November 13, 2022

So it is with great enthusiasm that I want to say to you―Let's start the gospel of Mark.

I remember when we lived in a different place, and we had available to us, the Durham Bulls baseball games, we'd love to go to the Durham―at least I would―love to go to the Durham Bulls baseball games. And we would go to a lot of those games, it's a good place to watch baseball. Every Friday night they would have a fireworks display. So if you went to a Friday night game, you got a fireworks display in addition to that. And the fireworks displays were spectacular. They were not half-rate fireworks displays at all.

So I recall one Friday night game that we were there we stayed for the fireworks and one of my children, I'm not gonna say which one because it'll kind of embarrassed the child though. So one of them―this was their first fireworks display. And so I didn't watch the fireworks, I watched the face. Because that was the real show. The first time to see the sky lit up with all of the explosions in the booming sounds and the fizzles and all the colors. That was the real show to see someone experience that for the first time.

In a sense, that's what we as the church are after. We are after a sight of Christ, we want to see him. And we struggle to see him, because of our sin, and our fallenness. And it blinds us in it. It perverts our view of Christ, but we still want to see him. And to see him we of course turn to his word, but in his word, the place that we turn to most is the Gospels to see Christ, because all of the scriptures are about Jesus. But the Gospels are directly about Jesus.

So instead of seeing in Daniel, all the ways that he is a type of Christ, we look to the Gospels, and we see him right there. So what a glorious picture the gospel has―the Gospels have for us, of the person of Christ and the work that he did, and the miracles that he performed, and the teachings that he gave.

Now, who among us, honestly, be honest with yourself, who among us thinks of the gospel of Mark, kind of like, the baby brother that tags along with the bigger brothers because mommy makes them take him along, you know. So here's Mark―Mark’s like the baby brother, and he's got three big brother's: Matthew, Luke, and John, and Matthew, Luke, and John are all grown up big gospels, you know, and where they go, mommy makes them take little baby brother Mark along with them, and they don't really want to have hiM, But mommy makes them take him on.

Who thinks of Mark kind of in those terms, right? He's the shortest gospel. He's only 16 chapters, you know, compared to John's 21, and Matthew is 28, and mark’s 24. And so much is not there. There's so much in Mark's gospel that is absent, conspicuously absent. There's no birth narrative. There's no shepherds, there's no wise men. There's no Sermon on the Mount. In fact, there's no extended sermon at all, there's no Lord's Prayer, there's no footwashing. There's so many things that aren't in Mark's gospel.

So I think that that causes us to sort of think of Mark as that little baby brother gospel debt. Well, he's the short one. And when we need a quick little gospel, we'll turn to Mark. But otherwise, let's go to the big boys of Matthew and Luke and, and John. Plus, those other three gospels seem to have so much character, and so much going for them. Right?

Matthew is the majestic gospel. Matthew is the gospel that shows the kingly Jesus, the majestic Jesus, who is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies.

Luke's Gospel is the one that connects so well with the outcasts and the underprivileged and the ostracized of society. Plus put together with Luke's phenomenal writing abilities, then Luke's Gospel just towers for us, doesn't it?

And then there's John's gospel, John's gospel―he's like the adult in the room, because the theology of John is all grown up and all mature. John talks about Jesus beginning from eternity past, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And so, John's theology, as mature and well thought out, and well fleshed-out, and then there's that big long upper room discourse and the foot-washing. And all of those things take place in John's Gospel. And so John's Gospel stands for us as a towering giant on its own.

And then there's Mark's gospel, and you think, well, what does Mark's gospel have going for it? Well, that's what we turned to this morning. Because the gospel of Mark is anything but the little baby brother that mommy made the big brother's take along to the playdate. Instead, Mark's gospel, I want to endeavor to show to us this morning, is a towering masterpiece on its own.

So the gospel of Mark is one of four gospels that we know are given to us in the scriptures, we have these three gospels called Synoptic Gospels. That just means that they are tracking sort of along the same kind of path, right? With the synoptic. You hear it in there optic―see, and then syn―together, see together. So those three gospels kind of see Jesus together.

