FBCWest 640 | The Beginning of the Gospel
Recorded On: 01/05/2025
Bulletin
Hymn # 273 “Showers of Blessings”
SCRIPTURE READING – Ezekiel 34:23 - 26
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate
Praise and Worship
Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“The Beginning of the Gospel”
PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection
Benediction “Egypt”
Sermon Notes
Mark 1:1 – 3 The prophesy of one who will prepare Mesiah’s way
Mark 1:4 – 8 John the Baptizer is that preparing one & testifies about the Coming One
Mark 1:9 – 11 Heaven testifies of Jesus as the Son of God
Mark 1:12 & 13 Jesus impelled to go into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan
Mark 1:14 & 15 Jesus preaches the gospel
Mark 1:16 – 20 Jesus calls His initial disciples
Mark 1:21 & 22 Jesus’ amazing teaching
Mark 1:23 – 27 Jesus does not allow unclean spirits to speak of Him
Mark 1:28 The news of Jesus spreads immediately everywhere
Scritpures
Transcript of Service
We are starting a new series in the Gospel of Mark. Now you may not be able to attend and watch all of the services but I encourage you to watch as many as you can because it'll be relevant. So if you have your Bibles and you should, please turn to the Gospel of Mark starting with Chapter 1. Now while you're turning there, let me say that it is long-held belief that John Mark wrote Mark. There's nothing internally that says that other than there's a discussion when Jesus is arrested that there was one of the minor followers who escaped and they grabbed his coat and clothing and he ran out and was somewhat naked. Some people think that that was that person, but may or may not have been. The early church fathers discussed and they believe it was Mark who wrote the Gospel. Others think that Mark wrote it either based on his discussion with Peter or as Peter had been martyred that he wanted to make sure that what Peter had experienced in the teaching and life of the Lord that he wrote that down.
Those are all speculation.
It used to be that it was thought that Matthew was written first and then there was a period of time that thought that Mark was written first and now it's back to Matthew being thought of as being written first.
What I do reject is that there are some people say, well, there was a common source called Q and all the gospel writers took their source from that. And I totally reject that. I think all the gospel writers took their information from either personal one hand firsthand experience or as Luke says, making a count careful investigation of all the things that happened. And so we're going to start with this with that brief starting.
And the other thing that I want to say is it's interesting how each of the four gospels start.
If you're going to write a fiction or a fairy tale, you often hear about once upon a time.
Well, the gospel writers don't start their gospels once upon a time.
Matthew and Luke start their gospel with the birth of Jesus and his genealogy.
John starts his gospel even well before that and says in the beginning with the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And that's how he starts his gospel.
Mark is going to use kind of a variation, if you will, of John and kind of catching up on Genesis because it goes, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
And then he goes on. So he says, I want to start this and I'm not going to start it with his birth. I'm going to start it because we're going to be talking about the gospel. And gospel is an old English word for saying good news because the starting of the good news, the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, who's the Son of God. So Mark makes it abundantly clear. We're not just talking about a man. We're talking about a man who is also the Son of God. So he wants to make it very clear that he's going to begin this and discuss the gospel, the good news. So it's not that the birth of Jesus was unimportant or didn't have the significance. The purpose of Mark is to say, I want to talk about the gospel, the good news of Jesus. So I want to start by saying this is the beginning.
And he goes, as it is written in Isaiah, the prophet, behold, I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way.
So Mark is going to say this beginning of the gospel is beginning of the gospel because you can be sure, because God had announced it to the prophet.
