Getting Christ Right in the Gospel of Mark

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May 15, 2022 | Shayne Poirier on Mark 1:1-13.

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons, or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.
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So we're in the Gospel of Mark, looking at chapter 1 in verse 1.
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And I wanted to begin our time together today by recounting a bit of a story, or an encounter that we had on White Avenue actually just this past week, when we were doing our
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Outreach and Evangelism night. Just this last Thursday, when we met a couple people here, at least, when we were out on the avenues doing some evangelism with my daughter
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Elise. We had a smaller group, and so we teamed up even with some of the kids, and some of the kids joined us.
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And this last Thursday, as we were out sharing Gospel tracts, and speaking with people about the
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Gospel, telling them about Jesus Christ, I was coming along the south part of White Avenue, just the south sidewalk.
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And standing outside of one of the bars were two young men, who were smoking outside with their
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Oilers jerseys on. And as we approached these two men that were relatively well -dressed, it became immediately apparent that they were not smoking regular tobacco.
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And so, both my daughter and I, we shifted so that the wind was in the right direction. And once we got into the right side of the wind,
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I shared a Gospel tract with one of the men who was standing there. And as I did, the man replied with a bit of an antagonizing tone.
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He said, hey, no, no, I don't need this. I'm already a believer. And a friend, his friend that was with him, leaned in and said, yeah, man, he's already saved.
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And I thought, what an interesting coincidence, or an interesting interaction to come across two men smoking cannabis on White Avenue, who are saved, apparently brothers in the
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Lord. And so, whenever someone does this, whenever someone gives me just a little bit to work with,
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I always try to follow up with a question. So I said, well, what does that mean that you're a believer? Or how can a person be saved?
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And as I did this, yeah, sorry, whenever I ask this question, I'm usually met with a variety of responses.
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On White Avenue, it's not surprising, when you ask someone how they can be saved, for someone to immediately take the conversation to New Age spirituality, or to take it to even aliens and some other planets, or a place of existence, or just to talk about some type of merit -based righteousness, or some long -winded conversation about this nebulous kind of the love of God that overlooks all of our sins, like you've heard me say before, like the cosmic
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Santa Claus. He knows when you've been naughty, he knows when you've been nice, he gives you gifts either way.
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And so, I was expecting this long -winded answer, or some kind of answer like that, when I said, how can you be saved if you are in fact a believer?
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And this man looked at me with his drug still in his mouth, and with a straight face he said, by grace, through faith in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And I looked at him, and I was stunned, because I thought,
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I've never encountered this before, where someone on the avenue says that they're a believer, and then they articulate something that is consistent with the
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Christian faith. But that's exactly what this man did. By grace, through faith, he even said, in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. So after I collected myself a little bit, and it took me a moment to figure out what
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I was going to say next, I got my bearings, and I started to probe with this man about his life, and even about this theologically pristine profession that he had made on the avenue.
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And what I quickly discovered about this man is that he had what I might say is a profession, but not a confession.
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He had a profession, but no possession. And he is what maybe
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Paul would describe in Titus 1 .16 as this, when he said to Titus, he said, They profess to know
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God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.
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And so as I conversed with this man, it was clear that he had an intellectual understanding of the gospel. When he asked, he had all the right words.
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He had the right answers. He knew the objective facts about the gospel. He knew the language.
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But as we spoke further, it quickly became apparent that he did not personally and experientially know the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Christ was Lord, as he said. Christ was
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Lord in theory. But for him, Christ was not Lord personally and in reality.
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And so I stood there for a little bit, briefly, trying to persuade and reason with this drug -smoking, professing
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Christian. But after another minute or two of speaking with this man, it was clear that he was more interested in enjoying another pleasure than in talking about the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And so, in a frazzled kind of way, and I'll admit this, in a frazzled kind of way, I pleaded with this man.
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I just said, you need to repent. You need to place your faith in Christ. And I tried briefly to convey that Christianity consists of more than just a shallow profession of faith.
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And then, with that, I carried on down White Avenue, and that was the end of that conversation.
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So, I got to have an opportunity, a conversation, with drug -using Christians, apparently, on the avenue.
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You know, the reason why I tell the story is because as we look into the Gospel of Mark today, in chapter 1 and verse 1, what we're going to find is that Mark deals with exactly this type of issue, about the understanding that we have of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, of who he is. And so, today, as we open our Bibles to Mark 1 .1,
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what we're going to find is that we're introduced to the person of Jesus Christ.
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And as we are, we're going to be forced to deal with some of the greatest questions that we will ever ask or answer in our lifetime.
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Namely, who is Jesus Christ? When we hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, when we hear,
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I believe in Jesus, when someone walks by us with a t -shirt that says, Jesus is my homeboy.
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Who is Jesus Christ? And then, to tack on to that, if we know the answer to that question, what are we to do with him?
