Mark’s Gospel Introduction (Part C)

He would say, I'm telling you the extraordinary story of God coming to serve men, salvation, and we should not be so accustomed to the Gospels that they no longer have a punch for us.

There's always more. He is God the servant, of God the Father, first and foremost, and that key verse mentioned from chapter 10, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life ransom for many. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Gospel of Mark. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick with the conclusion of his introduction to the Gospel of Mark in Mark chapter 1.

We read verse 52, and he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked. It doesn't have to do with anything. It's kind of random. Well, it's a cameo. It's Mark saying, that was me. And you learn this, you learn to pick these things up. The more you read the Gospels and the more you read the Scripture, you learn to pick things up. I see how Jeremiah writes now.

I understand what he's doing. I've read, let's just take G. Campbell Morgan, Harry Ironside, and Warren Wiersbe. I've probably read about 20 or more of their books. I'm not bragging.

This would be a good chance to, but I'm not. My point is, I can usually tell you a quote from them without seeing their name, because I've just been so familiar with how they speak, the words they use. It's part of reading. This is the case with the Bible too. You read Isaiah enough, and when you get to the New Testament, you say, that's an Isaiah quote. And you find yourself writing very often.

So these little benefits, they're in there. Anyway, it was the unanimous testimony of the early church fathers that John Mark was the writer of the Gospel that we have associated with his name. And some of the most important evidence comes from Papias, and he quotes an earlier source than himself.

And he was born about the time that Paul was making his way towards Rome. Mark, I'm going to read what Papias writes. He says, Mark, having become Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered, though not in order of the things earlier said or done by Christ, he made it his one concern not to omit anything which he had heard or to make any false statement in them. If that wasn't true, there were plenty leaders in Christianity that had a chance to object to those statements, but no one objects. It's likely a very true statement.

I believe it is. And this Peter, as Papias says, Peter gave the Gospel account that we have known as Mark to Mark, and Mark wrote it down and published it. So there's your apostolic authority for this document being in our Bible. 1 Peter 5, 13, Peter says, see who is in Babylon. That is a reference to the church where Peter is.

Elect together with you, greet you, and so does Mark my son. And so Mark and Peter were together even after the early phases in the book of Acts. Mark was plugged into church leaders.

Acts chapter 12, as I read earlier, the disciples were praying in the house of his mother. Paul and Barnabas in verse 25 of Acts 12, as I read earlier, also Barnabas was his cousin. And the two of them were together with Paul for a while. A big argument developed between Barnabas and Paul over John Mark's failure in service. And then Barnabas and Mark went off and did ministry together apart from Paul for a while, but Mark ends up coming back. This account that we have of Mark's Gospel to show the influence of Peter in chapter 10 of Acts, Peter's, the outline he uses to share the Gospel with Cornelius is the outline Mark uses for his entire Gospel. It is, it starts off with the baptism and works its way through the miracles and the wonders that Christ had done, and then it ends with the crucifixion and resurrection.

And Mark follows that pattern. There are other distinctives that belong to this Gospel that should excite you as believers, its connection to the Old Testament in presenting Christ as this servant of God, God the servant, servant of God the Father, in the power of God the Holy Spirit. Isaiah chapter 41, God speaking to Isaiah about the coming Messiah, he refers to him as my servant. He says, Behold my servant whom I uphold, my elect one in whom my soul delights.

I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. Nobody can, nobody fulfills that anywhere in scripture or history but Christ. Again Isaiah 52 verse 13, Behold my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.

These superlatives belong to Messiah. And so he outright, Mark does, declare the servanthood of God. We see, he doesn't have to say, Oh you see Isaiah, he said this and now we see Jesus doing it. He doesn't do it that way. He could have done it that way but he does not.

I would have done it that way. I would have cross-referenced Isaiah. But they didn't have a Bible in the way we have it today.

