Introduction: Why Four Gospels? - Brandon Scalf

Heritage Church Tulsa

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If you would, please go ahead and grab your Bibles and turn with me to the

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Gospel of Mark. That is Mark's Gospel. And today we begin a series that I think and believe wholeheartedly is going to deepen our love and appreciation for the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And I am excited to dig into this Gospel for a myriad of different reasons on a personal level.

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One, I love the Gospel of Mark. And secondarily, I am very aware that I am not promised tomorrow.

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And here is what I want to do. I want to always, no matter what

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I'm preaching through, put Jesus in front of you. And I want you to see

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Him in all of His beauty, in all of His glory, in all of His majesty, in all of His splendor.

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And certainly all books do that. That is the purpose of the Bible, to point to those things as it pertains to Jesus Christ.

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But in many ways, nothing does that better than the Gospel accounts. And so I am excited to dig into the

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Gospel of Mark so that we might see Jesus, particularly as the Son of God and the suffering servant.

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And I hope that you are excited as well. The title of today's message is,

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The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And as always, would you please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient

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Word. And really, we are just going to be looking at the first verse today.

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So look with me at verse 1 of chapter 1 of the Gospel of Mark. This is the

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Word of God. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the

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Son of God. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.

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Amen. Amen. Go ahead and have a seat and get your eyes back on the text.

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The Gospel of Mark begins with these words.

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As you just saw, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And He does this without mincing any words.

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There is no fluff in Mark's writing. As a matter of fact, we will see that as we journey through the book when we see things like immediately.

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There's always something immediately happening. But especially here, there is no wasted ink.

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There is no unnecessary words. Mark, or John Mark, as we will look at in more detail later, moves with the swiftness almost of like a lion in pursuit.

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And he just lays it out there that there is this Gospel. Not a

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Gospel, but the Gospel of this person, seemingly, of Jesus Christ, the

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Son of God. And the reality, friends, is

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Jesus Christ, the God -man, the Son of God, is the most divisive and most unifying figure in all of history.

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That's right. History. When we're speaking about Jesus Christ, when Mark is speaking about Jesus Christ, he's speaking about Jesus.

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And Jesus was a real person. He was a real man. Of course, he was the God -man, but he existed in history, in space, and in time.

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This is not a fairy tale. It is completely and utterly true. But he is the most divisive figure in history because, as he has said in his

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Gospels, he has come to turn family member against family member and to bring a sword, to divide because of what he teaches, and yet he unifies by his blood, and so on.

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He is also the most important figure in history. So important, in fact, that really we don't have to think that hard.

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History, for the last 2 ,000 years, has been divided based upon his birth and his coming.

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Up until this new change of the Common Era, and so on and so forth, we've separated history by BC and AD, which stands for Before Christ, of course referring to years before the birth of Jesus Christ, and AD, which does not mean, although we think it does oftentimes after death, it actually means

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Anno Domini, which is a Latin phrase that means in the year of our Lord, and it refers to his birth.

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So there is, as far as history is concerned, before Christ and after Christ. So we view history through this

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Jesus. Not only that, but he has become so commonplace that when people stub their toe at home, they will yell his name as an expletive.

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Now you tell me, who is a more important historical figure than Jesus?

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And so if for whatever reason you're here tonight and you're not convinced that Jesus Christ is actually a real person, that he's not really the

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God -man, that he never really existed, this is all a fairytale, let me ask you, who else in history has had that sort of an impact?

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Certainly something has gone on. Not only that, but his message is one that both divides and unifies.

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So his person unifies and divides, and so does his message, the very gospel itself.

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It is unparalleled in its powerfulness. It is the most controversial, but it is also the most unstoppable message that has ever been declared.

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It cannot, and it has not, and it will not be snuffed out. Transformed lives have happened because of this message.

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Sinners have become saints. And according to the book of Acts and other accounts of history, it has literally set the world on fire.

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And as we examine the book of Mark today, really we're looking at an account, a portrait of, yes, this

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Jesus, but also his message. Which is why I have decided to succinctly call the subtitle of this series

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The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God According to the Witness of John Mark.

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You see here as we look at the gospel of Mark in the first verse, we are not met with pleasantries.

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There's no genealogy, there's no birth narrative, there's no shepherds, there's no magi, there's none of this stuff, filler if you will, that is in all of the other gospels.

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Important filler, inspired filler, filler that needs to be in there. But Mark is getting right to the point.

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And he tells us what his gospel is about. It's about the gospel. And it's about Jesus Christ.

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And it's about the Son of God. Now, before we dig into the message that Mark has for us, there are some questions that we want to answer on the front end.

