was an Apostle.
Mark, he wasn't an apostle, but he was an associate of an
apostle, Peter. Secondly, the work had to be sound doctrinally, historically,
authentically. Mark was a true person, he was the one who wrote. The
church knew this, there was no criticism of it from the apostles or the early
teachers about its doctrine or its statements. And then thirdly, it had to be
widely circulated in the early churches and accepted as inspired by the churches.
Remember I've told you once before in another class that they didn't
dig up books that no one ever heard of and say, well we think this one's
inspired. What they did was they examined books that had been circulating for
centuries and had already been accepted by the church for centuries,
those are the ones that they selected to be in the canon. And Mark was one of
those books. Mark has all of these features and so we can accept it as an
inspired book of the Bible. Let's look at the text itself. The text
of Mark is clear, it's very free of abstract statements and concepts like,
again, like John for example, the Gospel of John, which would not appeal to the
Roman mind. And Mark's gospel is really directed towards Gentiles. A
Jew can read it, but it's really directed towards the Roman mind, it's very
direct, to the point, rather, so the book was written while Peter was in
Rome working with Roman Christians. So it would make sense that this book,
material, would appeal to Romans. It seems that Mark's gospel was aimed at people
who did not have a Jewish background, that's why there's very little reference
to Jewish history, unlike Matthew. When you read through Matthew, I mean, what are
you reading? This was done according to the Prophet. He's very careful,
Matthew is, not to show Jesus saying or doing anything unless he supports
what he's saying and doing from some prophet in the Old Testament. Mark, none
of that, didn't even bother. And, of course, Romans were mechanically minded,
they wanted their information in summary form; short, sweet, to the point.
Give me the big picture, just give me the big picture, that
was their mindset. And so Mark is a historical narrative, meaning Jesus did
this, and then He went there, and He did that, and then He came over here, and He
said this, and then after that, this happened. Historical narrative that gives
a description of Jesus's life, and His work, and His teachings, His death, His
resurrection, with very little background information and very little
philosophizing. Mark doesn't spend a lot of time saying, well, when Jesus
said this, this is what He meant. No, he - just the facts. It's
like a snapshot. It's like a postcard. John's Gospel is like a letter
to a friend, sharing deep thoughts. Mark - postcard. And Mark's
gospel is totally christ-centered, telling the story of Jesus's life, death,
and resurrection, and then it just ends. Period. Mark is not interested in
character analysis, he doesn't dwell on doctrinal development, his book is about
action and reaction, and you'll see that as we go through it. A good example of
this is that more space is given over to miracles in this book than the other
Gospels. Eighteen out of the 35 possible miracles are described in Mark. That's a
lot, more than half of all the miracles are jammed into this short 16 -
of course, when he wrote it, it didn't have chapters, but very short book.
Also, Mark takes time to kind of describe the reactions of the people to
Jesus, and these are carefully noted. There are over twenty-three references
to people who were either amazed, puzzled, astonished, hostile, he
describes the reaction that people have. Mark's Gospel is short, to the
point, colorful and powerful. It tells the simple story of Jesus without too much
background information and then it ends boom, with the challenge, believe and be
baptized and be saved. Disbelieve and be condemned. That's all there is to it.
Sometimes we offer the invitation and people say, well, why be so
direct? You might be offending my sister-in-law
who's visiting from Boston or something. You went and said that if people
don't respond they'll be lost. Well, that's how Mark does
it, straight ahead. So Mark - from Mark's perspective
the reader is forced to deal with the facts. It's almost as if he
says, okay, this is Jesus, these are the 18 miracles, oh yes, by the way, did I mention
the resurrection, okay, so those who believe in our baptize, you people are
saying - you people who've read this with disbelief, too bad, so sad, you're lost.
Pretty much. The central theme of Mark is very clear, we don't have to
have a debate about it, Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God, period. This is the
point of the gospel. And Mark divides his book into three very simple parts and
here they are: first part, the introduction of the divine Jesus, chapter
1, verses 1 to 13; second part, proof of Jesus's divinity through His teachings
and His miracles, chapter 1, verse 14 all the way to chapter 8, verse 20; part
number 3, proof of his divinity through his death, burial, and resurrection,
chapter 8, excuse me, verse 27 to chapter 16, verse 20. This is a book that
appeals to the practical mind. Each book in the Bible, as I've mentioned
before, has a purpose and has a particular audience. Matthew, of
course, its purpose is the same, always to show Jesus as the Divine Son of God, but
more specifically, Matthew wants to show that Jesus is actually the Messiah
according to Jewish prophecy. And he takes great care in building that case.
Mark, on the other hand, as I said, not interested in proving anything to the
Jews, he's interested in proving that Jesus is the divine Messiah to a more
Gentile audience.
