Book of Mark Lesson 2

Welcome to Life in the Word, our verse-by-verse study of God's Word.

This is Pastor Brian, and we are continuing today in our study of the book of Mark.

We are still in chapter one.

It's our second week of chapter one.

So let's get started with a word of prayer.

Father, take this time and use it.

Bless it.

May your word instruct us, guide us, and draw us near to you in Jesus' name.

Several years ago, I preached my very first sermon, and it was memorable.

Memorable only because, number one, I was terrified.

And second, because I had a knee problem.

I needed a knee replacement and it had not been done.

So as I was preaching, walking along back and forth, my knee popped out of joint.

And it was awful.

I mean, I couldn't move.

I had to do something.

I had to pop it back in.

And to do that, I had to straighten my leg and twist it back and forth with significant pain until it popped back in.

And then that really hurt.

And people noticed it.

I was trying to keep a smile, but I was grimacing.

People told me afterwards, you popped your knee out, didn't you?

So probably most preachers have had shaky starts.

I read of one later to become one of Scotland's great preachers who stood at the pulpit to preach the first time, but instead ran out of the church, went home.

But there was one who had it all together from the very first, and that one, of course, was our Lord Jesus Christ.

Whatever he did was perfect, whatever he said was perfectly true, and his exegesis of scripture was flawless.

In our study tonight, Jesus will begin his public ministry of preaching repentance and God's good news.

So turn to Mark chapter 1, beginning in verse 14.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

Verse 14, later on, after his temptation in the wilderness, after John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus went into Galilee where he preached God's good news.

So what's the good news?

Well, these first words spoken by Jesus and Mark give the core of his teaching.

The long-awaited Messiah had come to break the power of sin and begin God's personal reign on earth.

And this was indeed good news from God because most of the people who heard this message were oppressed, poor, and without hope.

Jesus' words offered these people freedom, justice, and hope.

I mean, the door to God's great future had been flung wide open.

Jesus, the promised Messiah, has come to usher in a new age of God's dealing with his people.

Verse 15.

The time promised by God has come at last, he announced.

Repent.

What does that mean?

Well, it has two parts to it.

It means turning away from our self-centeredness and our self-control and turning our lives over to Christ's direction and control.

Gospel preaching involves preaching repentance, but sadly, repentance has been reduced to a little more than a whisper in many of today's churches.

David McKenna, who once served as president of Seattle Pacific University, once saw a prominent preacher walk out of a sermon in which a colleague insisted that the gospel included repentance from sin.

Explaining his one man protest march, the man said the contemporary man needs a message of hope, not fear.

However, that preacher truly spoke only half the truth.

Man today needs hope, but he also needs to recognize that he is a sinner and need a forgiveness and repentance.

Unless sin is acknowledged and confessed, there is no hope.

Given our contemporary materialism and sensuality, we can be sure that if Jesus began his public ministry among us today, he would begin by calling us to repentance, right?

Verse 16.

One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew throwing a net into the water, and they fished for a living.

So the first pair of men Jesus called to follow him were brothers, Simon and Andrew.

And this was not the first time Simon and Andrew had met Jesus.

Andrew had been a disciple of John the Baptist, who, when introduced to the Lamb of God, turned and followed Jesus.

Andrew then brought his brother Simon to Jesus.

And when Jesus met Simon, he said, You are Simon, son of John.

You will be called Cephas, which then translated as Peter.

So these men understood somewhat who Jesus was.

They knew there was a Messiah.

I believe they had an idea of that in their mind, because they, when he came to them on the shore that day, he came to change their lives.

Verse 17.

Jesus called out to come follow me and I will show you how to fish for people, fish for men, to share the gospel, something we're all called to do, right?

Verse 18.

And they left their nets at once and followed him.

After the previous meeting with Jesus, Simon, Peter, and Andrew had returned to fishing, but when Jesus called them to follow him as his disciples, they immediately left their nets.

Verse 19, a little further up the shore, Jesus saw Zebedee's sons, James and John, in a boat repairing their nets.

Verse 20.

He called them at once, and they also followed him, leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men.

So John had also been a disciple of John the Baptist, okay?

But we have no record of James previously meeting Jesus, but he probably knew about Jesus from his brother, okay?