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So this is an introduction to an introduction in a lot of ways. We want to answer some questions so that we even understand how to get what

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Mark is even trying to communicate. And we need to understand what a gospel is. So the reality is, before we actually look at Mark's gospel,

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I want to ask and answer a few simple questions. I want to ask and answer, why are there four gospels?

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What is the gospel? Who is John Mark? And how did the gospel come about? And, of course, then we will look at who

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Jesus Christ is, this Son of God. But the reality is we probably won't even get to that until next week.

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Right now what we need to do is wrap our mind around what the gospels are.

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And what I mean by that is what the gospels are in general. So let's ask this question, and this is my first point. What is a gospel?

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What is a gospel? You will notice here, once again, that he starts off by telling us that this is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Now there is the gospel proper, and then there are the gospels. And what we want to ask is what are the gospels, not what is the gospel proper.

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The reality is the word gospel is a loaded term, especially in the modern, or in the

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Roman world, I'm sorry, in antiquity past. The word gospel here is a word that has been used elsewhere.

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It is not unique to Scripture. It is a word that really flooded the entire culture in which

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Jesus lived. The Romans used gospel to announce the birth of an emperor or a great military victory.

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It was good news. That is what a gospel is. It is a good news proclamation.

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And friends, that is good news because we live in a world that seemingly gives us nothing but bad news.

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And what Mark is doing is he is telling us, look, there is good news to be had.

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So a gospel really, in essence, is something that is speaking about, not something that can be good, but something that is objectively good.

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And it points to a particular person. But as it pertains to Mark's gospel, especially as it relates to the way that Romans used it,

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Mark really hijacks this. And biblical authors do this all the time.

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They hijack what is going on in the world to use terms that they would understand.

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Justification, for example. Paul uses this word, and he takes it from culture, and then he gives it biblical meaning.

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John does this a little bit when he engages his readership, when he says, in the beginning was the

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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He uses the word logos there. And what he is doing is he is reaching into philosophical minds, and he is trying to get them to think about something that they already understand, and then he is going to blow it up like it is a claymore bomb.

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And in many ways, the word gospel is a claymore. Because it is a word, like I said, that was used by the

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Roman Empire, and the gospel writers are saying, no, look, there is a gospel here.

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There is some good news to be heralded about a king that is born and about a military victory, and his name is

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Jesus. And so what we need to understand is when we ask the question, what is a gospel, we are not asking or answering it with this, rather.

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It is good advice. No, it is not. Gospels are not good advice.

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They are good news. And they are not about what we must do, although Jesus is going to preach, and he is going to tell us some things that we ought to do.

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But really, it is about what Christ has done, and who he is, and what he is about.

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The gospel is the triumphant announcement that the king has come, and that he has conquered sin and death, and gospels proclaim this gospel.

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In other words, gospels are, in writing form, the equivalent of a soldier running into a city with a victory proclamation.

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Do you get that? It is not just a book of religious information, of cool sayings.

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It is not a self -help guide. It is God's declaration through his servants that Christ has come into the world, and that he has conquered

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Satan, sin, death, and hell, and he has set free all who believe in him from those things.

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That's what it is. So we're here to learn about who Jesus is and what he's about.

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That's why Mark doesn't even identify himself. He doesn't even say, hey, by the way, this is

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Mark, like Paul does in his letters, because that's not the point. In fact, what you need to understand is that not only is this what a gospel is, but a gospel was entirely unique to this point in time.

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Yes, there had been types of biographies, although those were pretty new as well.

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I think Suetonius was one of the few kind of behind -the -scenes biography writers in that time period.

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And when he wrote it, it was kind of like, oh, no, this is like ancient TMZ. It was like too much information, right?

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Because they wanted just kind of the general big idea categories of what happened in history, but to like look at individuals, that was a new concept.

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But the gospel writers take it even further because they're doing it to persuade. It's almost like an evangelistic thing, but then they're saying, but actually it's about God and the flesh, and we want you to believe in him.

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So the next thing that I want us to look at is why and how do we have the gospels?

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How do we get the gospels? So that's what the gospels are. Now let's ask the question and answer the question, why and how do we have the gospel?

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Gospels have been and will continue to be the treasured possessions of the church, and they came to us first and foremostly by way of verbal plenary inspiration.

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Now that's a million -dollar word that just means God wrote it. God wrote it.

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And we know this because we've just walked through 2 Timothy 3, and it says there that all

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Scripture is what? God breathed. God breathed.

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But the plot thickens because not only is it God breathed, but it's God breathed in such a way that it includes human authorship.

