The Beginning of the Gospel: Jesus, King and Son

So here you have a messenger coming into the city with good news, the message of good news. And so what would happen is the guy would come into the city and stand up in the middle of the courts and say, hear ye, hear ye. Listen everyone. They would stand up. They would get everyone's attention and they would make a proclamation and they'd say, victory is won. We're not going to die. We're going to live. It would be a proclamation to the city. We are saved. Victory. [00:35:41] (40 seconds)

And so when the people would read this line, the beginning of the gospel, it would be Mark saying, this is good news. That's exactly what Mark is doing. He's standing up in the very first line of the book, in the middle of the crowd of readers, and he makes a euangelion, a proclamation of good news, and he's telling us right out of the blocks, this is not a historical account Jesus' life. It's not a a full of biographical stories. Mark is saying, there's a victory. [00:36:21] (47 seconds)

Declaring Jesus as the Christ is an expression of faith in him that goes well beyond the confession of faith that Jesus existed. Yes. I believe Jesus existed. I believe Jesus did some things. Yes. I believe Jesus taught some things. Maybe some things we should follow. Maybe some things we should ignore depending on where you're at with Jesus. But saying that Jesus is the Christ is saying that Jesus is God's anointed king. He is the king of God's kingdom. So in other words, follow me. [00:39:09] (52 seconds)

We have a temptation to miss out on these radically scandalous words that Mark starts with. So if I could encourage you of anything this morning, I wanna encourage you with this. When you read the bible, slow down. I do a bible study on Thursday nights and a lot of us read the bible out loud. And one thing that's very difficult is for us to read the bible slowly because every word matters. And so through this series, I wanna encourage you, don't just read for volume, read for value. [00:29:50] (51 seconds)

My father who grew up Catholic and worked for Catholic organization. But throughout all of my years and all of the time that I spent with my father, I never experienced a man who had God in his life. I realized that you can do church and not know the Lord. In those years, we never prayed. We never talked about God. We never talked about the bible. And so it wasn't that I grew up not believing in God. I didn't know what I believed. If that makes sense. [00:15:38] (45 seconds)

And so I thought this seems like a great weekend for me. I'll go. And so as I went, what happened was they gave me a bible and a t shirt. And the very first morning of this retreat, they gave us the task of doing a quiet time. Now, I had no idea what that was. A quiet time. Basically, it's just like it sounds, it's a time that you go and you're quiet and it's a time you read the bible and pray and be still before the Lord. [00:17:22] (30 seconds)

And so since I didn't know how to do that, in front of the bible that they gave me were some instructions on how to do a quiet time. And these instructions came with page numbers, and I thought that was very convenient because I didn't know how to navigate the bible. And so I turned to the page numbers, and after it had me read a verse, it would ask me a question, particularly about myself or my heart or my soul or really where I was with God. And so I tell you that because I wanted to tell you that as I was reading the bible, [00:17:53] (31 seconds)

I remember very very clearly the very first prayer that I had ever prayed in my entire life to God. I'm sitting there with the bible open outside under a tree. The sun is coming up in the morning, and I said this. I said, God, if you really knew me, there is no way you can love me the way that this book says that you love me. But then I remember saying, but if it's true, I wanna know you. I wanna know about you. I wanna learn who you are. [00:18:25] (42 seconds)

So here you have a messenger coming into the city with good news, the message of good news. And so what would happen is the guy would come into the city and stand up in the middle of the courts and say, hear ye, hear ye. Listen everyone. They would stand up. They would get everyone's attention and they would make a proclamation and they'd say, victory is won. We're not going to die. We're going to live. It would be a proclamation to the city. We are saved. Victory. [00:35:41] (40 seconds)

And so when the people would read this line, the beginning of the gospel, it would be Mark saying, this is good news. That's exactly what Mark is doing. He's standing up in the very first line of the book, in the middle of the crowd of readers, and he makes a euangelion, a proclamation of good news, and he's telling us right out of the blocks, this is not a historical account Jesus' life. It's not a a full of biographical stories. Mark is saying, there's a victory. [00:36:21] (47 seconds)

Declaring Jesus as the Christ is an expression of faith in him that goes well beyond the confession of faith that Jesus existed. Yes. I believe Jesus existed. I believe Jesus did some things. Yes. I believe Jesus taught some things. Maybe some things we should follow. Maybe some things we should ignore depending on where you're at with Jesus. But saying that Jesus is the Christ is saying that Jesus is God's anointed king. He is the king of God's kingdom. So in other words, follow me. [00:39:09] (52 seconds)

We have a temptation to miss out on these radically scandalous words that Mark starts with. So if I could encourage you of anything this morning, I wanna encourage you with this. When you read the bible, slow down. I do a bible study on Thursday nights and a lot of us read the bible out loud. And one thing that's very difficult is for us to read the bible slowly because every word matters. And so through this series, I wanna encourage you, don't just read for volume, read for value. [00:29:50] (51 seconds)

I remember very very clearly the very first prayer that I had ever prayed in my entire life to God. I'm sitting there with the bible open outside under a tree. The sun is coming up in the morning, and I said this. I said, God, if you really knew me, there is no way you can love me the way that this book says that you love me. But then I remember saying, but if it's true, I wanna know you. I wanna know about you. I wanna learn who you are. [00:18:25] (42 seconds)

And so the entire gospel of Mark is almost entirely the eyewitness account of Peter. And so some may refer to this as the gospel according to Peter, but written by John Mark. There's another reason to base our understanding of Jesus on the gospel of Mark, is because if if you read Mark, it doesn't read like history. It's written in present tense which kinda throws us off a little bit on the timeline deal because Mark always uses words like immediately, [00:24:49] (38 seconds)

You may not fully grasp the power of Peter's confession And that means you may not understand the power of your own confession when you say, he's the Christ. He's the king. He's the ruler of all things. So to hear someone say, Jesus is the Christ. It should cause our mind and our hearts and our souls to stand in attention and to lean in and to burst out with praise for God. You understand who Jesus is. For the first century Jew, the word Christ, oh it was a holy word. [00:43:42] (45 seconds)

And so as we study the book together, I trust that you'll find that the person of Jesus is unpredictable yet reliable. That Jesus is gentle yet very powerful. That Jesus is authoritative yet humble. That Jesus is human yet divine, and you'll find that Jesus is worthy of your life and devotion. And so let's get into it. As we get into it, you'll notice that Mark does not begin with the birth of Jesus. He doesn't begin with a genealogy of Jesus. But he launches immediately into a declaration of identity. [00:28:16] (46 seconds)