In any case, their lives had been changed, and they knew they had to leave all behind to follow Jesus.

And in these few lines, we have one of the most famous acts of obedience.

Jesus came with a radical message, and these four responded in radical obedience.

So let us think of what their obedience meant.

First, it meant an expanded life.

I mean the horizon of these fishermen's lives was bound by the margins of Galilee.

Once in a while they went down to Jerusalem for a festival, but not much else.

And by and large, they knew little more than the deck of their boats, the currents of the lake, and the handful of people in the marketplace.

Their conversations consisted of trade talk, local gossip, family affairs, and Galilean politics.

In a word, they were remarkably provincial, even to the extent of having their own telltale accent.

Then came Christ and how their world changed.

In place of Galilee came the world.

John was to become Bishop of Ephesus.

Peter went to Rome, and Andrew went as far as the borders of Russia.

I mean their hearts were enlarged to take in the whole world, their minds, once circumscribed and committed to the smallest of interest, now overflowed with deep thoughts.

Literally they became theologians, thinkers, sociologists, psychologists, and strategists, all because of the gospel message of Christ.

I mean, following Christ eliminates the trivial and expands our hearts.

Their mental and spiritual processes opened up as their hearts opened up.

I mean, there's nothing that will make you grow more than following Jesus Christ.

Peter and Andrew and James and John grew to undreamed of heights because they made themselves special objects of Christ's love.

And they made themselves special objects of Christ's attention by choosing to follow him.

Several years ago I owned a trucking company here in the Valley, a warehousing company, had several employees, and whenever I needed a new employee, I looked for the best skilled and most qualified person I could find.

Sometimes it took months.

But when Jesus needs men to take the gospel message to the world, the most important job of all, he's walking among the most mundane and normal of people.

There's nothing fancy about his recruiting.

He doesn't recruit his first disciples among the hustle and bustle of the city of Jerusalem.

He's not walking among his culture's finest looking or well educated or those born into the right family.

Jesus is not looking where the powers of the world are.

In fact, he couldn't be any further away from the center of his culture as he walks along the Sea of Galilee among everyday people doing everyday things.

So why there?

Well, because these are the people that Jesus came for, and the people that Jesus can use.

This is in the most ordinary places among the most mundane people, and we're reminded that to use an old Christian saying, Jesus does not call the qualified, rather, he qualifies the called.

Today, no matter who you are, what your history is, your qualifications or lack of them, your skills or unskillfulness, if you are a disciple of Jesus, those who bear his name and have responded to what he's done, then we have no excuse to make when it comes to knowing our usefulness or qualifications for service when he calls and for the kingdom of God.

Jesus doesn't care about your skills, qualifications, or education.

All he wants is someone who will respond to his call of service.

So what can we learn from these fishermen's response?

Well, these men remind us that there's a cost to discipleship, a cost to following Jesus Christ.

They had to pay a cost.

What's the cost for you?

What's the cost for me?

I don't know about you, but I've had a great cost in my life.

I've lost friendships.

I've lost business.

I had one large, large business account in my trucking business, a multimillion dollar account that I lost because I found out my my some of my salespeople were providing prostitutes and alcohol for this one company for all the men in that company, and it was cost me a fortune, but it didn't matter to me.

But when I found out about it, I was now a believer.

And I stopped it.

It could not happen.

And because I stopped it, I lost that whole account.

Millions.

It cost me.

That's okay.

These men left everything behind, not knowing what it would cost them.

They left their businesses, their security, their comforts, because they heard the voice of Jesus calling them to follow and become fishers of people.

And when their eyes gazed upon Jesus, they could do nothing but leave it all behind.

You know, it reminds me of missionaries.

Back years ago in the 1800s, 1900s, the people when missionaries left to go to a certain country, when they were called to go to these other countries, they packed up everything they had and put them in wooden coffins.

They weren't coming back, okay?

This was a commitment they were given.

They were giving up everything, even their own lives.

And they would go for years and years.

There was no coming back.

I mean, it's not very different from days of missionaries where they fly back and forth and have sabbaticals and all this other stuff.

But but they and these four men back then abandoned all they had and all that they trusted in and committed all that was theirs to his teaching and cause.

And Christ has not changed.