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What are we to do with Jesus Christ? Is Jesus Christ, is he the kind of person, and this is very important, is he the kind of person who will entertain any semblance of a casual, arm's -length relationship with him?
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Is he the kind of easy -going Savior who will wink at your sins and then secretly let you in the back door outside of the view of an uptight father?
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Or, is Jesus Christ the Son of God who loved us, who laid down his life for us, and who commands us to follow him?
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It's a pretty easy rhetorical question to answer, I think. And so, as we look today at the
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Gospel of Mark, and I'm excited to get into, I've told you before, we're now going to be preaching through narrative, it's a different pace, we're going to use different muscles, but I'm excited as we get into the
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Gospel of Mark, this is what we're going to find. In verses 1 to the end of 13, we're going to look at the prologue.
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What people who put structures of books of the Bible together, what theologians would call the prologue of the
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Gospel. And Mark is going to help us get Christ right.
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Getting Jesus Christ right. And let me say this, this is so important for every single person in this room.
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You can be right about everything under the sun, but if you don't get
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Christ right, you've got everything wrong. So, Mark is going to teach us how to get
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Jesus Christ right. He's going to show us who Jesus Christ really is.
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And then in so doing, not only is he going to give us the key, the key to answer, or the key to understand, excuse me, his
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Gospel aright, but he's going to show us how to live in light of this glorious Christ.
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And so, Darrell, I'm going to address you just for a second, buddy. Have you ever seen where they give people the key of the city?
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Maybe it's a famous athlete or an actor, and they'll give them a giant key, and they say, we give you the key of Philadelphia, so as to say that they bestow a special kind of honor.
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Have you ever seen that? No? Okay. Maybe I should have asked an adult. But what we're going to do today, what
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Mark is going to give us in Mark 1 -13 is this. He's going to give us a key, a key to eternal life, and he's going to give us a key to understanding his
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Gospel aright. Now, because this is our first time studying through Mark, what I'm going to do is
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I'm actually going to break this sermon up a little bit differently than I normally do. We're going to spend the first half of this sermon doing just a basic overview of this
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Gospel. I'm going to tell you a little bit about who wrote it, about how it came to be, about what its themes are, and then for the second part of the sermon, we're going to look at five quick points through the text that have to deal with this question, who is
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Jesus Christ? Okay? So, a couple weeks ago, or a few weeks ago, when we had announced that we were going to be going through the
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Gospel of Mark, our brother Lowell asked, why the Gospel of Mark? And that's a fair question. When you have 66 books in the
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Old and the New Testament, you can choose any one of them. Why the Gospel of Mark?
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Well, we said then, when you had asked that question, brother, that we wanted to teach through one of the Gospels in obedience to the
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Great Commission. We wanted to take a new church with many or some new believers, and we wanted to say, this is what
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Jesus Christ taught. If we remember the Great Commission in Matthew 28, it's just, if you're on Mark 1, you can look over at the next page,
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Matthew 28, verse 19, the Lord Jesus said, Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
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And so, we wanted to go now, for a little while, through the Gospels, and in this case, through the Gospel of Mark, in obedience to that, to teach believers in this church, where we're at, who
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Christ is, what he has taught, and what he has done. And then we chose the Gospel of Mark, now doing a bit of an introduction into the
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Gospel of Mark, because it's one of the most accessible Gospel accounts in our New Testament.
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The Gospel of Mark is the shortest Gospel, it's 16 chapters. It is the most concise amongst the other
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Gospels. And what we'll find, as we read through the Gospel of Mark, is that it's a fast -moving, it's a fast -paced, and action -oriented
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Gospel. It's an action -oriented narrative. And so, I challenge you, maybe kids, this is a good exercise, or if you're taking notes, let's count how many times the
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Gospel writer, Mark, uses the word, immediately. At least by my count, maybe
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I won't tell you, you can come and tell me afterwards, but by my count, I have over 30 times that Mark uses this word, immediately.
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And what he does, is he gives the Gospel a sense of urgency. And it's as if, if we remember what it says about Christ in Luke, it's as if this book, like Christ, has set its face on Jerusalem.
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It's dead set on the cross. And someone rightly said that the
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Gospel of Mark could be called a passion narrative with an extended introduction.
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Almost the full second half of the Gospel deals with Christ's final days, his final ministry, his death, and his resurrection.
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And so Mark, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, probably with a little bit of eyewitness testimony help and guidance from the
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Apostle Peter, wrote a book. This book of Mark is less concerned with extended records of Christ's teaching, and more with the movements and the ministry of Jesus Christ.
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As he made his way through Galilee, as he made his way to Jerusalem, and then where he would offer himself as an atoning sacrifice for sin.
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And so, who is the author of the Gospel of Mark? Who wrote this book? Many of you might not know that the author of the
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Gospel of Mark, Mark, is the same John Mark that we read about in the book of Acts.
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You might remember John Mark, who went with Barnabas and Paul on their first missionary journey.
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And just partway into the missionary journey, in Acts 13, he abandoned his comrades and we're told he went back to Jerusalem.