What was going to happen that there was going to be one who was going to prepare the way for the Messiah, for the Christ. And this was a necessary first step. So the beginning, if you will, the foundation of the gospel is the fruition and beginning of Isaiah's prophecy of the one who's going to prepare their way. It says in the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord, make his path straight. And that was, if you will, the prediction, the prophecy, what would happen prior to the Messiah coming, which means the beginning of the gospel was necessary to have this one who would prepare the way to make the path straight. And so if there was not one who was in that preparation mode, then the one who followed wouldn't be the Messiah, because the scripture clearly said that there's going to be one who's ahead who preparing this way. So it says, John the Baptist, or as I call him, John the Baptizer, appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And so that's what this preparation was that John the Baptizer was preparing this ministry for the gospel by saying that people needed to repent. Now, who's he talking to? He's not talking to the Gentiles. He's not talking to the world. John is preaching to God's people, the Jews, and he's saying, we need to have repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We are a sinful people, not just because we are God's chosen people, but we need repentance as everyone else. And it says, "And all of the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem, and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins." So we see that John's ministry is having an impact that people throughout the region of Judea and also in the capital city of Jerusalem, that people were coming and responding to John's ministry, and they were being baptized.
And he says, "John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locust and wild honey."
So John was not your typical person. He wasn't one who was dressed in great fine linen. He was out in the desert, and he was baptizing people. And his diet was a little unique. It was that of locust and wild honey. And so again, he was needing that wonderful tables, being wined and dined by the most fashionable people. He was totally, if you will, immersed in his ministry of being in the wilderness, preaching and teaching and baptizing.
And he was preaching and saying, "After me, one is coming who is my dear than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals." John is saying, "Look it. I understand exactly my place in ministry. My job is to prepare the way for the one who is the Messiah, who is my dear than me,
that I am not even worthy to untie his sandals."
Which seems so far different from any Christian ministers today who we tend to think, "Well, God can't do without me."
And in reality, we are sinful people doing what God has told us to do, and we're not worthy.
We're not worthy to be any part of what he is doing, but yet he has called us to do it. So rather than thinking that I am some awesome person because God has designated a ministry,
even no matter how fantastic that ministry may be and how many thousands or millions of people may impact it, I am still not worthy to even untie his sandals.
He is so far beyond me that his calling doesn't make me worthy. He does.
And he goes on to say, "And I baptize you with water." He says, "My ministry is limited. I take you to the River Jordan, and I dip you in, and I bring you up, and you have a knowledge that you have repented from your sins.
But I just put you in water." He says, "The one who's coming after me is going to change your life because the Holy Spirit is going to baptize you, is going to overwhelm you, is going to cover you. His ministry is far superior to mine."
He says, "In those days Jesus came from Nazareth and Galilee and was baptized by John and the Jordan." So we see Jesus coming, and so this one who is preparing the way, we see, okay, this beginning of the gospel we understand because the Scriptures prophesied of one who's coming ahead, and John is that one who's coming ahead, and he understands that he is not significant. It's the one that comes after him is, and so Jesus has now come to be baptized by John in that Jordan River.
Immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opening and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him.
And a voice came out of the heavens, "You are my beloved Son, and you I am well pleased." So we see we've got the beginning of the gospel saying the Scriptures prophesied of it. John, the one who prepares the way, is there. So we're knowing that the gospel is ready. And then heaven itself testifies that this one is the Messiah because Jesus is the beloved Son of God, and God is well pleased with him.
And he goes, "And immediately the Spirit impelled him to go out into the wilderness." Now that's a strange start. You would think, "Well, he's here to start the good news." So you would think, "Well, therefore, the good news would start by his teaching and preaching and doing all these things." And instead, the Scripture says that immediately he's impelled. He must go into the wilderness to be tested.
And he's going to be there for 40 days, as it'll talk about in a minute. And he was there in the wilderness for 40 days being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to him.
The other gospels spend quite some time talking about the various temptations that Jesus experiences.
Mark just wants us to know that part of the gospel is that Jesus is tested before he starts, that this good news, that God tests people.
Now, God doesn't necessarily test people for God to find out whether you'll pass the test.
As a matter of fact, because God being all-knowing knows whether you will pass or you will fail.
I think sometimes we go through testing for us to understand that our faith is genuine.
But there's going to be an identification, if you will. Jesus is in the wilderness for 40 days, symbolizing the people of God being in the wilderness for 40 years. But the people of God, instead of being consistently faithful, were too often unfaithful. But Jesus relied on the Father consistently throughout, even though, as it says, the wild beasts and Satan were there, he was faithful to God regardless of the circumstances. And so again, we see that this beginning of the gospel may seem a little odd, but he gives us little quick slivers of information to say that we can rely, that the beginning of the gospel is reliable, because this is what the Messiah is to do.