And they will kind of track along with each other with many parts of them overlapping. And there's John's gospel, which is sort of all on its own. And these four gospels are given to us in the Scriptures. And sometimes we ask, Why did God have to give us four gospels? Couldn't he just get it right the first time? Did he have to give us a gospel and then try again, and somebody else writes the gospel and somebody and finally we put all four of them together? And we think well, okay, we're glad that we have these four gospels, because sometimes one of them doesn't tell us all the information we'd like to know. And we can go to another one, and we can find that out.

But is that really why God gave us four gospels, because he couldn't give us one that told us everything that we needed to know? Well, when we think about why it is that we have four gospels, it's important to understand why it is that God has given four gospels in the Scriptures. And the best way I know to think about this is if you could imagine―and I know this will just be a tiny little leap of your imagination―but imagine that I'm the perfect person. Again, I mean, just a little―I'm the perfect person. And you want to tell people about what a perfect person I am.

So let's say for example, that my spouse, my wife wants to write a book about what a perfect person I am. She would have a lot to write, but she would write from the perspective of the perfect spouse, that I am the perfect husband, the perfect spouse, right?

Well, then maybe one of my kids wants to write about what a perfect person I am, they would write about what a perfect person I am from the perspective of the perfect dad.

Well, then maybe you would want to write about what a perfect person I am. And you would take the perspective of here's the perfect pastor. All of them are writing about the perfect person. But their viewpoint causes them to focus on different aspects of my perfection.

But that's hopefully that shows us why it is that God gives us four gospels. Because in writing about the perfect person, one would naturally have a perspective in which that person is the fulfillment of what they believe to be perfect. And it would be from a vantage point, which they held, that was based upon the relationship that they had.

So they would all be about the same person, but told from different viewpoints, they would focus on different aspects. And if you can grasp that, then that is exactly why God has given us four gospels.

So Matthew's Gospel focuses on the perfect Messiah, who is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament Scriptures. And furthermore, Matthew's Gospel is about, not just the perfect Messiah, but it's written to a specific group of people―the Jewish people who would understand that. They would see that and they would appreciate that Jesus is the fulfillment of the scriptures.

Luke's Gospel is about the perfect Messiah, who is the perfect lover of the outcast, of the downcast of the downtrodden. He writes to a larger audience, a Greek speaking audience, by and large, him being a native Greek Speaker himself, and not a native Jew, an ethnic Jew. So he writes from this perspective of what is Jesus to the Greek person, to the Greek Outcast could to the Greek widow, to the leper.

Then John's Gospel is a gospel that's written specifically to address a heresy that had come up in the church. John's Gospel was the last one written about 90 AD, about 60 years after Jesus ascended to heaven, about maybe 30 years after the other gospels were written. But his gospel is written to address a specific heresy called the Gnostic heresy. You may have heard of this It’s the kind of thing the History Channel loves to focus on. But you can think of the Gnostic heresy basically like this, Eastern religion wrapped up with some sort of Christian wrapping around it, put some Christian words to it, to Eastern religion, and that was Gnosticism. And so John's Gospel was written specifically to address that, to a specific group of people for a specific reason.

And so all of them are speaking of the same Messiah, the same perfect Messiah, from a different perspective, written to a different group of people.

So we turn to Mark's gospel here, and we ask ourselves, well, who is Mark writing to? And what's Mark's perspective and what's his modus operandi, so to speak? So what I want to do this morning is I want to spend about two thirds of the time talking about Mark itself―just sort of laying some foundation, laying some groundwork. Most of you here, this is not your first rodeo, so you know this, how it works. When we begin a new section of Scripture, we spent some time just laying some foundation, understanding what's happening in the world, understanding who's writing this, who are they writing to? And why are they writing it?

Because to understand the context is to understand what's given to us, right? It's, it would be like trying to understand Winston Churchill, without understanding World War Two―you cannot understand Winston Churchill, without understanding the context of World War Two.

In the same way, you cannot understand scripture, at least not the way God would have us to understand it, without understanding who's writing, who was he writing to? What's the situation? And so we try to spend a little bit time in beginning a new section of Scripture, just kind of understanding those nuts and bolts, so to speak.

So first, let's just spend some time understanding this man, Mark, who was it that wrote the Gospel of Mark? If you go to the Gospel of Mark, and read the gospel of Mark with the question, who is writing this?, and you're looking for the answer, then you wouldn't find it. Other than the heading right there at the very top, or probably your Bible has a little heading on the top of each page that says the Gospel according to Mark, understand, of course, Mark didn't write that.