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Well, it seems what had happened with John Mark after he went back to Jerusalem, maybe when he was declined another missionary journey with the
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Apostle Paul, after some time connected with Peter, Peter the Apostle, that we're familiar with.
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And at some point, he and Peter went to Rome. And we read about the relationship that Mark had with Peter in 1
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Peter 5 .13, where they worked closely together. Peter writes there, 1 Peter 5 .13,
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She who is at Babylon, this is likely a reference to Rome, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, so does
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Mark my son. And so, they had quite a close -knit relationship.
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Mark became a spiritual son to Peter. And so, it's not surprising then that with Mark spending so much time with Peter, that Mark's gospel bears a striking resemblance to the ministry of Peter, both
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Peter's teaching and his writing. And so, a lot of people actually would say that the gospel of Mark could be called the gospel of Mark and Peter, because it uses eyewitness accounts, and it uses little details that you'd expect from an eyewitness, like the grass was green on the top of the hill.
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That's something that you'd hear from an eyewitness if you were to hear them being interviewed at a crime scene or something like that.
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And so, here it is, Mark is writing this gospel with the help of Peter.
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And if you guys are like me, I always like to know what is inside each book. As a matter of fact,
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I just write it on the top of my Bible for that book. Mark, I'll put some author information and a bunch of other stuff, but if you're like me and you want to know just the facts, the dirty facts of the book of Mark, what you could actually do, if you want a quick reference, is just write
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Acts 10 .37 -42. Because what happens in Acts 10 .37
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is the apostle Peter preaches a sermon there, and the sermon that he preaches almost acts as the blueprint for the book of Mark.
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I'm going to go and take us there really quickly, but Acts 10 .37, the apostle
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Peter says, Beginning from Galilee, after the baptism that John proclaimed, God anointed
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Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. We're going to see that in our text today.
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He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. We find that throughout this book.
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It's very much focused on Christ's miraculous works, Christ's healing, Christ's rescuing people from demonization.
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Then he says, In Jerusalem they put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day.
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And eventually at the end of verse 42, he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one anointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead.
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And so the entire gospel of Mark in a nutshell is contained there in Acts 10 .37
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-42. So Mark wrote this gospel with Peter, likely from Rome, probably to a
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Roman audience. It has a Gentile letter type of flavor. So he explains
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Jewish customs. He explains Aramaic languages. He explains it to people who wouldn't be familiar, unlike perhaps the gospel of Matthew, wouldn't be familiar with the normal Jewish culture and language.
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Some of the central themes that come up in this gospel of Mark, I'll just name a couple big ones, are these.
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The first major theme that we get in the gospel of Mark, and this is what we're going to major on today, is a robust Christology.
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In Mark we get a robust treatment of the study of the person, the nature, and the role of Jesus Christ.
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And just like what we're going to see in our study today, not only does Mark make much of Christ, but Mark's central claim in his gospel is that Jesus Christ is the
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Son of God. And we see this at the beginning of the book and at the end of the book, in chapter 1 and then again with the
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Roman centurion in chapter 15. He is the Son of God, fully God, fully man, and he has a mission to accomplish.
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And that ultimate mission is to suffer as the savior of the world.
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But what we're going to see as Mark makes this case, beginning in chapter 1, is that Christ is continuously confronted with human ignorance.
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No one can get him right. The crowds don't get him right. He becomes a meal ticket.
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The religious leaders don't get him right. His disciples don't get him right. His family, in chapter 3, says that he's crazy.
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His family doesn't get him right. But if we pay attention throughout the gospel of Mark, what we're going to find is that throughout, as Mark gives us the works of Christ and the ministry of Christ and words of Christ and about Christ, is that throughout its preaching,
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Jesus is the Son of God. He's God incarnate. He's the savior of the world.
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And as we study this, just watch as his disciples and as others are confused.
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And it seems interestingly, maybe I think Mark planned this intentionally, the only people in the gospel of Mark until the very end who actually understand who
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Christ is are the demon -possessed people and in chapter 15, an unbelieving
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Roman centurion as he looks at Christ on the cross. And so we get this theme of Christ, Christology, and confusion about Christ.
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And the second major theme that emerges is the cost of discipleship. And I'm not going to belabor this,
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I'll just say it in one quick quote. In the words of D .A. Carson and Douglas Moo, they say, In Mark we find that Christians must walk the same road as Jesus.
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Christ was not received. Christ suffered. Christ was rejected. Christ was confused, or people were confused about Christ.
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But he says, Christians must walk the same road as Jesus, the way of humility, of suffering, and of death.
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And so we learn from the gospel of Mark that there is a cost to following this Christ.
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There's a cross to bear. There's a cost to be counted. And we must count it if we're to serve
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Christ to the end. And so that's my basic overview of the gospel of Mark.
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And if you want some more details, I'd be happy to give you more. So what we'll do now is we'll take the second half here and look at our text in Mark chapter 1.
