Mark's Gospel BONUS 1 - Making the Most of Mark and the Old Testament

So Mark's Gospel, we know, is our book of the term, God willing.

Between now and Easter, we'll work through the first eight chapters and hopefully after Easter, the rest of Mark's Gospel.

And this Sunday and next, we're having a couple of sessions on making the most of Mark's Gospel.

So in your Bibles, open up Mark chapter one.

And today we've really got just one topic, which is how the Old Testament is really key to understanding the Gospel according to Mark.

I mean, we can see that right in the very, very first couple of sentences of the Gospel, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written.

And then the Gospel, well, we're driven straight back to the Old Testament.

So let me let me pray for us, and then we will get stuck in.

Father, we thank you that your word in all of its parts leads us to Christ and to faith in him and to your gift of life.

We pray that we and our whole church, we pray that the children meeting elsewhere would be people of the book.

We pray that we would love it all.

Uh, listen to you closely in all of your uh revelation to us.

And for our few minutes this morning, we pray for uh good encouragement in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Just just brief initial bits of feedback.

Why is the Old Testament important?

What do we lack if we don't read and understand the Old Testament?

Just had a brief talk about that.

Chant stuff out.

I read a bit of Galatians last night.

It says Abraham had the gospel, but it was all about believing what would happen.

So he was adjusting that what would happen.

But it clearly said the gospel was preached to Abraham in the Galatians.

So we missed a yeah, we missed, we actually missed a preaching of the gospel because the gospel is contained in the Old Testament.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And books like Galatians kind of presume that you're gonna be in the Old Testament.

Yeah.

Anything else?

Mr.

Writ, Mr.

Full, you know, it just wouldn't make sense to me without the Old Testament.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Anything else anyone wants to share?

We miss the law, don't we?

The Old Testament law.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is the nature of God.

Yeah, what's important is God.

Yeah.

So God's law, uh, what the Lord loves, what the Lord hates.

Uh what matters to God.

Yes.

Yeah.

Anything else?

Creation started in the Old Testament, in the beginning.

Yeah, yeah, indeed.

And it's not that creation is absent from the New Testament, but the fullness of the creation accounts obviously matter, don't they?

Establishing the Lord and his relation to his created universe and how people fit in.

Um how we are how we are built as men and women.

I mean that's fleshed out in the creation pattern.

And yeah.

Anything else?

That's how God relates to his people, that's how he I don't know, you see that so clearly in pictures and how he relates, pursuing his people, you know, reaching out to them.

I don't know, you you get the depth, I guess, to the relationship element that doesn't necessarily.

Yeah, the depth of the depth of how the Lord uh relates to his people.

What about the book of Psalms?

I mean, if you if you sort of if you never read the Old Testament, you miss out on that aspect, both of God's revelation, but also the gift that is to the church.

Both teaches us about God, but it does teach us how to relate with, particularly in in prayer and pray and respond to the Lord.

So let's think about the Old Testament in Mark's Gospel.

So that's our topic this morning, given that Mark is our big Bible book for the term in Sunday preaching and fellowship group Bible study.

And just a few tips.

What to look out for as we read through successive chapters in Mark's Gospel.

The big thing is this we want to find and spot those significant Old Testament backgrounds which the text of Mark's Gospel points us to, and without which we will miss something important.

So, in other words, there is an Old Testament connection there.

We're not inventing it, we're not imagining it.

There is an Old Testament connection, and if we don't spot that, we will misunderstand something.

We'll either invent a meaning when actually the meaning is given to us in that Old Testament passage, or as we've just said, there will be something wonderful and true that we will miss the depth of.

Don't know if you've ever been to a 3D film.

You go to the cinema and it's 3D and you have to put these glasses on.

If you were then to watch the film without the glasses, I think that's a bit like trying to understand the gospel without the Old Testament.

Its basic shapes are all there, but it's kind of fuzzy and disjointed.

Then you put the glasses on, and wow, everything goes 3D.

You know, Jesus comes at you in all of his richness.

We see ourselves, we see the Lord, his holiness, his character.

You know, the unfolding plan of God in Scripture.

So, for example, we might find, and we will find many times in Mark's Gospel, there is a promise that's being fulfilled.