So if you look at the text itself, there's nothing to tell you who wrote it, because Mark never mentions his own name. He never says, I wrote this, and my name is Mark. In fact, the word Mark doesn't even show up in the gospel. So that's nothing unusual, actually, because none of the gospel writers tell us who wrote it. In fact, the Gospel of John is the same way. The Gospel of John will avoid even speaking his name. The word John, throughout the Gospel of John is referring to John the Baptizer, not John, who wrote, the other John who actually wrote the gospel. So John, and his gospel actually comes up with that little phrase, ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ to avoid even saying his name.

Matthew, likewise, does not say that he wrote it, although his name shows up in it, because he's part of the story. So he does include his name, because he's narrating events, which he was a part of. But none of the gospel writers want to tell us, hey, I wrote this, this is written by Luke here, this is written by Mark, because that's just the approach that they take. So Mark is the same way. There's nothing in the text that tells us who wrote it.

But we know without a doubt that the author here is Mark, because all of the early church evidence is unanimous―every early church father agreed. Mark was the author of this gospel. So we have it on solid ground, that the author is this man, by the name of Mark, this goes back to there's an early church father by the name of Papias, the you've probably may or may not remember that. But Papias is a pretty important guy to know about. He was a disciple of a fella by the name of Polycarp. And Polycarp, was a disciple of John. So that tells you just how early it is. That's just a few decades removed from the actual writing that Mark did.

So that testimony is unanimous that Mark is the author. So who is this man, Mark? Well, Scripture knows him by a few different names Mark, also John Mark, because he had two names, and then sometimes he's called John. And sometimes he's called ‘John whose name was also Mark.’ So some different variations. They're all talking about the same guy.

So this this fella Mark, he had two names, which even tells us something already about who he was, and the world in which he lived. Because his name John Mark―just like the world in which he lived in―was a collision of two worlds. John being a Hebrew name, Mark being a Latin name, or Roman named: Marcus. So John Mark lived in a world that was a collision of not just two worlds, but three. The collision of the Hebrew world, the Roman world―or Latin world, and the Greek world. So John lived in this world of three cultures living essentially side by side with one another. John spoke, (I'm sorry, Mark, I'll go I'll use His name Mark), Mark spoke at least three languages, perhaps four. So it really kind of irritates me when modern people think of ancient people as though they were all stupid. Just if you lived in ancient history, then you just weren't very intelligent. Mark spoke at least three languages, probably four―anybody here speak four languages, not me.

So he was fluent in this in three languages. And he writes this gospel, of course, in Greek, but let's just let's kind of dig into his life a little bit, to understand a little bit about him about the one who's writing to us. So this man Mark, we actually know quite a bit about him. We know that first of all, he was a cousin of Barnabas. Barnabas, we know him. He was a fellow who, he was a person of means. And he was the one in Acts chapter six, he sells a bunch of property and gives all the proceeds to the church. So that was Barnabas. And Mark was his cousin.

In addition to that, we also know that Mark was the son of a lady by the name of Mary, which about two out of every three women in the New Testament are named Mary. She's one of the many. So Mary was his mother. Now this particular Mary was a woman of means. She, we don't know anything about her husband, Mark's father is never mentioned, but she was a woman of means. And we know that a couple of ways. First of all, we know that because she owned a house that was in Jerusalem, and it was quite a large house, it was large enough that the church in Jerusalem used it as its central main meeting point for many years.

It's the house that had you know, of as the upper room. That was Mary's house, it was Mark's house, Mark lived in the house that had THE upper room.

Now, this upper room is something that shows up quite a bit in the New Testament. We'll talk about that in just a minute. So she owns this house that's big enough for lots of people to meet in it. And in addition to that, she's very generous because the church uses her house a lot. We'll see that in just a minute. But we also know that she had at least one servant―a girl by the name of Rhoda, we remember her from Acts 12. Remember the story where Peter was in prison. And they're having that prayer meeting at once again, Mary's house. And then the angel comes and miraculously gets Peter out of prison. And he comes and knocks on the door. And the door is answered by the servant, Rhoda.