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So Mark chapter 1, beginning in verse 1. Thanks for humoring my long introduction.
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Mark writes this. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the
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Son of God. That's verse 1. So Mark begins with those words, in the beginning.
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Now when I taught on the gospel of John in July, just a stand -alone sermon, does anyone remember how does the beginning of John 1 -1 begin?
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Yes, brother. Exactly like Genesis. John 1 -1, in the beginning was the
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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And John there leans on Genesis 1 -1, in the beginning,
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God. Well here Mark does almost the exact same thing, unlike Matthew and Luke.
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He says, in the beginning. It's that same Greek word that we saw in John 1 -1.
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It's the same Greek expression that we see in Genesis 1 -1 in the Septuagint, which is the
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Greek translation of the Old Testament. And it means beginning, or origins.
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What Mark is trying to do in this, using this expression, is that from the very beginning of his gospel,
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Mark is making reference to the time of creation, to convey that the beginning of Christ's life, and ministry, and gospel, the beginning of Christ's person and works, is no less important than the very creation of the world.
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In fact, they run parallel. It's as if there's a new creation. The day that the world came to be was a monumental day, but there is a day that's just as important and necessary, and Mark tells us that is the day of Christ.
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And then Mark says, in the beginning, or the beginning of the gospel. I'm not going to talk a lot about Greek words, but I'll use one more just for this.
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In this instance, he uses the Greek word euangelion, which means good news, or good tidings.
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And kids, what you might expect to see, when someone would talk about the gospel in Greco -Roman culture, is when there is a battle in a far -off land, or some distance away, and the battle is waged, and when the war is won, the victorious army would send a messenger to preach, to herald the euangelion, and what it is, they're heralding victory from battle.
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And so, in the Greco -Roman world, this was often used in the plural. We have won this battle, and we have this, and this, and this to report.
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But here, in Mark, the author, the inspired author, Mark, he says, in the beginning, the gospel singular.
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There's a singular gospel in the beginning. And that's because Christ's gospel stands alone.
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It doesn't have competition. There's nothing to add to it, or to take away from it, in the beginning, the gospel.
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And we see that this gospel is not just about an event. It's not just about a temporal victory won on the battlefield, but this gospel is about a person.
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The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The gospel is good news.
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The gospel is something that we can preach and share. It is a word to be declared, but the gospel is also a person, and that person is
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Jesus Christ. And notice here that Mark gets right into it. He doesn't hold punches, just like John in John 1 .1.
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In the beginning, the gospel of Jesus Christ, who? Jesus Christ, the
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Son of God. Mark knew exactly what he was doing when he said those words, the
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Son of God. He knew how his readers would understand that. When he declares Jesus to be the
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Son of God, he is saying, Jesus Christ is God incarnate. His relation to the
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Father is that of a son, and the son of a father is the heir. This is God.
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And so what we're going to see, I'm going to take us really quickly through five different points in this text, three of which are going to show us that this is what
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Mark means, that Jesus Christ is God incarnate. And so if not next week, but the week after, we're walking on White Avenue again, and instead of finding a drug -smoking, professing
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Christian, we find a Jehovah's Witness. You could look, if all you had was
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Amy's Gospel of Mark journal, you could look at these first 13 verses of Mark 1, and you could defend the deity of Christ just from this chapter alone.
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I don't know about you, but that excites me. I can look at one text, and it gives me everything
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I need to defend who Christ is and what he's done. So we're going to look at that together. Who is
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Jesus Christ? Who is Jesus Christ? And the answer to that, Jesus Christ is
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God. He's the Son of God. He's the living God. He is God's Son. And so we're going to look at five brief points, and if you have a handout in the inside of our bulletin, you can follow along there.
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The first thing that I want to show us is that Jesus Christ is God as foretold by the prophets.
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Jesus Christ is God as foretold by the prophets. In verse 2, Mark says, "...as it is written in Isaiah the prophet."
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Here he combines Isaiah the prophet and Malachi together to form one individual quote, and he probably used
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Isaiah because Isaiah was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. And so to put
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Isaiah and Malachi together in short form, he simply refers to this quote as originating from Isaiah.
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We're going to get to that in a second. But then in verse 4, we're introduced to a prophet that's even greater than all of the
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Old Testament prophets, the prophet John, John the Baptizer, or sometimes
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John the Baptist, as we call him. And we read this in verse 4, "...John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."
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What I want us to see here is, even though this was written to a Gentile audience, there's a ton of allusions going back to creation, and a ton of allusions going back to the nation of Israel.
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And so, in a sense, where it all started, the nation of Israel in the wilderness, John returns, and there he preaches a gospel of repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
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It says, "...all of the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the river
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Jordan." It says, "...all." That's probably a bit of hyperbolic expression, but what we can tell is that John went ahead.
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John the Baptist went ahead of the Messiah, of the one who was to come, and, in a sense, brought about a national revival of spiritual interest.