Or we might see a common scripture pattern that comes again and again and again, and we find that exact same pattern being repeated.

Maybe it's a pattern about what we are like, or maybe it's a pattern about how the Lord deals with people.

So, how do we find this?

Well, sometimes we will see uh explicit quotations from the Old Testament, like at the very start of uh Mark's Gospel, Mark 1, verses 2 and 3, as it is written, and then a quote in speech marks.

Mark 1:2

It's more obvious, isn't it?

It explicitly directs us to an explicit specific part of the Old Testament.

Sometimes it's less obvious.

There are what you might call allusions or hints to Old Testament passages.

Maybe there is a significant phrase, or a significant word, even, or a significant idea, which connects either to a specific Old Testament passage or to a range of Old Testament passages.

And the encouragement is this we'll want to look up that passage and we'll want to read the wider section from which that quote comes or from which that hint comes.

We don't just look up that passage in the Old Testament and go, oh, that's nice, Isaiah 40, right, back to the New Testament.

Think, okay, I'm going to read around it.

Why did Jesus quote from the Old Testament as he did?

Or why did the Bible writer, uh Mark, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, quote from that bit of the Old Testament?

So we want to look up the passage, read around the wider section, and then ask that question well, why?

Why is God directing me to this bit of the Old Testament?

How does it shed light on the new?

Now, what I it's easier to, I think, to show this in action, isn't it?

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at three examples.

I'm gonna talk you through, firstly, the passage that I preached on last Sunday, or a bit of it, so from the very start of Mark's Gospel.

And if you just turn to the second page of your handout.

So I'm gonna read down this passage, but as I do so, I'm gonna just make some comments and connections to those bits of the Old Testament that Mark here actually directs us to.

So this bit of Mark's Gospel, it's the introduction, actually.

It's the preface, and it's full of the Old Testament.

So there are two very significant quotations.

So they're on the right hand side of your page with the red bits, but there are also several significant hints or allusions or connections, and I've listed them on the left hand side of the page.

So look at the start of Mark's Gospel, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And those titles given to Jesus, perhaps it's obvious you cannot understand them without the Old Testament.

So the Christ, it is the anointed one.

And that connects us with the long Old Testament story of God's anointed king.

It goes back to 2 Samuel 7, where the Lord said to David, I'll put the relevant verses, he shall build a house for my name, and I'll establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

I'll be to him a father, he shall be to me a son.

When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men.

So here is the promise of the Davidic king, the Messiah, the Christ.

But this is a king whose throne will be forever.

It goes beyond David's son Solomon, in other words.

And it's also anticipating a king who will actually be disciplined, you know, with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men.

But we we know that there was a king who would come, who would be disciplined, not for his own sins.

But also the son of God.

Well, he shall be to me a son.

We see it in 2 Samuel 7, but particularly that takes us to Psalm 2, the very beginning of the Psalms.

I will tell of the decree, this is the Son speaking, the Lord said to me, You are my son.

Today I've begotten you.

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage.

So here is God's King being installed as ruler and judge of everything.

And the New Testament tells us that this coronation, uh, the Lord Jesus, he became the Son with his death and his resurrection.

That was his installation as this king.

So the beginning of the gospel of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, the King of God.

Then we go on.

Verse 2, verse 3.

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face, he'll prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

Now these two quotes, the first one actually comes from Malachi, so it says, as it's written in Isaiah the prophet, but then he actually takes us to Malachi because we need this Malachi quote to make sense of the Isaiah one.

So Malachi 3, Behold, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me, says Malachi, the very last book of the Old Testament.

And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, but who can endure the day of his coming?

So this is one of the last words of the Old Testament.

God is going to come, and he is going to come to judge and to refine his people, and he's going to be like a fire.

But also, Isaiah 40, a voice cries, and you can see the quote there a voice cries in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

God is coming.

Go up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news, of gospel.

Behold, your God comes with might, he will tend his flock like a shepherd.

So, in other words, God is going to come as a saviour.

So he's going to come as a judge, but he's also going to come as a saviour.

And before he comes, a messenger will come.

That's the point, isn't it?

There's, you know, here's the here's a messenger, then God comes.

This is how we have to understand the ministry of Jesus, by the way.

He's a judge as well as a saviour.

And then John appeared, verse 4.