He still expands lives of people that follow him.

Verse 21.

Jesus and his companions went to the town of Capernaum.

When the Sabbath day began, he went into the synagogue and began to teach.

They would also quote from quote from well-known rabbis to give their words more authority.

The scribes would teach like this, and Moses said, and the prophet Jeremiah once said, but when Jesus spoke, it was just the opposite.

He didn't quote authorities, he spoke as the authority.

When Jesus taught, they were amazed not because of the entertainment value, but because of the authority in his message.

The teaching of Jesus was astonishing because it offers authority to a world bent on autonomy, a world that wants to write the rules itself.

And Jesus says, I am God.

I and the Father are one.

I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father but through me.

Jesus preached God's word, not about God's word.

Jesus' teaching basically said it's my way or the highway.

Once Harry Ironside was greeted by a visitor who said he had enjoyed the service, although he didn't think Ironside was a great preacher.

Ironside replied, I know that I'm not a great preacher, but what about my preaching brought you to that conclusion?

And the man answered, I understood everything you said.

This was an unwitting confession of one of the reasons for Ironside's greatness.

Similarly, when Jesus preached the word, he was clear, he was concise and painfully direct in his application, as we see again and again in the Gospels.

Jesus had authority because of his deity, as revealed in three passages of Scripture I want to look at.

All are ones, John chapter 1, Colossians chapter 1, and 1 John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention Colossians 1 · chapter mention 1 John 1 · chapter mention

These are key Christology passages that reveal why Christ's words have authority.

So look at John chapter 1, beginning in verse 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

In the beginning, the word already existed.

The word was with God, and the word was God.

In Hebrew, word means agent of creation.

In the beginning, the agent of creation already existed.

The agent of creation was with God, and the agent of creation was God.

He existed in the beginning with God.

God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.

The word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought his life brought light to everyone.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.

Now skip down to verse 14.

So the Word became human, flesh, and made his home among us.

He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness, as we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son.

So here the one and only true God of the universe reveals himself and communicates to humanity through Jesus Christ, the Word, the Creator.

Next look at Colossians chapter one, beginning of verse 13.

For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation.

For through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on the earth.

He made the things we can see and things we can't see, such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.

Everything was created through him and for him.

He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.

Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body.

He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead.

So he is first in everything.

For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself.

He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross.

And lastly, first John chapter one.

We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, who we have heard and seen.

We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands.

He is the Word of life, the one who is life itself, was revealed to us, and we have seen him.

And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life.

He was with the Father, and then He was revealed to us.

We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard, so that you may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

So these aren't the only three places where you can go and find out who Christ is, but these are for me the cardinal passages that give us more doctrinal and theological understanding about the deity of Christ than just about anywhere else in Scripture.

The words of Christ are the words of God.

His words are words of authority, and they're very, very, very beneficial for us.

That's why we need to be in the Word.

And that's why the people were so amazed at His teaching.

There's nothing else like it.

Verse 23.

Suddenly a man in the synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, So here, even demons go to church, my friends, okay?

Even demons go to church.

Why?

Because most churches aren't preaching the gospel today.

They're preaching how to fix yourself.

Live your best life now.

Verse 24.

Why are you interfering with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

Have you come to destroy us?

I know who you are, the Holy One of God.

Now Satan always tries to imitate God, right?

Christ came to earth in human flesh and now dwells within us by the Holy Spirit.

Demonic possession is the satanic counterfeit of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

The Spirit comes to indwell believers and makes them more fully human, holy, and flourishing as God designed us to be.

But demons enter someone, a nonbeliever, again, they cannot enter a believer because the Holy Spirit is there.

They enter into someone to take control of them in order to steal, kill, and destroy.

So it may have been a lot of shock to these Jews to find an unclean spirit in what was supposed to be a sacred space in the synagogue on the Sabbath.

Why are you interfering with us is used by someone who's being attacked without provocation.

This demon seems to be suggesting that by his teaching here in the synagogue, Jesus had invaded the spirit's territory.

And this evil spirit knew two things, that Jesus had indeed come to destroy them and their power, and that Jesus was the Holy One of God.

The demon, indeed all the demons, for the demon used the word us, knew Jesus was the Messiah.