We just thumbed to the page and boom you've got, it still had scrolls and codexes and other things that were just not as smooth as what we have in our age. Instead what he does to declare the servanthood of God is he has a single word that he uses more than any of the others. In fact the word in the Greek appears 80 times in the New Testament, 40 of them used by Mark in his gospel. And the word is immediately. And immediately. And immediately. And it's boom.

Now we think the word immediately means right then, right at that instant. But John is, John Mark not using it that way. He is saying in action. And boom he does it. And then he builds it out.

We'll cover that as we move through the Bible. But no one uses the word as masterfully. It is an action word that the Roman mind would quickly pick up. And we then pick it up when we're told that's right. I keep seeing him use that word. And I see that he doesn't use it as I would expect him to use it. But then when I think about it, I see how it's connected to the man of action. The servant who is in action and not just claiming I'm a servant, but actually doing something. Action. Results. Influence.

Can't separate them. We say about other Christians in the church, I love that guy. He's such a servant. I want to be like that guy. We want people to say that about us.

What would you say to me? That guy's okay. He's a terrible servant. I don't want to be anything like that.

I don't want that one. There's something compelling about Mark being the one to emphasize the servanthood of God. Again, Matthew makes the connection that this is your Messiah.

Luke says, consider the wisdom that came from this one is greater than Aristotle and Socrates and all the rest put together. And Mark says, watch him work. Watch what he does.

You tell me. Because Mark himself failed as a servant. He was the rich kid that was used to all of the nice things in life there in Jerusalem. But, you know, he wanted to be in ministry. He wanted to serve and he had a chance to serve with Paul no less and his cousin Barnabas. And then he goes out there and he finds out the food was disgusting.

So were the mannerisms. So did the lifestyles of the Gentiles with just too much for Mark and he just couldn't stomach it. God, instead of saying, well, you know, Mark, you weren't tough enough. I don't really have much for you now.

No, God doesn't do that at all. He says, you know, I have a niche for you. I'm going to take you and I'm going to have you write the Gospel according to Mark.

And as I said earlier, it's going to be the springboard for the others. Matthew says, you know what, Mark, man, there's so much information that I can add to what Mark has because I was there. Luke will come along and say, I've researched this. I have, the word he uses, Luke, when he opens his Gospel up, he says, I've performed an autopsy on the facts. We get our English word autopsy from Luke's word that he's explored these things. So thorough Luke was in his research. He brings things that Matthew and Mark did not have, not because they didn't have the ability, but Luke had the time and he traveled around.

He interviewed people and he got witnesses and substantiated the testimony of these witnesses. And it is quite refreshing to see it and it is this niche of Mark that gives us this Gospel and says this to us, you can fail in ministry because you just haven't found yourself yet, but I'll help you get there and I will use you and you will be used. No genealogy of Jesus Christ in this Gospel like we have in Matthew and in Luke. And why, I'll get to why we don't have it in John, but what we have here, well let's take John first.

In John's Gospel, the genealogy is not given because Christ has no ancestry. He is the word. He is self-existent and that's where John is coming from. So let's look beyond the incarnation and let me tell you about the existence of Jesus Christ. Unto us a child is given, a son is born. And he goes on to say, and his name will be wonderful counselor to the mighty God, the everlasting Father. That's what John is focused on and that's why we don't have a genealogy there.

He takes us nowhere near the cradle. The deity of Christ, Christians, it is paramount you get to clarifying that or declaring that with someone you are witnessing to about Jesus Christ. But Mark, he doesn't give a genealogy for a different reason. And the reason is, who's interested in a servant's genealogy?

He has no pedigree worth mentioning. He's presenting a servant. And the interest concerning a servant is this, what can he do?

I don't care where he comes from. I'm hiring to work or I have him to serve. How does he serve? Is he a good hand or a bad one? In the industry that I come in, in my vocation, that meant everything.

You were either a good hand or you were not. And this servant, Mark chapter 10 verse 45 is our flagship verse. That's God the servant right there in that verse. In the Navy, the flagship, that's where the admiral is.