So John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness, have a look, and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him, and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Now John was clothed with camel's hair, and wore a leather belt around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey, and he preached, saying, After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I'm not worthy to stoop down and untie.

I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

So here is John the Baptist.

We kind of join up the dots.

He's the messenger prophesied by Malachi and Isaiah.

And he comes in in a prophet's clothing.

Specifically, he comes in Isaiah's, in Elijah's clothing.

Two Kings one.

He wore a garment of hair with a belt of leather about his waist.

It is Elijah the Tishbite.

And Malachi, again, Malachi is in this passage's mind, in the Holy Spirit's mind here.

It promises, I will send you Elijah before the great and awesome day of the Lord.

So in other words, God said that Malachi, that Elijah would come again, or rather, one like Elijah.

And then we actually meet the Lord Jesus.

Verse 9.

In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee.

He was baptized by John in the Jordan.

And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open, and the spirit descending on him like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son.

With you I am well pleased.

Those two passages I put on the left-hand side of that paragraph.

They are allusions, they are hints.

I think they're there.

So we see we see in the waters of baptism Jesus coming up out of the water and the spirit descending like a dove.

And it possibly probably reminds us of the very beginning of the Bible.

The spirit hovering over the face of the waters, a little bit like the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Virgin Mary when Jesus was conceived.

Something very significant is happening here, almost like a new creation.

And Jesus is affirmed as the beloved son.

The beloved son.

There are a couple of Old Testament passages that that ought to remind the Bible reader of, but one is of Genesis 22, where the Lord said to Abraham, Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and take him to Mount Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice to me.

Obviously, in that story, the son was spared.

Unlike the Lord Jesus, you know, the beloved son, the only begotten son, who would not be spared.

And then straight away, verse 12, we read the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.

So it's a temptation scene, isn't it?

This is not the first temptation in the Bible either.

It reminds us of Adam in Eden, facing up to that crafty serpent who deceived him.

It's also like Israel in the wilderness.

And we are in the wilderness, we're in the desert.

And the number 42, it sort of reminds us, if you're a Bible reader, 40 days, oh, Israel, they were in the wilderness for 40 years.

They were tested and they fell.

Passages like Numbers 14 reminded us that they were wicked, that they grumbled against the Lord.

Whereas, here is Jesus, who is a better Adam, the second Adam, and he is the true Israel who stands firm.

It helps us understand the Lord Jesus' perfections and why it is the Father is so pleased with him.

And then we come to the very first public words of Jesus, verse 14 and 15.

Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel.

And hopefully, with that Old Testament picture in mind, we see the Lord Jesus much more clearly, don't we?

And when we read the time is fulfilled, we think, okay, that makes sense, doesn't it?

There was a plan which is now being put into action.

And the response makes sense.

Repentance and belief.

Well, because this is the kind of Jesus, the kind of King that Jesus is.

This is how, therefore, we ought to respond.

Now, I've sort of cantered through that fairly fast.

Hopefully, you find that encouraging and also quite exciting.

The Bible is a wonderful book, and there are lots of rich and wonderful connections to lead us to Christ and to faith in Him.

Does anyone have any reflections or questions from this passage or the things I've just been talking about, or the kind of the principles that we're trying to illustrate here?

And where you've like, particularly the illusion type ones or hints, do you know that that's a potential because the language is similar?

Like as in obviously we're reading in English, there's similarities, but is that where knowing Greek or Hebrew or whatever is helpful?

Yeah.

Um so spotting hints and allusions, is that is having a knowledge of the original languages helpful to spot them?

I suppose how do you spot legitimate allusions and hints, and you're not just making connections up?

Uh it's a good question and a good caution, by the way, because you can you can play a kind of a sort of bounce around the Bible game just using random word association, and that's not a very helpful thing to do.

Um just just practically, this is where things like you know, a good cross-reference Bible can be helpful.

Um my ESV here's got you know a cross-reference down the middle.

They're not inspired, you know, the the the editors who put in those connections, but it's a helpful tool to have.

I think this is also where uh having a decent commentary or two uh can be helpful.

So, in other words, um we don't have to do this work on our own, although I think one of the big encouragements um I'm wanting to give is that we can actually, as we as we grow as Bible readers and we grow as Old Testament Bible readers, we will more and more spot the connections that the Holy Spirit has actually put in the passage.

