Who is Mark?

All right, thanks to the musicians.

If you have a Bible, you can open up to Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

If you don't, I think this passage is printed in your bulletin.

Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

And we will start in verse 36.

Acts 15, verse 36.

Acts 15:36

And after some days, Paul said to Barnabas, Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaim the word of the Lord and see how they are.

Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark, but Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

And there arose a sharp disagreement so that they separated from each other.

Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.

But Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.

Let's pray one more time.

Lord Jesus, here our prayers, thank you that you promise that when we seek to draw near to you by your grace, that you draw near to us.

And we do ask that you would speak forth through me, through your scriptures, that we would taste and see your goodness and be transformed from one degree of glory to the next by your grace and goodness.

We pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Turn to Mark chapter 14.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

And while you're turning there, I want you to think about this with me.

Have you ever been in a situation where maybe you felt like the black sheep of the family?

Maybe the low man on the totem pole, or maybe just overshadowed by the people that you spent time with?

Maybe it's your job?

Have you ever felt left out?

Maybe you got a big opportunity once in life or on the sports team, and then you blew it.

Maybe you had a failure in life, and your failure was pretty public.

It was even written about.

Have you ever had a situation where maybe you did something wrong, you sinned, and then you were trying to make it right, and you really did.

As best you understood your own heart, you had good intentions, but even in trying to make things right at first glance, it seemed like you made things worse.

We're going to look at a guy today that had experiences like that that I think we can identify with.

Now, um, starting next month, and actually not next week, because this is kind of a funny thing.

When I first accepted the job and I was talking to some of the elders on the search committee, I was looking forward at my calendar, and I only had one Sunday that I had made any commitments for the rest of my life.

And it was February the 1st.

And I was like, are you serious?

Uh but the Lord is sovereign.

So next week I'll be doing a missions conference at the PCA church up in Albertville.

If you want to pray for me, John will be here.

He's a great teacher of the word.

But starting February 8th, I'll be back, and what we're going to do is we're going to go through the Gospel of Mark.

And so what we're going to do this morning is really an introduction to who is this John Mark character in the Bible who wrote the Gospel of Mark.

Okay, so we're going to start by just looking.

He's not mentioned very often, but he's mentioned a few times, and we're going to look at it, starting in Mark's Gospel, chapter 14, and skip down to verse 48.

And Jesus said to them, Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me?

Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me, but let the scriptures be fulfilled, and they all left him and fled, the eleven disciples.

And a young man followed him with nothing but a linen cloth about his body, and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and he ran away naked.

Now, this is one of those little small throwaway verses.

You may have not even noticed it before.

None of the other gospel writers tell us this, and so almost all commentators agree this is probably John Mark, and he's telling you the story because it's like I was there.

And this is kind of a side note.

This is one of the reasons that you can trust the Bible as an eyewitness account.

C.S.

Lewis has this famous quote where he says, The art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is purely a modern art.

Surely the only explanation of passages like these is that they really happened.

The author put it in simply because he had seen it.

You can trust the Bible.

Let me just give you another reason you can trust the Bible.

The Bible is often telling us about the flaws and the weaknesses and the screw-ups of the authors of the Bible, of our heroes.

I don't know if you've ever had a chance to try to talk to a Muslim about their faith.

They don't tend to talk a lot about the faults of Muhammad.

You ever try to talk to a passionate Buddhist?

They don't tend to tell you a lot about the sins of Buddha.

Talk to a Mormon.

They don't want to talk about all the screw-ups of Joseph Smith.

But you read the Bible, and it's often, as we'll see later, talking about our heroes, how they screwed up, how they sinned.

That's just another reason.

You can trust this book.

It is very honest.

So here's a little bit of context, okay?

There was a wealthy woman, probably a widow, named Mary, who lived in Jerusalem, who had a large house, and she had a young son named John Mark.

He's probably a teenager at this time.

And so this was the house where Jesus and the disciples had the Lord's Supper.

And Judas had left to betray him.

They went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray.

And probably what happened is young John Mark woke up in the middle of the night, and it says he wrapped a linen cloth.