And while the people in the synagogue were astounded at Jesus' teaching and wondered who this man could be, the demon knew.

At this period of time, people believed that to know a person's precise hidden name was to be able to gain control over that person.

Thus, the demon's first attempt against Jesus was to state his name in public, Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God.

I know who you are.

The demons knew that Jesus is coming, marked the beginning of the end of their power, but they tried every way they knew to break him.

Their master Satan had tried and failed, and the demons Jesus would encounter would try and fail as well.

By including this event in his gospel, Mark was establishing Jesus' credentials, showing that even the spiritual underworld recognized Jesus as the Messiah.

Verse 25.

But Jesus reprimanded him.

Be quiet, come out of the man he ordered.

Why?

Well, I believe there are two explanation explanations that will help us understand why Jesus said this.

First, Jesus wanted to contain the enthusiasm that people had for a political Messiah that most Jews were looking for.

Jesus didn't want to be their king in the way they desired, nor did he want to be a military leader.

And second, to confess Jesus' deity without a proper understanding of his crucifixion and resurrection is partial and invalid.

He didn't want people to wildly proclaim him to be God's Son unless they understood the meaning of his death and his resurrection.

This would explain why even the disciples lacked understanding until his resurrection.

Verse 26.

At that the evil spirit screamed, threw the man into a convulsion, and then came out of him.

Without any recourse except to submit to a higher authority, the evil spirit came out of the man.

But first, to show its anger and protest, the evil spirit shook the man violently into a convulsion.

This demon's behavior reveals the true purpose of demonic possession.

Demons have a deep-seated desire to do violence and to destroy all who were made in the image of God.

Verse 27.

Amazement gripped the audience and they began to discuss what had happened.

What sort of new teaching is this?

They asked excitedly.

It has such authority, even if evil spirits obey his orders.

Now the word amazed in the Greek carries with it a note of fear of alarm.

The people were astonished at Jesus' teaching and authority and his display of his authority in the showdown with the demon had now caused a certain terror in the people what they had witnessed.

And the crowd referred to Jesus' teaching as new.

It was new compared to the dry sermons they usually heard from the scribes.

Jesus' teaching challenged them.

His words blew apart all their ideas of what the Messiah would be like.

Verse 28.

The news about Jesus spread quickly throughout the entire region of Galilee.

29.

After Jesus left the synagogue with James and John, they went to Simon and Andrew's home.

Now, verse 30, now Simon's mother-in-law was sick in bed with a high fever.

And they told Jesus about her right away.

So sorry, Roman Catholics, your Peter was married, and he wasn't your first pope.

First Corinthians 9 5 also confirms this.

He was married.

He had a mother-in-law, and you get a mother-in-law when you're married.

Verse 31.

So he went to her bedside, took her by the hand, and helped her sit up.

Then the fever left her and she prepared a meal for them.

Now modern readers like us hear about this healing of a fever in these verses, and we struggle to be impressed, don't we?

But in Jesus and people in Jesus' day did not have medicine.

They didn't have Tylenol to keep a fever from rising.

And so fever was a deadly killer, right?

The Old Testament sometimes presents fever as a divine punishment in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

And the rabbis regarded fever as a heavenly fire that only God could put out.

So the healing of this fever is yet another proof of Jesus' deity.

Then the fever left her and she prepared a meal for them.

And we see the woman's heart response in verse 31.

She immediately got up and began to serve them.

This is a telltale sign of everyone who has truly received the healing touch of Christ.

Our response to him should be like that of the talkative woman who received Christ under C.

H.

Spurgeon's ministry and said, Oh, Mr.

Spurgeon, Christ has changed my life, and he shall never hear the end of it.

That's what we should be like.

We should be bragging about God and what he's done for us.

Verse 32.

That evening after sunset, many sick and demonic and demon-possessed people were brought to Jesus.

As evening approached, an unmistakable air of anticipation settled over Capernaum.

For with the conclusion of the Sabbath, that was the Sabbath day, remember, the ill and the deranged could be carried to Jesus.

I mean, a electable tenth.

Blank of the town and the countryside as they waited for nightfall.

The law said that the Sabbath ended when three stars came out in the night sky.

Basically, it was 6 p.m.