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And you can picture this prophet going before the Lord Jesus Christ, almost like, for those of you who are gardeners, maybe the plow boy that proceeds, the one who sows the seed.
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They ready the soil for the seed to be sowed. Or maybe the forerunner of a king to prepare the way for the king.
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And sometimes you hear about that, don't you, when we think about people like the President of the United States, when the Secret Service, they go to a location that the
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President will visit two weeks ahead of time. They prepare the way. They remove obstacles and hazards.
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They get the people and the place ready for the coming of the President, or in this case, the king of the universe.
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And so there, in the Jordan River, John prepared the people for the coming of Christ.
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And he wore what we would typically know as prophet's clothing, with camel's hair.
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He wore a leather belt around his waist. And kids, how would you like to live on a diet of locusts, like grasshoppers, and wild honey?
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This man was a prophet right out of the Old Testament. And he preached there saying, he wasn't the main event.
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He was the opening act. In verse 7, he preached, After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandal
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I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the
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Holy Spirit. What we see is here we have the greatest of all of the prophets,
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Old Testament and New, preparing the way for Jesus Christ, the
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Son of God, the God of gods. And what we see about the ministry of this prophet,
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John the Baptist, now, just to back us up to verse 2, is that this prophet had a divine mission that had been foretold, that had been prophesied, that had been prepared in advance.
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And what I want you guys to see is this. If you end up on White Avenue next week, or someone rings on your doorbell this evening, and they want to talk to you about how
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Jesus was an angel, Michael the archangel, or they want to tell you about Jesus being a really good man, or a really bad man, or a good moral teacher, you could take them to Mark 1, in verse 2 and 3, just those two
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Old Testament references, and you there could prove the deity of Christ.
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So you've got this great prophet who comes before Christ, and we know that in some ways he has the spirit, we're told, the spirit of Elijah.
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And now what we're going to do is we're going to visit, actually, those references that talk about this prophet who is to come, and to see what their role was in God's economy.
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So let's go first to Malachi 3 and verse 1. That encompasses the first half of this reference from Mark.
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Behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare the way.
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When we look at that passage in context, what we find, oftentimes when we read these texts, we think this simply refers to a prophet that was going to come before the
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Messiah. But when we look at Jewish literature, and when we look at the Old Testament itself, we find that this prophet wasn't just preceding a great
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Messiah or some angelic being. In Malachi 3 .1, it reads, Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me, and the
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Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. This is in reference to God and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight.
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Behold, he is coming, the Lord of hosts. John the
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Baptist's job was to make the nation of Israel ready for the Messiah, yes.
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But John the Baptist's job also included making the way ready for God to come to his people.
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At the end of verse 1 there, Malachi 3 .1, says the Lord of hosts. And then in Isaiah 40 verse 3, the second part of that, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the
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Lord, make his paths straight. This is even more compelling. Mark quotes from Isaiah 40 verse 3, a voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the
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Lord. And that word, it's not just Lord in a general sense.
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If we were to look at it in the Hebrew, a voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of Yahweh.
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Make straight in the desert a highway for who? For our
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God. And so the very first thing that Mark gives us in Mark chapter 1 verses 1, 2, and 3, and then down to chapter 8, is that this is
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God in the flesh. And we know this because he's preceded by the great prophet who himself would usher
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God into the world. So Jesus Christ is God as foretold by the prophets.
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You can take this. I used to tell people when you would go and do apologetics, that if you want to defend the deity of Christ, you can go to John 1,
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Colossians 1, and Hebrew 1, Hebrews 1. But now I'm going to add one. John 1,
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Colossians 1, Hebrews 1. Go to Mark 1. Because Mark 1 verses 1, 2, and 3 teach that this is
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God, the Son of God, God incarnate. The next thing that we see is this. Jesus Christ is
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God as demonstrated by his relationship to the Father.
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As demonstrated by his relationship to the Father. In verse 1, he's called
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Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I've already spoken on that. But moving along then to the baptism of Jesus in chapter 9.
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In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the
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Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open. And picture,
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I want you to see this, brothers and sisters. For those who would deny the Trinity, you've got the
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Trinity here at the baptism of Jesus. And he came up out of the waters, immediately notice that, he saw the heavens being torn open and the
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Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice, that's the voice of the
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Father, came from heaven, you are my beloved Son. With you
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I am well pleased. And so here we have some Trinitarian theology just in this account of Christ's baptism.
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But what we see, if we were to look at some, just very quickly, basically, some of the aspects of this baptism of Jesus is that we have the
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Trinity. We don't see it here, but we see it in other gospel accounts that Christ came, that he was baptized, in this case, to fulfill all righteousness, we're told.
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And then one commentator says, Peter refers to this event, and this is in Acts 10, verse 38,
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God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power.