Linen back then would have been a sign of wealth.

And he threw and he followed Jesus and the disciples out in the Garden of Gethsemane to see what happened.

And when the guards came to rest Jesus, and all the disciples got scared and ran away.

John Mark tried to run away too, but he wasn't that fast, and they almost got him.

They got the linen cloth and ripped it off of me.

He literally ran away scared and naked.

Okay, this is the first time that we see anything about him.

Now flip over to Acts chapter 12.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 12.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

This is about 10 years later.

Jesus has died.

He has risen.

He has ascended into heaven.

The gospel is starting to go forth.

Peter has been, at this point, the primary leader of the megachurch in Jerusalem that probably had tens of thousands of members at this point, but he had been arrested.

And so the church gathered, at least the leadership team of the church gathered to pray for Peter.

And where did they gather?

They gathered again in Mary's house, because it would have been big enough to hold probably the 120.

This is probably where Pentecost happened as well.

We don't know for sure, but probably.

And look at Acts chapter 12, skip down to verse 11.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

When Peter came to himself, an angel has led him out of prison.

He said, Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.

When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose other name was Mark.

Back then, a lot of times, people would have a Jewish name if they were Jewish, and then a Roman name as well if they were a Roman citizen, which he was.

So John was his Jewish name.

Mark was his Roman name, where many were gathered together and praying.

So I just want you to think about John Mark.

He saw Jesus.

He heard some of the words of Jesus.

He wasn't one of the twelve.

Some people speculate that he was maybe one of the 70, but we don't know.

He was almost certainly one of the 120 that were gathered and praying when the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost.

And for 10 years he's there in the church with Jerusalem, with Peter as the head pastor.

That's what he's soaking up.

In these prayer meetings, seeing these miracles.

Skip down to verse 25.

And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.

So Barnabas and Saul had been sent from another church in Antioch that had a lot of money to Jerusalem that was a pretty poor church to bring them money.

And when they were traveling back to Antioch, they took John Mark.

Now, John Calvin makes this comment about Mary, John Mark's mom.

She was desirous to have her son addicted to preach the gospel.

Parents, you want to know something great to pray for your kids?

Pray that.

They'd be addicted to preaching the gospel.

Now, Acts 13, look at verse 2.

This is the leadership team of Antioch Church.

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

So this is the first missionary journey, Barnabas and Saul.

But skip down and look at verse 5.

When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, and they had John to assist them.

So they're taking John.

They're trying to train him, they're trying to prepare him for ministry.

Okay?

But skip down into verse 13 and look at what's going to happen.

A lot is in this verse.

Now, Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perka in Pamphylia, and John left them and returned to Jerusalem.

Now there's at least three or four important things we need to notice in this verse.

First, this is where Luke starts referring to Saul as Paul.

He had two names: a Jewish name, a Roman name.

Saul is his Jewish name.

Why does Luke switch in his gospel and start referring to him?

Probably because this is when Paul and Barnabas quit going to the Jews so much, because most of them were hard-hearted, and they started going more and more to the non-Jews, the Gentiles.

And so Paul probably started using his Roman name, and Luke starts recording it that way.

The second thing is, if you look, up until now, whenever it talks about Barnabas and Saul, this kind of stud missionary team, it's always Barnabas and Saul, Barnabas and Saul.

Here it's flips, and now it's Paul and his companions, or Paul and Barnabas.

Barnabas was in the faith before Paul.

Barnabas mentored Paul, but at some point Paul began to outshine Barnabas.

And Barnabas seems like was very humble and happy for that to happen.

But Paul became the leader.

Now, and then for our point, what's very important is John Mark leaves.

He runs away.

Now we don't know for sure why he left.

Lots of speculation here.

Let me just throw some of them out for you.

The region they were in at this time was very mountainous.

Travel may have been harder.

And John Mark may have said, I'm a young man, I'm tired of this.

Maybe it was persecution.

Maybe he missed his mama.

Hey?

It may have been, we find out later.