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For instance, 2 Peter 1 .21 says, For no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the

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Holy Spirit spoke from God. Now this is huge.

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And this is huge because you need to understand that though God wrote Scripture, he is the author of Scripture, he also works through the personalities and the vantage points and the understanding of individuals.

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Now this is what verbal plenary inspiration means. Here's what it doesn't mean.

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It doesn't mean that the biblical authors were sitting at a table and all of a sudden the

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Holy Spirit invaded their bodies and they clicked off and then they were just writing in some sort of trance.

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But many of us might actually think that that's what happened, or if we don't even think about it that much. But what happens is

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God, through the superintending work of the Holy Spirit, uses the personality, the experiences, the vocabulary, and the mind of the human author to write his message.

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Does that make sense? So first and foremostly it's written by, in many ways, the

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Holy Spirit, but it's also written by human authors.

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And they are never in conflict. But that's what happens first.

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Secondarily, if we're looking at it from a historical standpoint, the Gospels were really oral in nature.

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It was oral apostolic witnessing. It was tradition.

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And so what happened was these things happened and the apostles began to talk about what they had seen with their eyes, what they heard with their ears, and they began to preach about it, to talk about it, and they would pass it around.

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And it would go from one mouth to another ear, and then from that ear down to their mouth to another ear, and so on and so forth.

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These were eyewitnesses, and they were speaking about what they had seen. This is why John, one of the

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Gospel writers in his letter, 1 John, says this is what we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands.

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This is real life, people. This is not imaginary.

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But then they wrote it down. They wanted to have something that would give certainty for their time and beyond.

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It could be circulated, and that would be remembered. So why are there four?

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And that's the next question I want to ask. Why are there four Gospels? Well, I hope everything that I've been saying up to this point will help clarify this point even more.

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There are four Gospels. There are three synoptic Gospels, and there is one non -synoptic Gospel.

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You might be asking, well, what is a synoptic Gospel? A synoptic Gospel is, of course, a piece of nomenclature that is summing up Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And these are synoptic Gospels because there's a lot of overlap in what is written in them.

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There's, of course, some differences, and there is some additions, and so on and so forth, and negations.

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And then John is kind of on an island, no pun intended, right?

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Because a lot of what he wrote is original to himself. And so we've got these four perspectives, and that's the way that I want you to think about it.

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The reason that we have four Gospels is because in God's perfect wisdom, he gave us four different portraits of Christ.

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Each displaying unique facets of his person and his work. And he did this by using different men and different people.

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Speaking to different and specific audiences. For example, the book of Matthew.

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The book of Matthew was written to a primarily Jewish audience. And his purpose was to lift high the reality that Jesus was not only

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God, but that he was the promised Messiah that they had been waiting for. That their scriptures foretold of.

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And Luke, this is to the Greeks. It is really a historical document.

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And then Mark is much like the book of Romans in that it presents

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Christ, yes, as the Son of God, but also, like I said, the suffering servant. The one who came to do the

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Father's will. And literally, more than a third of the book is him moving toward and explaining the crucifixion.

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But the reason that we also have four is because they each have different purposes.

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We just talked about some of them, but there are two that really make this clear. Both John and Luke.

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John just straight up tells us at the end of his gospel, in chapter 20, verse 30 and 31, he says,

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Therefore, many other signs Jesus also did in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book.

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But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

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So there were specific audiences, but there was also specific purposes. And John tells us his purpose was simply to show forth the reality that Jesus is the

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Christ. That he is the Son of God, and that if you believe in him, you have life in his name.

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Life now and life forever. More. Couldn't be more simple than that. What I also find interesting, and what you should also notice, he begins saying that Jesus did other stuff other than what

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I've said. He didn't write them down, because it didn't serve my purpose.

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And it would take way too much paper. So what you need to understand is when you think about the gospels in their totality, you need to understand that really they're from a person's perspective on what they find to be most helpful at any given moment for their purpose that they have set forth.

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So why is there four gospels? Because there's four people who were with Jesus, who wrote it down.

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And they had different purposes in writing. For instance, that was John's, but Luke tells us what his purpose is right at the beginning of his letter.

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He tells us in verse 1 of chapter 1, Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed them down to us, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you, most excellent

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Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty about the things you have been taught.

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So Luke was apparently sent by this man named Theophilus, and he was there to do historical work.

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He interviewed people. He got the facts down. And he wrote it in consecutive order.

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And so Luke's really is the most consecutive. The rest of them are completely out of order to some degree.

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And they're literally just telling us stories to help us see what they want us to see.

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Now I know in many ways that just causes the Western brain to break. We want everything to be exactly the same.