And now after John had been taken into custody, he was arrested because John had been teaching and preaching that Herod and those, he had divorced his wife and married his brother's wife and did other things that was counter to the Jewish code and law. And Herod and his wife didn't like it, so they had him arrested so they could shut him up. So after that arrest, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel. So Jesus waits until John, if he will, his ministry has concluded and Jesus now picks up that ministry. And Jesus is saying, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel, believe in the good news." And so Jesus has modified John's gospel, John's teaching in a little bit. He's saying, "Yes, we need to repent,
but we need to repent and believe in the good news. And that good news is Jesus is the Son of God who came to have his life given as a ransom for many." And so we see this sense that Jesus takes what John has done and has modified it and increased it to say, "We need to repent, but we also need to believe." And he was going along the sea of Galilee and saw Simon and Andrew, the brothers of Simon, casting a net in the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men."
And immediately they left their nets and followed him. So again, we're not given any indication, although that there are others in the other gospels, that Jesus had some other connections and contacts with these people that he's calling. Peter, it's been called, his brother, Simon has been called, and we're going to see a couple more. And going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who were also in the boat, mending their nets. And immediately he called them and they left their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired servants and went away to follow him. So again, Mark is telescoping the facts and saying, "I want to show you that the beginning of the gospel is, these are the necessary steps to be followed, but I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on these foundational beginnings because it's the gospel, it's the good news that I want to communicate." So he starts off his beginnings by saying, "You can rely on the fact that Jesus is the Messiah because of these foundational information, but I'm not going to spend an order, an order in an amount of time
explaining them. I just want you to know that they're there and it can be relied on." So we're only given this superficial discussion of this calling of the disciples, but we are at least given that. But I want you to notice that Mark frequently says immediately, immediately, immediately, because the gospel of Mark is kind of a gospel of action. Matthew does much more about the teaching. Luke kind of has a combination of teaching, but also of what the Lord had did so that he might communicate it to a Gentile audience. John gives a very high view of who Jesus is, that he's the high priest and that he is the son of God. But Mark, again, makes it very clear that Jesus just isn't a man, he is the son of God. So he gives us these little foundational aspects so that we might understand who Jesus is. And they, being these four men and others and Jesus, they went into a Capernaum. Immediately on the Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and began to teach. And so again, notice Mark doesn't want that he keeps using this action word immediately. There is no hesitation. There is only a certain amount of time and we got to be moving and we got to be advancing and we got to be moving on the kingdom of heaven. And so it's immediately, so he immediately enters the synagogue and he begins to preach. And they were amazed at his teaching. We are not told what Jesus taught. Oftentimes the common custom at that day was you would go to a synagogue and they would be at some point of the scriptures and there would be a scriptural reading and then the person who was there to speak, the rabbi or whatever, he would give understanding to the scriptures. And so there would be the reading and then the teaching. So we're not told what Jesus taught or what the area was, but we are told the response. For he was teaching them as one having authority and not as the scribes. For you see
what happened in that day usually was that there would be the scriptural reading and then some one would speak and say, well, rabbi so and so taught this about that scripture and rabbi.
Others person spoke this about the scripture and they would give you what other people thought about the scripture. That's not what Jesus does. He doesn't give them points of view from others. Rabbis. He teaches as one having authority. And why does he teach as one having authority? Because he had authority because he was the one responsible for the teaching because he wrote the scriptures.