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In Jesus' baptism, as later in Christian baptism, all three persons of the Trinity are involved, the initiative of the
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Father, the vicarious work of the Son, and the glorifying, enabling power of the
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Spirit are all revealed in this act. And so here we see the beginning of Christ's ministry, the beginning of his public ministry.
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We see, as Peter would say, Christ anointing with the Holy Spirit and with power.
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And what we see here, when God the Father speaks, when he addresses them in verse 11, you are my beloved
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Son, with whom I am well pleased, to relate, to call Jesus Christ his
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Son, was to call him God. And the reason we know that is because the
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Jews believed exactly that. If we go to John chapter 5, in verse 18, as an example, we're told there that the
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Jews were seeking Altamore to kill Jesus. Why was it? Because not only was he breaking the
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Sabbath, but he was calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
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And so Jesus Christ is God incarnate as evidenced by the prophets. Jesus Christ is
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God incarnate as evidenced by his relationship with the Father. And I like one story that really illustrates this well.
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In the 4th century, the emperor, Roman emperor Theodosius, denied the deity of Christ.
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He began to tell people that he did not believe that Jesus was God incarnate.
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And so when his son, Arcadius, was about 16 years old, Theodosius made him an equal partner in the rule of his empire.
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He essentially took him under his wing. He said, you're a man now, and the authority that I have, you have.
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And so among the noblemen who assembled to congratulate him on this occasion was a bishop named
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Amphilochus. And he made a splendid address to the emperor and was about to leave when
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Theodosius exclaimed, what, do you not take notice to my son? The bishop then went to Arcadius and putting his hand on his head, you can see, almost patronizing, putting his hand on his head, he said, the
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Lord bless you, my son. And the emperor, Theodosius, was roused with fury.
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He had patronized his son. And he said, what is all of this? Is this all the respect that you pay to a prince that I have made of equal dignity with myself?
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And Amphilochus replied, sir, you do not so highly esteem, sorry, you do so highly resent my apparent neglect of your son because I do not give him equal honors with yourself.
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What then must the eternal God think of you who has allowed his co -equal and his co -eternal son to be degraded of his proper divinity in every part of your empire?
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Jesus Christ is proven to be God because he is the son of God. Next we see this.
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Jesus Christ is God as confirmed by his perfect holiness, as confirmed by his perfect righteousness.
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You might remember at some point the rich young ruler came to the Lord Jesus Christ and he said, good teacher.
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And Jesus said, why do you call me good teacher? Only God alone is good. Well, here we see that that is true.
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Only God alone is good. And we see in the gospel accounts of the Lord Jesus Christ that only
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Jesus Christ is good. And so we see here, looking at verse 12, the spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
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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.
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We get again the sense of the urgency of Christ's mission. And interestingly enough, just as Christ passed through baptism, like the nation of Israel did when they went through the
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Red Sea, Christ is then, we're told, driven. Drove him out into the wilderness.
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Almost like God drove the nation of Israel into the wilderness after they passed through the
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Red Sea. And what we see actually in this account is that Christ begins to, almost in a dramatic fashion, pass through all of the tests that the people of God had to endure in the
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Old Testament. As the nation of Israel passed through the Red Sea, Christ passed through the waters of baptism.
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As the nation of Israel was led into the wilderness, Christ was led into the wilderness. As the nation of Israel was tested in the wilderness for 40 years,
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Christ was tested in the wilderness for 40 days. And what we find, unlike the nation of Israel, and you guys have probably heard me share this before, when
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I talk about complaining with my children, I ask them, what happened to the nation of Israel when they complained?
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And they say, they were bit by snakes. Well, in this exact same situation, the nation of Israel passed through the wilderness.
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They groaned, and they mumbled, and grumbled, and they complained, and were told that the
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Lord laid them low in the wilderness. But what do we see with Christ 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness?
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It says this, that he was tempted by Satan. Even the temptations of Christ had to be external.
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They weren't internal temptations. Like, I'm really hungry now. I need to eat. I'm tempted to complain.
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But they're external. He was tempted by Christ, and we're told that he did not give in to this temptation.
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And so what we see in the life of Christ is that at every stage where humanity has failed,
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Jesus Christ shows himself to be perfect in every regard.
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So when Christ went into the waters of baptism, he was shown to be perfect. He fulfilled all righteousness.
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When he went into the wilderness to be tempted, he was shown perfect. Now, who is good but God himself?
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The answer is no one. God alone is holy and set apart as morally perfect, as complete.
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And here we see that Christ himself is morally perfect. I once heard a story about a hermit, a monkish man, who when he became a
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Christian, and how many of us when we were young believers acted this way or felt this way? I know that I did.
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But when he became a believer, he was so zealous and he so badly wanted to get away from sin and from corrupting influences that he went into the wilderness to live in a cave.
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And someone who wrote his biography, I'm not sure who this was, that he told this to, but we're told that he took with him a little brown loaf of bread and a jug of water.
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But he had hardly gotten into the wilderness. He had just gotten into the cave before he upset the jug and spilt his water inside the cave.