Saturday evening.

So when the sun had set and the stars were blinking clearly above, the people came.

Verse 33.

The whole town gathered at the door to watch.

The whole town.

Now, we don't know how many there were, but some historians and scholars believe there could have been as many as a thousand people.

Verse 34.

So Jesus healed many people who were sick with various diseases, and he cast out many demons.

I mean, after an all-nighter like that, and casting out demons and sick, healing sick people, what do you think of the city of Capernaum looked like that day next day, huh?

I mean, if Jesus did this here in my town or your town, healing sick people and delivering people who were possessed by demons, what do you think your city or town would look like?

What would the city council look like?

What would the school board look like?

Verse 34.

But because the demons knew who he was, he did not allow them to speak.

Don't tell anyone.

I mean, Jesus always had compassion on people in need, but he never lost sight of the fact that his mission was first and foremost the healing of people's souls.

As marvelous as this night was, Jesus healing diseases and casting out demons, we should not be naive about what was going on here.

Most of the people who came to Jesus that night simply wanted something from Jesus.

I mean, in a reasonable sense, we can't blame them, can we?

I mean, we can sympathize with those people.

I can't.

However, they neglected the spiritual implications, implications of Jesus' miracles and teachings.

They were looking at the temporal and not the eternal implications.

Jesus, quite frankly, was being used by these people.

But it's against this reality that we see his heart, for he genuinely cared about the physical plight of these people, whatever their motivation was.

I mean, it's natural to want a magic Jesus, but we must always remember that God is not someone to be used.

He is to be loved, worshipped, and served regardless of our situations or circumstances in this world.

So Capernaum was exalted to heaven that day and night, for deeds worthy of heaven had been done in her.

Verse 35.

Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.

Before daybreak, I mean he gets up to pray.

We're probably talking, I don't know, 4 a.m., 5 a.m.

He'd done an all-nighter before, pulled an all-nighter, and now he's getting up just a few hours later, probably from his sleep, to go out and pray.

We need to pray like Jesus prayed.

You think you've had a long day or long night?

You still need to pray.

And let me ask you this.

When we talk about prayer, does it put you on a guilt trip?

Does it?

It does me, because none of us pray enough.

I mean, I've never met someone who said, I've got to really cut back on my prayer life.

It's ruining everything else.

There's never going to be a 12-step program for someone who's addicted to prayer.

There's never going to be a kid who doesn't turn in their homework because they were praying too much last night.

All of us have room to improve, and most of us are not praying enough.

So I don't want to guilt you, but we all need to be people of prayer.

Much, much, much more prayer.

And I just want to encourage us all to pray like Jesus.

And to do so, I want to give you five particular things.

I'm only getting through two or three of them, maybe, about Jesus' prayer life in these verses.

So, first, prayer is the three C's: conversation, communication, and communion with God.

Communication and communion with God involves speaking, listening, and sometimes being silent and still before Him.

Prayer obviously involves conversation.

Well, when we talk to God, we speak to God.

But also in Isaiah 28, 23, God says through the prophet Isaiah to us, give ear and hear my voice.

Listen and hear my speech.

That's communication.

We speak and we incline a listening ear to what the Lord is trying to say to us when we pray.

I do so because I usually pray through Scripture.

I love to open Scripture up and read Scripture, and as I do that, I'll pray, I'll read, I'll listen to what God's saying, I'll pray, I'll listen to what God's saying.

I enjoy that.

I find great value in that.

I have for many, many years now, especially some of the most difficult times of my life.

So in Psalm 46 it says, be still and know that I am God.

That's communion.

We need to be still and meditate on His word.

So secondly, prayer is not the convenient thing, is it?

It's the necessary thing.

It's necessary for your mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional well-being, but it's never convenient.

There's always a thousand other things to be doing, right?

But it's absolutely necessary that we spend time communicating with God.

It's like a marriage.

If my wife and I stop talking to others, each other, just stop talking, we're going to drift apart.

And it's the same thing with your relationship with God.

If you stop talking to God, listening to God, you're going to drift apart.

So I'm going to stop there.

We'll finish this part about prayer next week.

Thank you for joining us today, and I hope you'll have a blessed week.

Okay, stay focused on God and join us again next week.