So we know that Mary had at least one servant, and she owned a house big enough for a big church to meet in it multiple times a week, every week.

So this upper room that was part of her house, is very well-known in Scripture, a lot of things took place in the upper room. And for all of these things, it's very likely that Mark was there for all of these things, at least most of them, but probably all of them.

So the upper room was the place where the Last Supper took place, where the Passover was, the Passover was observed, and then the communion the Lord's Supper was instituted. And that whole long discourse in the end of John's gospel, the foot-washing, and all that all that took place in Mary's home, probably with Mark there. Mark was probably also helping to serve, to serve the meal and to tend to serve those who were partaking of the meal. He may have been there for part of the meal. But he was certainly I would say, likely to have been there helping with that meal.

So that was the last supper, that night was the night of Jesus's arrest. And so then, few days later, the upper room comes back into the scriptures again, because that is the hiding place for all the disciples who are fearful for their lives right now. Jesus has been crucified on the cross and the Holy Spirit has not come yet everybody's afraid. And so they're hiding in the upper room. And Jesus Himself appears here in this upper room, at least twice.

So Mark would have likely have been there, when the risen Christ appears in the upper room. And then we sort of go forward a little bit further from that. And we come to the next event which is quite significant. And that would be the Pentecost event, which also took place in the upper room. So the tongues of fire the divided tongues of fire calm, the sound like a mighty rushing wind, and the Holy Spirit is given in the church is birthed―that took place in the same home that was owned by Mary, the mother of Mark. And so Mark was almost certainly there for this. And being there he may have been in the room itself. If not, then he was certainly close enough to have heard this mighty rushing wind and seen the fire and certainly heard the apostles now speaking in other languages, so mark would have been there to experience at least part of that.

And then we go forward. The next event for the upper room would be Acts chapter 12. Peter’s arrested and James has just been more I heard and Peter is going to be martyred the next day. But then the angel comes and miraculously gets peter out of prison. Meanwhile, the entire church is gathered once again at the same home this home of Mary, and they're praying. And during this prayer meeting, here comes Peter, Peter shows up and knocks at the door Rhoda comes and opens the door and there is the miraculously delivered Peter, out of prison. Mark probably would have been there to experience that as well.

So he was one who experienced firsthand a lot of very, very significant events in the life of Jesus and in the life of the early church. Because his mother, being this woman who owned the home and being a generous woman, the Church used her home as its basic central meeting place.

So this was his mother. What else did this, what else do we know about this man, Mark? We know that. First of all, he was one of the ones who went on the first missionary journey with the apostle Paul, the first missionary journey they started out in Cyprus, the island of Cyprus. And we're told that they went across the entire width of the island of Cyprus preaching the gospel the whole way, planting churches, strengthening the disciples across the whole width of Cyprus.

They get to the other side of Cyprus, and they're waiting, they're at the south east shore, because what they want to do is they want to take a boat over to Asia Minor, to a place called Purga in Pamphillia. And while they're waiting, then we're told that Mark does probably what he's most famous for―abandoning Paul. So Paul are marked left, we're told in Acts chapter 13, while they were waiting their Pamphos to come to Perga in Pamphilia, John, or in other words, Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem.

And we're never told why he did that. We can only speculate, and lots of people have speculated about a lot of different things. Perhaps he was just homesick. You know, it hadn't been just a week or two had been months that he was away from home. And he's a young man at this point. He's not, he's not an older man. So maybe he's just homesick for mommy. And so maybe he just went back home to mommy, maybe he perhaps wasn't real happy with the fact that cousin Barnabas wasn't leading, that Paul had kind of taken the lead. And cousin Barnabas wasn't the leader. Maybe he wasn't real happy about that.

Or maybe he had gotten kind of sideways. Maybe he had some misgivings about the way Paul is presenting the gospel to Gentiles. Remember, we've talked about that frequently about this whole taking the gospel to the Gentiles, the Jewish Messiah to the Gentiles. So maybe Mark wasn't quite there yet to understand this gospel, this free gospel for all people like that. So maybe he had a little bit of misgivings there.