Um yeah, sometimes having some facility in the original languages does help.

Um and that's and that's actually where a good commentary, um, I mean, most of us don't have that um facility, it's not a requirement for a Christian.

I mean it's a not it's a it's a it's a good skill to work on if you can.

And sometimes that's where a good commentary can be helpful.

So, for example, not in our passage, but I referenced uh where the uh the Holy Spirit, in the in the uh uh incarnation narrative, the Holy Spirit overshadows uh the virgin.

And you know, the Greek word there, the boffins tell us, is connected to and related to the Hebrew word for the Holy Spirit in Genesis 1, 2, uh over the waters of creation.

So there does actually seem to be a verbal parallel.

So that's that's a nut that's that's lovely, that's a beautiful thing.

I didn't know that.

I I read that, and you know, people who are you know good Bible scholars they can point us to some of these lovely and rich resources.

But I think one of my big encouragements is as as we just get to know the Old Testament more and more, we will get a better and more discerning kind of radar for what really is there and for what isn't there as well.

One thing on that as well, just getting to know I think getting to know the Bible as well, you sort of will be able to pick out things that are sort of major themes, if you like.

So, sonship, for example, yeah, you know, the more familiar we are with the Old Testament and the idea of sonship in the Old Testament, I think those sorts of things help pick out illusion, you know, kind of sort of just noting the big sort of themes, and I think that you know, just to underline that as a cool thing, you're looking for New Testament illusions.

Um think or think of Isaiah 42 or something, and God delighting in the serpent, and that's quite a key thing in the book of Isaiah, and you might think, oh look, God is pleased with someone here.

You know, you you you might think of some of the pinnacles, I suppose, of Old Testament.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm slightly rambling a bit, but that's super helpful.

So, in other words, we I guess we want to be reading and understanding the Old Testament, but part of that is not just sort of reading and understanding isolated bits of the Old Testament, but we're trying to understand you know the flow of the whole story.

And like Chris says, there are particular points within it and particular things of great significance in the story of the unfolding uh revelation of God in the Old Testament.

And hopefully, through Sunday preaching, we we kind of grow in our knowledge of that.

Sometimes that's called biblical theology.

Um, not talking about doctrine, but talking about the unfolding revelation of God or redemptive history.

Hopefully, you know, Sunday preaching will kind of grow our revelation of that.

It's good to read a book about it.

Um, I guess that's what lies behind Bible overviews.

If you do a Bible overview or you read a Bible overview book, you're trying to understand the unfolding story and the really big features, and we suddenly see a passage in the New Testament that plugs into that.

Um yeah, that's super helpful.

Any anyone else want to chip in with something?

Look, let's let's go on, go back to page one of the handout.

Just some things to talk about in groups.

We're gonna look at just two passages.

Uh in your Bibles, would you turn on firstly to Mark chapter 5?

Mark 5 · chapter mention

So let me read um Mark chapter 5, starting at verse 24, and then you're gonna talk about that with folks around you.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

So, and Jesus went with uh well, he went with Jairus, the synagogue ruler.

Verse 24 goes on, and a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better, but rather grew worse.

She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment.

For she said, If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.

And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, Who touched my garments?

And his disciples said to him, You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, Who touched me?

And he looked around to see who had done it.

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.

And he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well.

Go in peace and be healed of your disease.

So, three questions.

Take a take five minutes or so, and talk about those three questions, and then we'll be back together in a minute.

Thoughts, maybe how I don't know, we read that passage initially, and then maybe, okay, with it with the light of that passage from Leviticus, how do I see something different or fuller, or dare I say it better, about the Lord Jesus' power and compassion?

Does anyone want to just speak to that?

So the woman wasn't just suffering from horrible conditions which she was, but she was also rich and unclean and unable to be amongst the worshiping people of God.

Jesus lived her from a physical island, but also brought her back into the worshiping company to detective place and the contrast seems to come out between God's perfection and weakness and imperfection.

And that's what God does.

Jesus did a perfect job when he created the world.

Everything was perfect.

And then still came and the devil and but now Jesus went to restore.

You guys want to share anything on that passage?

Yeah, that's right.