When I was in high school,
my junior English teacher loved the novel Moby Dick. Thought it was the finest piece of literature ever written. And then she made this comment and she said, Moby Dick was greater than Herman Melville. And so I raised my hand. I said, so are you saying that Herman Melville didn't write the book? She goes, no, he wrote it, but the book was far greater than him. And I'm going, that doesn't make any sense. If it came from him, then it wasn't greater than him. It may have been the best work he ever wrote, but it was his writing. Jesus' authority comes, not because he tells you about the scriptures. He authored the scriptures. So if you want to know what they mean, you ask him. So they were amazed because he wasn't saying, well, this is what people think. No, this is how it is. So when I say God loves you, I'm not saying this because I heard it somewhere. I say this because I know the father and the father loves you. As John will say, the, that the father so loved that he gave his only begotten son. Jesus can say that because he knew the father, not because he heard about him. And so Jesus' teaching is amazing. And again, it shows Mark's understanding that the beginning of the gospel, the beginning of the good news, we can trust because it is Jesus, the son of God, who is the author of the scriptures is teaching. "And just then there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit and he cried out,
saying, what business do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." Now I want you to notice that in this religious meeting, there are demons and they're not content to being quiet. They're wanting, if you will, almost to interrupt. We know who you are. Have you come to destroy us? Have you come to put us in our place before we're supposed to be put in our place? We know who you are. You're the Holy One of God. Jesus' response is very interesting. "And Jesus rebuked him, saying, be quiet and come out of him."
I, and this is where I'm going to give you my view, not as one who's having authority. I think the reason that Jesus rebukes them, not because he's interrupting the service, but because the demons are not to be the ones to testify who Jesus is. Yes, it is true that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus is Lord to the glory of God, the father. But at this critical time, it is not for those who are spiritual enemies to say who Jesus is, but they are to come by hearing of faith. And so Jesus shuts them up because they're the wrong ones to just testify who he is. There will come a time when the heavens have already testified who he is, that his deeds will testify to who he is, that the Holy Spirit will testify to who he is, that his disciples will testify to who he is, and the resurrection from the dead will testify who he is. But the demons are to be quiet. And throwing him into convulsions, the unclean spirits cried out with a loud voice and came out of him. So even the demons, he has authority. He has authority to teach the scriptures, and he has authority over those who are God's enemies, if you will.
The beginning of the gospel, the scriptures, the one who's before the heavens testifying, his calling, his testing, and now his teaching and his command for the unclean spirits. And they were all amazed so that they debated among themselves saying, "What is this?" And you teaching with authority, he commands even unclean spirits, and they obey him.
I find this so normal. There's Jesus teaching. There's Jesus teaching. They're amazed at his teaching. He's just commanded unclean spirits to come out of the man, and he came out of the man. And what do they do? Instead of talking to Jesus about what had happened, they start talking to each other and debating with each other what had just happened. Maybe if we were more concerned with what Jesus had to teach
than what other people had to say, we would be more faithful in his teaching.
But they're coming to unclean spirits obey. Well, if unclean spirits obey those of us who are people, maybe we should obey as well. Maybe he is one who has brought and is the good news. And here's that word again. Immediately, the news about him spread everywhere into all the surrounding districts of Galilee. Talk about an impressive media blitz.
One teaching in a synagogue in Capernaum.
And the authority over unclean spirit causes immediate discussion and news spreading
all over Galilee about Jesus.
One event causes mass information.
Maybe, just maybe,
your testimony about who Jesus is could have greater impact than you might know.
We're not told what he taught, but they were amazed. We're not even taught that any of them there became followers of him. Probably they didn't because again, they discussed among themselves what had happened rather than addressing the one who caused it to happen. The beginning of the good news
has a consequence of Jesus's fame spreading throughout Galilee.
We should take that information, that good news, and just as
in that time, people were wanting to know what had happened, maybe we should be witnesses of what had happened, not in that synagogue, but what had happened in our lives
and how that could impact others.
We will go on and find out more about what this good news is.
But Mark wants us to know that there is a beginning to this good news.
And it will spread everywhere, not just into the surrounding districts of Galilee, but spread throughout Asia, in Europe, in Africa, in Australia, as far and wide as even to where you and I live.
But it doesn't end there. We should continue to spread that good news, not only geographically, but from generation to generation to generation until he returns as he says he will. And at that time, it won't be the end of good news, it would just be a better understanding of that good news.
Now