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And it was a long way to go back to get more water. And it says that we're told that he got so angry with himself for what he had done that he soon discovered that the devil could even get into the cave where he was.
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The devil could even reach him no matter where he was that even his own sinfulness erupted from within him regardless of where he was.
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And so he thought he might as well go back and face, we're told, the trials of ordinary society.
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And isn't that the truth? Brothers and sisters, haven't you ever been in a situation? I remember when I was baptized.
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Looking back, I think it's foolish and silly, but I thought for three days after I was baptized that I did not sin.
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I remember getting to Wednesday and thinking, I'm still going. The track record's still going.
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I haven't sinned yet. And I think it was Thursday when it finally hit, oh, I've sinned again.
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And it turns out I still need Christ. Don't we find that no matter where we are, what we're doing, who we're with, where we work, whether we work alone or work with 25 unbelievers, that when sin isn't coming from outside, it's coming up from within, even in our new regenerate hearts.
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But in Christ, that was not the case. In Christ, we see that He is holy.
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He is completely separate from fallen man. He rises above all the rest as the perfect man.
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And yet at the same time, while He is perfect, well, Jesus Christ is holy above all that we can imagine in our minds to be holiness.
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We're told here as well that Jesus Christ, this is my fourth point, that Jesus Christ is
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God who has come as the suffering Savior. There is no
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Savior but God Himself. And what we see is that Christ came to a fallen world to bring the gospel, the euangelion victory.
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He was preceded by a prophet. He fulfilled all righteousness.
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And then someone might ask, but Shane, where do you see this suffering? Where do you see this aspect of the
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Savior? I want us to look at verse 13. And He was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan, we're told, and He was with the wild animals.
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And the angels were ministering to Him. Some commentators think that this is looking back at the garden when
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Adam and Eve lived among the wild animals in peace. But another commentator,
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James Edwards, who wrote one of the top -notch commentaries on the gospel of Mark, he writes this.
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He says, I'm inclined to see in the reference to the wild beasts a very specific point of contact with Mark's Roman readers.
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Tacitus spoke of Nero's savagery towards Christians in the 60s. In these words, they were told, they were covered with the hides of wild beasts and torn to pieces by dogs.
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Picture Mark in Rome writing this. He was among the wild beasts, even as Christians in his day are being devoured by wild beasts.
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He says, given the ravaging of Christians by ferocious animals during Nero's reign, it's not difficult to imagine
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Mark including the unusual phrase with the wild animals or with wild beasts in order to remind his
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Roman readers that Christ too was thrown to wild beasts.
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And as the angels ministered to him, so they will minister to the Roman readers facing martyrdom.
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You'd expect that if Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the King of the universe, came to the world, we would expect that yes, there would be the forerunner, that they would welcome him in with a royal carpet.
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But what we begin to see even here in this prologue in Mark is that yes, Christ came as God the
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Son, but yet also Christ came as God the suffering servant.
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And that's something that we're going to see repeatedly, but Mark is going to point to, I want to say Paul, but what
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Mark is going to point us to over and over again is that Christ came into the world to suffer, to be among the wild beasts, to endure hardship, to endure every temptation, and yet without sin, and he did it to save his people.
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And we're going to see that in Mark chapter 10, verse 45. Mark 10, 45. For even the Son of Man, Christ said, even the
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Son of Man came not to be served, but to give his life as a ransom for many.
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And so that's why Mark can call this the gospel, the euangelion, of Jesus Christ.
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Because Christ didn't just come, wouldn't that be interesting if Christ just came to the world to be a good example for us?
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Who of us could follow that example? Children, if Christ came to the world and he said, if you will just do what
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I do, think as I think, love as I love, live as I live, then you will have eternal life.
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That would not be good news. That would be the worst news in all the world because you'd fall short, you'd be like me after my baptism.
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You wouldn't get to day three. I didn't get to day three. You're going to sin, you're going to fall short of the glory of God.
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And so we have the good news of Jesus Christ in this, that God the Son came, and he came, brothers and sisters, to suffer.
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And we get a picture of that gospel even here, what theologians call the double imputation, that you have
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Christ who lived a perfect life, a righteous life, morally impeccable and flawless.
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He did everything that we have never done, and he's not done anything that we have done that was bad.
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We've got Christ the righteous. And on the other hand, you've got us as sinners.
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We've only ever known sin. We've only ever known fallenness. And here, just in the beginning of this gospel, we see the
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Son of God who is going to come with all of his righteousness. He is going to die on the tree.
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Really, historically, die on that tree in our place.
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And then by faith in him, he imputes his righteousness to us.
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And we come out of the water with God saying, this is my beloved son, or this is my beloved daughter with whom
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I am well pleased. Not because of what we have done, but because Christ, because Christ went into the water, because Christ went into the wilderness, because Christ went onto the cross.