So this this lady was suffering very, very grievously, but the law of God in a sense actually intensified her suffering because you know God in his wisdom and providence built into the Old Testament law certain certain things and features to teach his Old Testament people about his holiness and the problem of sin.

So there's nothing intrinsically sinful about leprosy, that was another such thing in the Old Testament law, or blood being in the wrong place.

You know, but blood had a very big significance.

So this lady found herself, through no fault of her own, not just physically suffering, but as Leviticus says, barred from the tabernacle, the presence of God, the worshiping company of his people.

And that was that was intended in the providence of God until the Lord Jesus should come along.

And he comes along as a priest, and unlike people in the Old Testament, he he was not made clean, unclean by contact with her.

Instead, actually, it worked the other way around.

You know, he was the first ever priest who doesn't just offer sacrifices, sacrifices, but actually makes atonement happen.

And so he he cleans her, uh, not just fixing a physical ailment, but restores her to full fellowship with God and his people.

And then that's just in that lovely conversation he has with her, uh I think you see something of the Lord's love for her.

It's wonderful, isn't it?

Let's quickly look at this last passage from Mark 11.

We'll do this together.

So Mark 11, verses 15 to 19.

Mark 11:15–19

So I'm gonna read, then we're gonna talk about some questions quickly.

As I read, think.

Does this passage tell us that churches should not sell things?

Okay?

I bet we've all heard that application, right?

Not just because we're gonna be selling a whole bunch of stuff, sorely, but have that in your mind.

Is that a legitimate application to this passage?

Churches shouldn't sell things, or at least on Sundays or in church.

Okay, right.

So, Mark 11, 15.

And they came to Jerusalem, and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons, and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.

And he was teaching them and saying to them, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers?

And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him.

Because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.

And when evening came they went out of the city.

Very briefly, immediate thoughts from the passage about why Jesus was made so angry.

What do you think?

It was a total misuse of the temple.

Worshiping God?

Yeah, total misuse of the temple.

Yeah, thank you.

Keep a finger in Mark.

Turn back to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah chapter 7.

Jeremiah 7 · chapter mention

So this is the passage that Jesus is quoting from.

This is where your um your cross-reference might be helpful.

So Jeremiah 7, verses 8 to 11.

Jeremiah 7:8–11

So I'm going to read a slightly wider paragraph, which is often a really important thing to do.

So verse 8.

The Lord says, Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail.

Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal and go after other gods that you have not known?

And then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered only to go on doing all these abominations.

Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?

Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord.

So Jesus chose that passage to quote from, effectively to preach from, to explain his actions in the temple.

How does that help us better understand what was going on in our passage in Mark?

What do you think?

Continuing with the ways of the Old Testament priests and their apostasy.

And instead of giving the worship God deserves, they thought that they were righteous and they could do whatever they wanted in the temple.

Yeah.

Yeah, they were kind of repeating this same sinful pattern from the Old Testament.

They seemed to think that they were okay.

And they could do whatever they wanted when they came to the house of God.

Any other thoughts?

So the thing that's really making you say that is hypocrisy, right?

It's going.

So the application today would have been don't go through your week, your working week disobeying God's law, and then come to church thinking that it God doesn't mind that.

Yeah, I think that's bang on, isn't it?

It's hypocrisy, isn't it?

You go Monday to Saturday doing what you like without reference to God.

I mean maybe and they were breaking the Ten Commandments, left, right, and centre, worshiping false gods, not loving their neighbour, and then you turn up, uh, we are delivered, we are delivered.

And you know, Jesus is revolted by it.

It had a particular, I guess it had a particular outward expression when he went into the temple, you know, the buying and the selling.

They were going about their own their own endeavours, but all of the while the the root sin is hypocrisy, and the Lord loathes it.

But we we see that much more clearly, don't we, when we actually see the bit of the Old Testament that Jesus has got in his mind as he kind of preached that visual sermon and chucked over the temple tables.

Good.

Look, we're out of time.

Uh let me pray briefly.

If you've got other questions about it, please please ask.

But let me pray and we'll pick up again with some other things next week.

Uh Lord, we do thank you for your word.

We want to be better students of it, and we want that most of all uh that we might know you and love you and serve you better.

So please be our helper in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.