Go read Colossians 4.10 that Mark was actually cousin to Barnabas.

So he may have said, Hey, when my cousin is the leader, that's cool.

I like that.

This Paul guy, I don't know if I want to be a follower of him.

It may have been Mark was passionate, preached the gospel to other Jews.

Jews tend to like other Jews.

But when it was time to go to the Gentiles, he's like, I'm not down with that.

I'm bailing out.

We don't know for sure.

Listen, another thing, if you do character studies of Paul and Barnabas, Barnabas was known as the son of encouragement, shepherd, priestly.

You study much of Paul, he was a little bit more type A and driven.

And Mark may have been like, you know, I like the warm, fuzzy Barnabas team.

The Pauline driven special forces team, that's not for me.

We don't know.

He bailed out, okay?

And listen to what John, uh, this is John MacArthur, what he says.

Paul had no stomach for men who were lazy, cowardly, or uncommitted.

He especially did not want fellow workers who would not carry their share of the load and who bailed out when things became too uncomfortable or demanding.

Tell us what you really think, MacArthur.

We don't know for sure, but everybody would agree it was a sinful reason to leave.

John Calvin said he had no more reason to break his promise to be on that missionary team than a husband has to leave his wife.

That's how seriously of a sin it was.

He blew it.

Now, flip two, our main passage, Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Let's look at it once again with all this context.

This is years later.

We don't know exactly, but it's probably one to three years after John Mark had bailed out on the first missionary journey.

And after some days, Paul said to Barnabas, so notice he's the leader, let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaim the Lord of the Lord and see how they are.

Let's go strengthen the churches.

Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark.

That's his desire, and he made it known.

But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

And literally that could be translated.

Paul didn't think John Mark was worthy.

He wasn't deserving.

It wasn't fitting, at least in Paul's mind.

It wasn't right.

It wasn't just this is my opinion, this is my preference, this is my style.

At least in Paul's mind, it's like it would be wrong to take that guy.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Such a sharp disagreement arose between them.

They split up.

Here's Calvin again.

This should make all of the godly afraid for just cause, meaning for a good reason.

Because how easily may Satan cause those to be divided who have, listen to this phrase, a cold desire for peace.

Christians should have a warm desire for peace.

I always want peace if possible.

But he's saying, Barnabas and Paul, whoever he rose, at least in this moment, they had a cold desire for peace.

They cared more about getting their way than about unity.

Unless the servants of Christ take great heed, there may be many chinks through which Satan will creep in to disturb the concord which is among them.

So Barnabas seemed to just grab Mark.

It does seem like maybe Barnabas was trying to say, I'm not gonna stay here and fight with you, Paul, anymore.

I'm taking my cousin and we're going to Cyprus.

That's where I'm from.

We're gonna go back there and do ministry.

And then Paul takes Silas and he goes on the missionary journey.

Now, lots of application that we can take from this, okay?

Here's point one of application.

Even when we have the best intentions and goals and plans and motives, we will run into problems in life.

Are you familiar with that little phrase that comes from an old poem?

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

They go astray, they don't work.

Now listen, that is never an excuse to just be haphazard and lazy and fly by the city of your spants, and I'm just spontaneous.

I never plan my day, I just wake up and so.

No, God gave you a brain, He wants you to use it.

It's good to have plans, it's good to think, it's good to organize.

But what's the point?

Don't be shocked when your plans don't work.

Don't so idolize your plans.

Be such a perfectionist that if your plans don't go just right, that you're shocked.

I had a young man, senior at Sanford, that I was uh discipling meeting with recently, maybe a year or so ago, and uh he was a fairly new Christian.

And one day he said, Hey man, I need to talk to you.

What's going on?

He said, Man, I was dating this girl.

And he said, You know, when I did dating before I was a Christian, I did it all wrong, and I know that now.

But I'm a Christian now, he's like, What's dating this girl?

And he said, I tried to do everything right.

We were like talking about Jesus, reading the Bible, going to church together, praying together.

I didn't touch her.

I mean, I was trying to do everything the way God wanted, and she dumped me.