So the audience of Mark is the world, everybody needs to know in no uncertain
terms that the Bible declares that Jesus is the Divine Son, the savior of the
world. You can deny this, you can reject this, but you can never say that
Mark doesn't teach this. I say that to people that I've
studied with all the time, you don't have to believe what I've just shown you,
don't have to believe it, but what you can't do is, you can't deny that this is what it
says. Your argument is not with me, your argument is with the book. I'm just
here, hopefully, to clarify it for you and answer your questions. And then this book
of Mark is a great first book to read with a non-christian. If you have you ever
wondered - people ask you, how do you start a Bible study? What
do you do, what doctrine do you start with? Don't start
with doctrine, start with reading the Bible. Most of you know that I
have a Catholic background, I grew up Catholic.
I went to Catholic school, taught in Catholic schools, taught religion,
monastery, seminary, the whole thing. So I'm really familiar with the Catholic
Church and it's practices. And people many times asked me what's the best way
to convert or to approach someone who's Catholic, who has
questions. do you kind of, they think, well the Catechism. So you
could kind of go to the Catechism and show them, this is wrong, that's
wrong, Mary was not ascended into heaven bodily. The assumption of
Mary, where is that in the Bible? Wrong approach. My answer always is just
get them to read the Bible. Period. Just have them read the Bible and from
there will come the questions, not your questions, their questions. I remember
when I first started. I mean, I was on a train on my way to Vancouver
and I bought a Bible to read on the train.
Never had read it. Imagine 28 years old, had taught for the Montreal Catholic
School Commission, had taught religion, I was the form teacher - never -
imagine teaching a religion class and Christianity never having read the
Bible, it wasn't required. You had to read the syllabus, you know had my syllabus.
Every teacher had the syllabus, I had that and I had the Catechism, which I
knew, because that's what I studied as a kid. A memory, the rote memory.
The nuns, and later on the Christian brothers - and I don't knock my Catholic
education, I had a great education. You really did learn how to read and write,
you learned Latin, and all that kind of stuff, but you didn't have to read the
Bible. And so when I began reading the Bible, then the questions began. Wait a
minute, this is the religion that I practiced for most of my life and this is
the book upon which my religion is supposed to be based and yet there's
such a huge contradiction here. So I spent a couple of years just trying to
find somebody who could answer my questions about the Bible.
Remember, when we say, church of Christ, they're the Bible
people. I found one of those guys Jim Meder, he was a Bible guy, he
was a preacher, he knew the Bible. So I had my questions lined up for a couple
of years that nobody could answer. I'd ask him a question, he said, okay, good
question, I named make me repeat, is that your question? Yes, okay. Well then, he'd
take out this Bible and, okay go ahead, read that, and I would read. What
does it say? Well it says blah, blah, blah. Are you sure that's what it
says? Yeah, that's what it says. Okay, next question. And he would just go question to
question, he wasn't out to challenge me, he wasn't trying to talk me out of,
what, nearly 30 years of education, he just wanted to answer my questions
and show me where the Bible answered the questions that I had. And then when I
needed a little more elaboration, okay
well, we came to baptism for example, I couldn't
understand, why did they use that word. Okay, well then it took a little
bit of background in the Greek. What it means, but other
than that, his answer was always let me show you where it says that in the Bible
and he let me learn the Bible and he allowed me to go at my own pace. So all
this to say that if ever you're going to sit down and read the Bible, not
necessarily with someone who's a Catholic or anything like that, but just
especially with someone who's not churched, doesn't know much, the
lingo, church is even a little threatening, Mark is a great
book to read. Short, to the point, lots of miracles demonstrated. Because the bottom
line is, if you don't believe that Jesus is the Divine Son of God, the basis, the
cornerstone of our religion, well then it doesn't matter what else is there, right?
The fact that Jesus is the Son of God is the thing that motivates me to
try this, do that, obey this, deny this. Because if He's not the Son of God,
He has no moral thing over me, He's just a holy man, right. The Dalai Lama, a holy
man, a good man, a morally upright man, an educated man, but he's got nothing over
me. He can't tell me what to do, right. So we're going to stop there,
because in lesson 2 we start the text and we'll just. It'll be so
This class is going to be a textual Bible study. I just wanted to take
only one lesson to give the background, a little critical introduction. I think
most of you know this already. Next week Mark chapter 1, verse 1, the thing I'm
going to ask you to do, if you're going to stay in this class is to read ahead.
It's not a long book. Read it a couple of times, get it under your belt so that by
the time I read it in class or put it up on the screen you'll have read
that passage, you'll have read that chapter once or twice and you'll know
about it. You may even have some questions and in the material that I
present you'll get some answers.