But probably the most likely scenario was he just didn't want to put his shoulder to the work that was to come. Because as they then cross over into Asia Minor, the remainder of that missionary journey makes up a lot of what Paul would say to the Corinthians, Second Corinthians 12, where he talks about the beatings, imprisonments, and all that. So they knew this was coming. It had been hard in Cyprus, this whole planting churches thing is not easy. There was a lot more work ahead of them. And maybe Mark just wasn't up to the task. Maybe he just did get worn out and just want to go back home to mommy.

Whatever the reason, we know that this was the reason for a sharp division between Paul and Barnabas because a little bit later, Paul is getting ready for his second missionary journey, and he and Barnabas are getting things together. And Barnabas says, let's get let's get Mark. And Paul says No way. He's not going with me. And there was the sharp division, so sharp that Paul and Barnabas separate, split ways. They divide themselves and Paul and Barnabas will never be a team again.

Then Barnabas and Mark team up and then they go and they go back to the island nation of Crete and continue working the gospel message there. Meanwhile, Paul and Silas team up and then Paul and Silas are kind of a team from there on out. Now, whatever the division is, or was, whatever the reason for it, we're not told. But if there was reason for us to understand that the church took one side or the other―it'd be pretty clear that the church took Paul side, because we read here in Acts chapter 15, and verse 40: Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. So the church sort of sanctions, or blesses Paul and Silas, which might say to us that whatever the reason for the division was, the church was saying, we think Paul was right here. We think Mark was in the wrong.

So, this separation, this failure that Mark occur incurs here, this catastrophic failure when his teammates needed him most, when the gospel was beginning to go across Crete―or Cyprus―and then over to Asia Minor, and Mark just fails, he just comes up short, he cannot continue and he goes back home. This is an incredible stain upon his life, of course, but then we know later on that he and Paul will be reconciled together.

So if we read in Colossians, four, verse 10, and 11, Paul is writing a letter to the Colossians. And he says there that Mark is with him. Likewise, when he's writing the letter to Philemon, he says that Mark is there with him. So Colossians and Philemon were written together at the same time, Mark is there with Paul, that's about the year 66. A D. Mark has probably written his gospel by that point. But by that point, he's reconciled back to Paul.

And then we're familiar with Paul's final letter that we have Second Timothy, in which Paul says, Bring Mark, because Mark is useful for me for ministry. So we know that Mark, justified himself in Paul's eyes, he got back into Paul's good graces eventually, which is an important thing for us to remember.

But then there's also this connection between Mark and Peter. So when we look to Peter, Peter spent a bunch of years in Rome, ministering to the church in Rome. And while Peter was in Rome, he's writing his epistles: First and Second Peter. And in those epistles, he mentions that Mark is there with him, for example, First Peter, chapter five, verse 13: she who was at Babylon―and that's code for Rome, that sort of secret code for Rome―she who is in Babylon, who has likewise chosen sends you greetings, and so does mark and listen to this, my son. So Peter calls mark, his son, my son, reminds us of how Paul would refer to Timothy.

So the same type of mentorship bond between Paul and Timothy is like the bond between Peter and Mark. So here we have this man Mark, who to my knowledge, is the only biblical character that had a close bond with both Paul and Peter. I don't know of another who had sort of this mentoring mentorship relationship with both Paul and Peter. I don't know of another whom both Paul and Peter would say―We want him with us, because he's helpful and is useful. And he was a really a big help for us.

So that really speaks a lot of this man, Mark, that both Peter and Paul look upon him as kind of like a child in the faith, as as one whom they are discipling and mentoring. But in addition to that, he's a valuable person for him, for them to have there with them.

So this, this Mark, who is there with, with Peter, is in Rome, of course, ministering to the church in Rome. And we remember what Peter is now known as. Peter will forever now be known as, of course, the apostle who, most visibly and obviously, abandoned Jesus. Remember that whole story where Jesus says to Peter, you're all going to abandon me? And Peter says, not me Lord, even if I have to die, I will never leave you. And Jesus says, Actually, Peter, this very night, you'll do it three times. No, not me, never me. And then of course, we know how the story plays out. And then that was that was just the lowest moment in Peter’s life when he abandoned the Lord.

And then we know the story of how Jesus restored Peter at the end of John's gospel there, and Peter never forgot that. He never forgot that he was the one who failed Jesus. And Jesus restored him.