She broke my heart.

And he's like, basically, I'm mad at her because I was being like the best version of me ever, and she rejected me.

He's like, but I'm kind of mad at God because I'm like, hey man, I was doing it your way, and it didn't work out for me.

You ever felt that way?

Now, what I wanted to say to this young man is, hey, buddy, welcome to life on planet Earth.

That's just the way it works sometime.

I I had a Holy Spirit moment and I wasn't quite that brash.

But the point is, guys, listen, even when we're doing our best to follow the Lord, you're going to run into problems in life and you don't want me to be shocked.

Second point is this.

This may be the biggest takeaway for most of us this morning.

God's providence prevails over his people's problems.

Amen.

Okay?

Or you could say it this way: God's pattern, God's normal pattern, is to use his people's problems to promote his plan.

Just listen to these two verses.

Don't flip there, but you can look back at them later, and I bet you've heard them before.

They're both from Proverbs.

Proverbs chapter 16, verse 9.

Proverbs 16:9

The heart of a man plans his way, and I'll add, so it should, but the Lord establishes his steps.

Proverbs chapter 19, verse 21.

Proverbs 19:21

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, and again, that's the way it ought to be.

That's not bad.

But it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

Guys, did you notice what happened here?

I mean, Paul and Barnabas had good intentions.

Hey, we're missionaries.

God called us to the Gentiles.

Let's go back to all these Gentiles' churches.

Let's serve them.

Let's be willing to travel and suffer and minister to them.

Those are good plans.

Those are good intentions.

And then John Mark is like, I'll go.

I'm sorry I blew up last time.

I'm trying to make amends.

I want to go with you guys again.

And it blew up in their face.

I mean, Paul and Barnabas, this was the missionary team that the Holy Spirit had appointed.

They're breaking up.

They get sideways with each other.

I mean, imagine how much this must have hurt Mark.

And yet, did you notice what happened?

It was going to be one missionary team of two guys that could only be at one place at a time, and now you got two missionary teams.

And sometimes as I've studied this passage, I really wonder if it was like, man, Paul and Barnabas, they're the two senior, experienced missionary preachers.

And they loved each other.

And they probably thought, man, we will always do this together because we just like each other.

That's a glorious thing.

And maybe it took this heartbreaking pain for God to split them apart and multiply the work.

That's just the way God works sometimes in his sovereignty, and it should not.

Listen, sin should always sadden us.

But the long-term providence that God works through it should delight us.

Okay.

God often used persecution in the book of Acts, Acts chapter 8, Acts chapter 11, to advance the gospel, going to new places.

Acts 8 · chapter mention Acts 11 · chapter mention

Again, because it was kind of like all the Christians are like, we're at this 20,000-person megachurch in Jerusalem.

This is awesome.

And we got 12 different apostles that preach to us on rotation.

Who wants to leave here?

And God said, Well, how about I start killing some people?

And then the gospel will spread.

But there are Christians there in heaven.

Better for them.

And better for a bunch of Gentiles like us because the gospel came to us.

Notice, notice, third point.

The point wasn't just to bless Paul and Barnabas and Mark, although they did get blessings.

The point was to use them to bless others.

So I'm a Christian.

Sometimes God will use my pain, my problems, my heartache to bless others.

That's called parenting.

And we're a little dim reflection of the heart of Father God when we do that.

Listen, this is one of the massive themes of the whole Bible.

Blessed to be a blessing.

The Geneva Bible said God uses the faults of his servants to profit and build the church.

Are you okay with that?

I hope so, because God's gonna do it anyway, whether you like it or not.

Fourth thing.

Nobody, you do not have to be defined by your sins and your failures.

Again, as I was trying to read this, I was trying to put myself in the shoes of John Mark.

I just imagined the pain.

You know, the first time he fled from Jesus, that would have been bad, but it's kind of like, yeah, but Peter and John and they all ran too, so it's not that bad.

But then it's like he's on the first missionary journey, right?

Paul, Barnabas, Mark.

And then Mark bails out.