That's where the commander of the fleet or the squadron is. And Mark 10 45 says is this, for even the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. You know how powerful that is? I've come to be killed for others. I'm God, but I'm going to serve men.

Not the way men think, oh I'm not going to be bringing you cups of tea and stuff like that. I'm going to bring you salvation. Something that nobody else can do. And that begins the gospel story of the New Testament. That's what it's all about. And now we come to verse 1. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

That's the theme. This breaks the silence in print of 400 years. Malachi was the last printed document of God. And it's been 400 years or a little more since that publication of Malachi to the publication of Mark. Now of course the silence was broken when the announcement of John the Baptist was going to be, you know, and then Mary.

That's God breaking the silence, but in print it is Mark if you believe this is the first published gospel. Is there much evidence for Matthew and Luke being before? I don't think so.

That's why I don't have that opinion. But we're not going to go into that. The beginning of the gospel, it continues. I had an unbeliever, someone I was witnessing to ask me years ago, whatever happened after Easter?

Because it was around, you know, Resurrection Sunday and his word for it was Easter. And he says, whatever happened after that? I said, that's an excellent question. Luke tells us. Acts chapter 1, oh Theophilus.

Well, that's nice. I'll get to that part. He said, the former account I made, that is the gospel of Luke, oh Theophilus, Acts chapter 1, 1. Of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach. So Mark says, here's the beginning. Luke comes along and says, yeah, and that beginning continued on into the apostles, their lives and their followers, the disciples of Jesus Christ. The source of origins should be very important to us.

We care about the truth. I'll go back to Acts just for a minute where I mentioned that John Mark and how he was a rich child there in Jerusalem. When Peter was imprisoned at one point, of course he's delivered from jail and he goes to John Mark's house, the mother, of course Mary, and he knocks on the door and one of the girls, Rhoda by name, she comes to the door and she sees it's Peter. Now they're having a prayer meeting for Peter's being delivered and saved from jail. Rhoda is so excited she doesn't open the door for Peter.

She leaves this fugitive from justice, man's justice, the man on the lamb. She leaves him at the door to worry and she runs in and tells the people in the prayer meeting. Luke tells us they thought she was beside herself. They thought she's kooky. She says, come on, you're hallucinating.

She is insistent and fine. And they go to open the door and there's Peter. Now Peter lets us know this is a sticky situation because he puts his hand, shh, be quiet. I don't want anybody to hear.

They're probably looking for me. And my point is, oh, so what they say to her, what they say to Rhoda is, you're probably seeing his angel. And the reason why I want to get this in is the kooky stuff that was in the church even then. What do you mean seeing his angel?

What is that? His angel looked like him? What do you have to back this up? Well, that was a, you know, folklore that crept into the lives or took hold of the lives that crept into the church.

And I sure wish somebody would have dealt with it right then and someone who said, what are you talking about? There's no angels, either Peter or it's not Peter. So when we come back to this, the beginning of the gospel, we want to get our facts lined up with the scripture in its entirety and not come up with harebrained little ideas and theories about the gospel of Thomas is no gospel.

It is a fraudulent document and we receive nothing from such documents. The reason why Matthew, Mark, and Luke are part of our Bible is because they've proven themselves to be trustworthy and authentic. And the minor discrepancies of the documents are just that, so minor they're not even really worth mentioning most of the time. Anyway, this material, this action-packed material, when missionaries begin to translate the New Testament historically, now we don't have too much of that nowadays, but in the earlier days when missionaries would go into places where the gospel had not gone and they would begin to translate the Bible into that vernacular and circulate it, Mark was usually the first book they would pick. When I would lead someone to Christ, I'd usually send them to the gospel of Mark because it gets to the point, it gets to the foundation very quickly. The other stuff will come.

You've got to start somewhere, but Mark is usually the book. I can't remember, if I was reading in Mark or Matthew's gospel, I do remember as I'm saying it was Matthew, so that won't work for my point. Let's pray.