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And we want it to be in consecutive order. And we want everything to be crystal clear, or else it's just not true.

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Well, that's absurd. Right? Because you're getting different vantage points.

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Now, think about it this way. If you go home tonight, and you are going to speak to a family member who is at your house, and they say, hey, what was the sermon about that your pastor preached this evening?

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Every single one of you in this room would have a different answer to that question. And yet none of those answers would be untrue.

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Right? You heard what you wanted to hear. Certain things that were emphasized spoke to you.

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And there were certain details that you might get right, but could be more clear.

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That's the same with the Gospels. They're different vantage points with different purposes and different audience.

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They were different people with different emotions. They were struggling with different things.

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They were happy about other things. And the reality is, that's good.

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Because we get to see Jesus from so many different perspectives.

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It's beautiful. Once you get past all the academic arguments about how that means it's fake, you realize how beautiful it is and how wonderful it is that God, in His wisdom, gave us multiple men to tell us about our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But more than that, they gave it to us, these

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Gospels, to teach us. Romans 15 .4 says, For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that the perseverance and the encouragement of the

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Scriptures we might have hope, that through the perseverance and the encouragement of the

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Scriptures we might have hope. So it's to teach us, so that through the

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Scriptures' perseverance, we wouldn't despair. And that we would hope in God.

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I want you to imagine with me, especially children, if you want to pay attention for a second.

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I want you to imagine a cathedral with four massive stained glass windows, each revealing different aspects of the same light.

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The four Gospels are like that. They never contradict one another, which is amazing, right?

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Because if it was a made -up story, they most certainly would. But they never do. They only complement.

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And they give us a fuller picture of who Jesus is. Because if we just had one guy talking about Jesus, it would be pretty one -dimensional.

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But if we have these four Gospels, we get a fully orbed view of who the

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Christ is, through their personality, through their purpose, through their audience.

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Personality idiosyncrasies. So what does this mean?

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This means in order for us to really understand our Savior, we must read all four Gospels.

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Some prefer Matthew's teaching to Mark's action.

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Others prefer Luke's detail to John's depth. But we must embrace all four of these if we are to be

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Christians who see our God, Jesus Christ. Because they are all divinely inspired testimony of the one true

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Christ. The next thing that I want to do is I want to examine who wrote this book.

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I know that it doesn't say anywhere in the book of Mark that Mark wrote it.

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He begins by talking about the one person who matters, Jesus Christ. He was a servant. He was a slave.

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He was a doulos of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he did not find it necessary to include his name.

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Because it's about Jesus. It's not about him. But the reality is church tradition has always maintained that John Mark wrote this gospel.

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Not just Mark, but John Mark. And the reality is we don't know too much about John Mark, the human author, other than he was not one of the twelve disciples, but he was, according to scripture, linked very closely with them.

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And even those details really are kind of limited.

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But, for starters, let's look at tradition. Let's see what men of old have had to say about this reality.

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And then I want to examine the scriptures that prove what they're saying. The earliest reliable records that we have of Jesus' life, ministry, and death, that is the gospels, were written by men.

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And those men made disciples. And so there were people living a little bit later on down the road who knew who wrote these books.

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For instance, a man by the name of Papias, who was the bishop of the church at Heriopolis in 140

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A .D., said this in one of his letters, quote, The elder said this also.

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Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatever he remembered of the things said and done.

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But not, however, in order. Within another 40 years, sometime after 160

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A .D., there was an anonymous preface to a papyri found on the book of Mark.

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And in it, it said, Mark, who is called, and this is maybe my favorite thing that I read all week, who is called stump -fingered, because he had rather small fingers in comparison with the stature of his body, he was the interpreter of Peter.

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After the death of Peter himself, he wrote down this same gospel in the region of Italy.

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Now, one of the things we're going to look at later is Peter calls him his son. And Peter wrote during the dispersion, and so he would have likely been kind of in this region of Italy when he wrote his gospel.

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So this is completely accurate. Irenaeus of Lyons, who is probably a little bit more familiar of a name, said after the death of Peter and Paul, Mark, the disciple of Peter, also transmitted to us in writing the things preached by Peter.

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So one of the things that history tells us, if we look at it, is that Mark's gospel really is a regurgitation of and an observation of Peter's preaching ministry.

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And so he was writing down what Peter had to say about who

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Jesus was, and Peter was with him all day, every day, for quite some time.

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And so though Mark likely wasn't an eyewitness of everything he wrote down, he was the disciple of Peter, who most certainly was.

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We know that John, Mark, was the cousin of Barnabas. We see that in Colossians 4 .10, when

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Paul sends his greetings, along with his fellow prisoner, and also, quote,

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Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, about whom you received instructions. If he comes to you, welcome him.