And Luke has to write about it.

He's like, I'm gonna make it right.

I'm going on the second one.

Hey, Paul, I'm back.

I'm ready for special forces.

And Paul says, No, you're not.

And it gets so bad that Paul and Barnabas break up.

And Mark probably at times wrestled with the guilt.

But go look later if you want to at 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 13.

1 Peter 5:13

And it's Peter writing a letter and he mentions Mark and he calls him my son.

See, at some point after this, Mark started spending a lot of time with the Apostle Peter.

And when the Apostle Peter was in Rome preaching, and Mark was like his right hand man, at some point, either Mark had the idea, maybe Peter or some of the other Christians said, Mark, will you write down Peter's eyewitness account of Jesus?

And how did we get the gospel of Mark?

It was because of that.

And what it have happened if he stayed with Paul the whole time.

Don't despise the day of small beginnings.

Don't despise the day of your failures.

God is able to restore the years that the locusts have eaten.

God's calling card is taking tragedy and turning into triumph for his people.

Here's Matthew Henry.

The best of men are but men.

I suspect there was, as usually there is in such contentions, a fault on both sides.

God would not permit such things to be if he did not know how to make them to serve his own purpose.

And then the fifth point, I want everybody to flip over for this one.

Probably be the last passage we look at this morning.

So quickly flip over to 2 Timothy chapter 4, 2 Timothy chapter 4.

2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention 2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

The fifth point is this God is a master of redeeming and restoring relationships.

That's another one of his calling cards.

You got in sideways with somebody, humanly speaking, maybe in your family, and you're like, there doesn't seem to be any hope.

Maybe not humanly speaking.

God can fix it like that if he wants to.

Three different times later in Paul's epistles, he mentions Mark, and all of them are positive.

And here's the last one that was written days, weeks, months at the most, before Paul's killed.

Luke alone is with me.

Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.

Mark went from being disapproved of by Paul to being, I'm very useful.

Disapproval to very useful.

What do you think those words did for John Mark?

Like some kind of medicine for his soul.

Now listen, I gotta say this again, to be really honest.

There's no promise in the Bible that God will definitely heal all human relationships in this life.

I wish there was.

There's not.

A very powerful practical verse is Romans chapter 12, verse 18.

Romans 12:18

Just write it down, look at it later, but here it is.

As far as it goes with you, be at peace with all men.

So everything you can do to mend relationships, you ought to do it.

But why does it say it that way?

Because Paul knew, the Holy Spirit knows, that sometimes we try our best to mend relationships, and if the other person is hard-hearted and sinful and doesn't want to repent, you can't make them.

And sometimes you're never gonna mend that relationship, even if you do everything right.

But here is a promise that the Bible makes.

That night when he got arrested, they killed him the next day.

And it wasn't just the wrath and anger of human beings that were killing Jesus that day.

The Bible says that God, the judge, in his anger and wrath, was putting Christ to death for us.

Christ had no sins of his own.

But he was killed by the wrath of God for my sins and for the sins of every single person that would ever trust in him.

And guys, this is the ultimate example of God using the pain and the problems of his people to promote his blessing for everybody.

Christ suffered so that we can benefit.

And aren't you glad?

So, guys, no matter what a mess I've made of my life, mess I've made of human relationships, sins I may have that are public and ruining my reputation, I can be right with God through repentance and faith in Christ.

And that's all that ultimately matters, right?

You get to heaven for all eternity, who's gonna care about your 80-year reputation on planet earth?

Distant memory.

I'm just glad I'm here.

I can be right with God.

It's been guaranteed by the blood of Christ.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, please hear our prayers.

Please fill us full of the Holy Spirit.

Please help us to believe these truths.

Lord, if there's anybody that is listening right now that doesn't have a saving relationship with Christ, I pray that by your Spirit you would draw them near unto you.

And Lord, if there is anyone here, there's probably many here, Father, who do have a saving relationship with Christ, I pray that you would grow us, you would strengthen our faith as we again afresh taste and see the goodness and the glory of our Savior.

We pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.