No, not yet. I got so convicted by that gnashing of teeth, man, I did not want any part of that. Well, these men who give us the gospels, they preached it, they lived it, they preached it, and then they published it. And that's how it gets to us, but I've got some interesting stuff I don't want to pass over, so I'll move quickly with this. This living it, preaching it, publishing it was what Jesus promised. John, chapter 14, verse 26, the Helper, who is the Holy, well, he says it, 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 things that I said to you. And that's what we're getting when we come to our scriptures.

And Mark tells us how it all began. His gospel, incidentally, frequently concerned itself with the beginning. He uses that word relatively more than any of the other gospels, as he does with the word immediately.

And this next word, evangelion, evangelism in our language. Now this is interesting because the Romans, they used this word too. And when they used the Greek, it would be this word, and they used it, and remember that's Mark's audience, there's an inscription that was in Turkey at about 10 years or so before the coming of Christ that announced Caesar Augustus' birth, and it announced it in just this way. It used that word. It says the inscription speaks of Augustus' birth as the beginning of the gospel, announcing this for the Roman Empire.

So Mark takes that. The Holy Spirit sort of just says, hold on a second. That's not accurate. The beginning of the good news is relative to the people and what that news is to God. And the coming of Caesar Augustus was not good news to God, and it really wasn't good news to man. However, the coming of Jesus Christ, that is the good news. And it is the good news of God for sinners. So the Holy Spirit appropriates the word. And the long announced Savior is now here. And this Savior would be sovereign, he would be a servant, and he would be holy. And none of the Caesars could claim all of those.

They could claim sovereignty to some degree before they were assassinated, which kind of backs down on their sovereignty. He says of Jesus Christ, Christ of course the subject. If you were to say, Mark, what are you doing here?

What are you doing with these opening words? And he would say, I'm telling you the extraordinary story of God coming to serve men, salvation. And we should not be so accustomed to the Gospels that they no longer have a punch for us. There's always more. He is God the servant, of God the Father, first and foremost, in that key verse mentioned from chapter 10, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life ransom for many.

I'm almost done. Of course the outcome would be through the cross. This Jesus would give us an example of serving. John's Gospel chapter 13 verse 15, Jesus speaking, for I have given you an example. That's why servanthood is important to us. That you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him.

If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. The Bible just will never let the flesh rest. And the flesh will never let the spirit rest. And that's why there is war. And we are supposed to be up for this war. And as I mentioned, Mark's repeated use of the word immediately, that dominant word, is to show us that Christ was instantly responsive to the Father.

That's our example. You know, Jesus gave a parable. He said, you know, the man had two sons, and he said, son, I want you to go do this. And one son said, okay, dad, and he didn't do it. And the other son said, I don't want to do it, I'm not doing it, and he goes out and does it. Both were wrong.

One was not as wrong as the other. Christ is, son, I want you to do something, okay, and he goes and does it. And that is the example that he acts on the command without hesitation. We hesitate because we don't have perfect knowledge all the time. We're not sure sometimes. But when we are sure, when we're sure God wants me to do this, we better do it, regardless of what others may think. And also, others may think very highly.

It's not always bad, not always, people not always against you, people all the time, that's wonderful. The Son of God. That is God's declaration and revelation that Jesus is the Son of God, God the Son we could say.

This distinction, of course, requires that you be self-existent, uncreated, as Christ was. His authority was that he was God's Son. And all the mighty works that would follow would be in the strength of the Holy Spirit in God the servant. And so Philippians 2, 5, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a slave and coming in the likeness of men.

It's quite powerful. He came in the form of a slave. There's no hesitation there. In the fullness of the time, God sent forth his Son. His beginning is not a start.

It is a state. It is not the beginning of something. It is where he is on the calendar. And Mark will spend his words proving these points. Thanks for tuning in to Cross-Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross-Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross-Reference Radio. You can search for Cross-Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross-Reference Radio.