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Now what's interesting about that is Paul is giving them this charge to welcome

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Mark, and the reason that he's telling them to do that is because Mark had really stepped on his own feet, and he'd made a fool of himself, and he kind of had this tiff going on with Paul, and Paul didn't really want to have anything to do with John, Mark, because he deserted him.

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In Acts 13 .13, it says, Now after Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos, they came to Perga and Pamphylia, but John left them and returned

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Jerusalem. So he was going to join them on this missionary journey, and things got hard, and John, Mark, was like,

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I'm out of here. Good luck. I'm not into all this.

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So when Barnabas wants him to come again, Paul is like, I'm good on that guy.

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I'm good on that guy. 2 Timothy 4 .11,

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it says, Only Luke is with me. Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service.

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So something happened between this happening in Acts and 2 Timothy. There was some sort of reconciliation that happened here, and now he says, look,

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Mark is useful to me in ministry. Bring him with you. Now I could do a whole sermon on that, and I would love to, but the thing that you need to understand is that Mark was a real person, and I think the evidence bears that out.

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He was a person who learned from Peter, who was cousins with Barnabas, who desired to do ministry with Paul, but ultimately wound up messing up, harming his brothers, and being a coward.

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Do you know anyone like that who's a real person? You. Me. And yet God chose to use him in one of the most profound ways that anybody has been used in all of history.

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As a matter of fact, that's the story of all of the biblical authors.

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Name me one who didn't mess up. I'll wait. Jesus is the only perfect one.

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And so when we read this, we're reading an imperfect man's testimony of the perfect man,

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Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And he wants you to fall and worship this

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Christ. He wants you to see him in his beauty and his glory. He wants you to see him as this servant, but also as this conquering king who overcame the crucifixion, who died for you and for me, if we would but fall at the feet of Jesus.

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Mark is like, think about it this way, a battlefield journalist. He's running alongside

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Peter, Peter's preaching, and the dispersion, and all of these things are happening, and he's just taking notes and hoping someday that people would pick this up and they would be transformed.

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So John Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark. It was likely written in 55 AD, and it was most likely the first gospel that was written.

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And it's mind -blowing. It's mind -blowing because Mark was a deserter. He was a sinful man who made mistakes and hurt people.

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And yet God defined him not by those mistakes, but by his grace.

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And now we have this book. So let that encourage you as well.

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That's not the point of the message, but it is a side note, one that's important. God uses messy people.

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God uses messy people. What are some other things that we know about John Mark?

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John Mark had a mother. Her name was Mary, and she owned a large house where Christians gathered.

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We know that because it says that in Acts 12. Twelve. He joined, of course, we know he later deserted, the mission of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 12.

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Twenty -five. But Paul refused bringing him again.

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So in Acts 15, 36 -41, they part ways. So Paul really forgave him.

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They were reunited, and he even wound up defending him.

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He was Peter's son in the faith, 1 Peter 5 .13. He was friends of the apostles.

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He was a co -laborer in their workings. And he's a picture of failure and success.

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And I want to ask this question, or rather make this assertion based on a question that I had.

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Maybe that's why him and Peter were so close. Because if you remember,

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Peter denied the Lord Jesus three times. After saying he wouldn't, by the way.

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It isn't even like he did it and was like, my bad. Before he did it, he was like, I would never do that.

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He had to be rebuked by the apostle Paul in front of everyone because of the way in which he was living.

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The way he was living was not matching what he was preaching about as regards to how to live this life.

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Whether to live it as a Gentile or a Jew. Peter was a story of failure as well.

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And yet the Lord restores him and sends him to preach. And history records that he was so ashamed of his actions that when it came time for his martyrdom to be crucified, which

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Jesus promised him that would happen, he refused to be hung right side up and begged them to crucify him upside down because he would not be honored in such a way.

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You see, when you meet Jesus, everything changes. Mark is proof of that.

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The one who he listened to preach and wrote his gospel down understood that.

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Do you understand? As an aside, it's always funny to me how silly people who don't think about the

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Bible or pay attention to history are. For instance, atheists use the upside down cross to try and mock the

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Lord Jesus. And yet it's a symbol of great humility before the

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Lord Jesus. What a God we serve.

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What a God we serve. So John Mark wrote this gospel.

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And he wrote it about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mark here is not leaving any doubt to who he's talking about and why he's talking about him.

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And he gives him three titles. He's talking about Jesus, and he's talking about the

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Christ, who is Jesus, and the Son of God, who is the Christ, and who is

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Jesus. But that, friends, is something that we will begin to examine next week.