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He imputes his righteousness to us. That's one half of double imputation. And the other half is this, that just as Christ was with the wild animals in suffering and being tempted by Satan, our filthiness, our rags, are imputed to him.
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Our sin is imputed to him. Our filthiness before a holy God is imputed to him.
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So in the gospel, we have Jesus Christ, the Son of God, but also Jesus Christ, the suffering servant.
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And so my fifth point that I'll just finish up quickly, what do we do with all of this?
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What do we do with Jesus Christ as God and with Jesus Christ as suffering servant?
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We do this. Because Jesus Christ is God, he demands your allegiance.
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He demands a response. It's not enough. Friends, pay attention to me for a moment.
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It's not enough to stand on a street corner when confronted with the truths of Christ's gospel and say,
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I know the facts, I'm good by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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It's not enough to stand on the street corner and know the facts of the gospel. But hear me, it's also not enough to be sitting in this church, in this assembly of God's people, and to say, because I go here and because I know the facts that sinners are saved by grace through faith in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, it's not enough to know the details without responding to them.
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And perhaps, that's some of you in this room. Perhaps you've been sitting under the preaching of the gospel for the last several months, maybe the last several years.
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And if someone were to ask you, you could articulate. If we were to give you a quiz, you could tell us how a person is saved.
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You could articulate the details of the gospel, maybe even with surgical precision.
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But examine your own hearts for a minute with me. Examine your own hearts. If you lay it all out before God, adults and children, if you lay it all out before God, and if you're honest with yourself before God, you know, if it's true or not, you know if you've responded to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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You know if Christ is your Savior. You know if Christ is your
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Lord. You cannot approach the gospel of Jesus Christ with a casual nod.
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You cannot respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ at arm's length. You cannot respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ with a lukewarm heart.
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You can't hold out. You can't cling to your delusions of self -righteousness or autonomy or even religiosity.
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If you've seen, like we see here in the first part of the gospel of Mark, if you've seen that Christ is
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God and that He died for sinners, then there's nothing too great that you can do for Him. And what we see actually is the response to this gospel.
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We're going to get into it next week in verses 14 and 15 when Christ says, repent and believe the gospel.
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But we see even in our text in verse 4, John was baptizing them in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin.
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Brothers and sisters and friends, we need to respond to this
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Christ with repentance. And if you're in this room and you know in your heart's heart that you have not repented of your sin, then you are abiding under the just wrath of God.
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And delayed obedience, God is not impressed by. Delayed obedience is disobedience. There was a man,
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Thomas Fuller, in the 17th century who stood before a congregation of people and he said, you cannot repent too soon because you do not know how soon it may be too late.
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Are you right with God? As the man on the street said, by grace through faith in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Not theoretically, but really.
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Have you turned to Him? Have you had a change of mind? I know that we hear this from me from time to time often that you need to repent.
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And it can be really easy to just let it go over our heads or to wash over us without responding. But have you actually repented and is
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Christ your Lord? You cannot have Christ as Savior without having
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Him as Lord. And then if you're a believer, brothers and sisters, there's application for you.
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Martin Luther, when he pictured Martin Luther on the steps of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, as he nailed his 95 theses to the door.
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Theses number one on that document was this. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
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Do you repent every day? Is your life a life of continuous adjustments, readjustments to orient myself to the person of God?
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To orient myself to the Lordship of Christ? Or have you seen repentance as only a one -time thing, one and done?
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We need to repent. Next thing we need to do, we're going to see this in our text next week, but I'm going to lean a little bit on the
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Gospel of John as well. In John 1 verse 12, But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
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If you've repented, you also need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe in his name.
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Not just in the facts, some historical facts at some time, but believe in Christ presently.
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As John says, Receive him as Lord. Receive him as the
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Son of God. This is the defining characteristic of what it means to be a
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Christian. We remember Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail. What was the
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Gospel that they preached to the Philippian jailer? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
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And what that means is to put all of your trust on him, to put all of your hope on him, to take all of your filthy rags of self -righteousness, to drop them at the door and rest on Christ's merit, to rest on his saving grace.
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And then in keeping with that repentance, in keeping with that faith, serve the
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Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart. I quoted already, but C .T.
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Studd said, If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, there is no sacrifice that is too great for me to make for him.
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If you want to read the Gospel of Mark, you want to rightly understand it, yes, see who Jesus Christ is on the page.
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Repent. Believe in him. But brothers and sisters, follow him. Count the cost and then follow him.
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I'll just finish with these words. As we study the book of Mark, recognize what
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Mark is trying to show us, recognize, sorry, what Mark is trying to show us in his
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Gospel. The world around us is going to confuse Jesus Christ. But recognize with Mark that Jesus Christ is the
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Son of God. As the Nicene Creed puts it, begotten from the Father before all ages,
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God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same essence as the
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Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven.
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And the Gospel of Mark is going to tell us what he did when he came down from heaven. So brothers and sisters, let us live in light of the
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Lordship of Christ. If you've not placed your faith in him, do so now.