The Bookends Of Mark

Affirmatively, please, in the Scriptures to the Gospel of Mark, the

Gospel of Mark, Chapter 1. No, I have not forgotten how to find the book of Hebrews in my

Bible. But, as some of you know, in the not -too -distant future,

I have a trip next month, in fact, over to Europe, the

United Kingdom, Germany, and hopefully as well, Ireland. And I have a number of debates that I will be doing there, and also writing a book, and when you put all that together,

I've got to try to keep things going in the same direction. And so, we're going to be looking at the

Gospel of Mark, and hopefully we'll all be blessed by the study of God's Word. Before we do that, let's ask the

Lord to bless our time together. Gracious Heavenly Father, we do ask that during this period of time, by your

Spirit, you would help us to focus upon your truth. And Lord, that you would protect us from being like the man who looks into your perfect law of liberty, and then, like looking into a mirror, goes away and forgets what kind of man he is.

May we not be, as we so often are, so quick to forget. But may we remember what we hear from your

Word this day. We pray by Christ's name. Amen. The Gospel of Mark.

If you were to go to almost any seminary in the land today, almost any seminary in the land today, you would be told, even in the most conservative of those seminaries, that the

Gospel of Mark is the first gospel to be written. Now, do we know that for a fact? We do not.

I don't know how we could know that, unless we could somehow find a copy of Mark from the first century, that says,

I, Mark, wrote this at such and such a time. And it would then have a stamp on it, that's from the ancient equivalent of a notary republic.

Notary republic? Notary public. That says, this is the date in which this was written.

And then we'd have to find one of Luke, and then we'd have to find one of Matthew that comes after that. But, in the large portion of Christian scholarship today, the assumption is that the

Gospel of Mark was first. Now, do I think that? I don't know. I don't know the order in which the

Gospels were written. The problem is that the vast majority of scholarship assumes

Mark was written first, because they assume sort of an evolutionary concept in regards to the development of the

New Testament as a whole, and especially the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And so the theory is that Mark's written first, and then Matthew and Luke come along, and whether Matthew and Luke know about the other one or not, they have another book, which we've never found, and no one in the early church ever whispered about, called

Quella. It is the German word for source, the Q source. And so they have two books, they've got

Mark, and from Mark they get the framework of things, and then from the

Q source they get the stuff that Mark doesn't tell them, and they're sort of sitting there, and they're editing, and they're going, well, you know,

Mark may have said this, and of course, you know, the name Mark isn't, you know, the very first word of the book is arche, which means beginning.

It doesn't say Mark, and this is what my Bible says, the Gospel according to Mark, and well, that comes along a little bit later on.

And do notice it's the Gospel according to Mark, not Mark's Gospel, but the

Gospel is something that is out here. It is the message of Jesus Christ. Here is

Mark's version, and then you have Luke's version, and Matthew's version, and John's version, and that's how we have it in the earliest manuscripts.

But the idea is that Matthew and Luke are sitting there, and they're editing things and changing things.

Now, at that point, I demur again from the majority of scholarship, because I think it raises more questions than it actually ends up answering.

From my perspective, it seems very clear that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are drawing from an oral tradition, a preaching of the church, because that's all the

Christians had for a long time. How did anybody in the first number of decades in the early Christian church know what the message of Jesus was?

It was preached to them. It was the preaching of the message that brought to them the truth about Jesus Christ.

And so, they're drawing from that. They're eyewitnesses. I mean, think of how many thousands of eyewitnesses there were to various elements of Jesus' ministry.

You have in the Gospel of Mark, the feeding of the 5 ,000, and the feeding of the 4 ,000. Well, there's a lot of people there, and not everybody in the 5 ,000 was in the 4 ,000, and vice versa, you probably have not quite 9 ,000, but 7 ,000, 8 ,000 people there.

And sure, people died faster back then than they do now, but still, in those early decades, there would have been literally thousands in the land of Palestine who are eyewitnesses to elements of the story of Jesus.

The idea that someone could just come along and make all this up and then voice it upon people is just historically absurd.

But again, if you went to those seminaries or Bible colleges, or especially if you have the misfortune of wandering into certain classes at Glendale Community College or other places like that, you will be told that, well, not only do we not know who wrote any of these things, but they were written much, much later, and Mark has such a different view of things than John does.

And here's the dichotomy that's presented to you. John, we think that one's real late because it has a very high view of Jesus.

I mean, you have to be so completely radical as to be off the radar screen to miss the fact that John presents

Jesus saying things like, I and the Father, we are one. And before Abraham was,

I am. And the book starts with, In the beginning was the Word, and it was with God, and the Word was God. And at the end,

Thomas, my Lord and my God, said to Jesus, and Jesus blesses his confession of faith. And clearly,

John is presenting to us a Jesus who, from an evolutionary standpoint, is way down the line because, well, we know that's not how

Jesus was. And so if you've got John saying that, then John's very, very late. But Mark, what we're told, and you'll hear this from scholar after scholar after scholar after scholar.

Some are unbelieving scholars. Some call themselves believing scholars. But what you'll hear is you'll have,

Mark gives us a very human Jesus. Now, hopefully when you hear that, and you'll hear this on CNN, and you'll hear this on Fox, and you'll hear this all over the place, especially even, you know, you look at the events just in the past week.

You can't help but turn on the television and there's a discussion about morals and ethics in our society.

Look, you know, the Congress of the United States used to print Bibles. So it's sort of hard here in the

United States for us not to talk about what the Bible says about things, but all the vast ignorance that has descended upon our nation and, let's be honest, upon the church in regards to the history, content, and teaching of the

Bible. And so you'll hear people saying, well, the Bible contradicts itself on this and it contradicts itself on that.

And you will hear so many different people saying, it can't even figure out who Jesus is. You've got the

Jesus of John who's this heavenly figure whose feet never touch the ground. And then you've got the very human

Jesus of Mark. Well, is that true? Is that the case?

What I want to do this morning, this evening, next Lord's Day morning, and next

Lord's Day evening in the four times that we have together during that rare occasion called vacation for Pastor Fry, where we somehow manage to pry him out for all of one

Sunday, is to ask the question, what does Mark teach us about Jesus?

What is Mark's testimony? And I'm not going to be dealing with the fact because it is a fact that Mark presents to us a human

Jesus because guess what? We believe in a human Jesus. The world doesn't get that part.

They think we believe in some sort of demigod whose feet never touch the ground and who just sort of floated around and didn't eat food and popped in and out and that type of thing.

That seems to be what they think we believe. Now, some of that we can lay at their feet for just not doing their homework, but some of that we have to lay at our own feet and not being clear about the fact we believe that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and the

Gospel of John teaches us that. That allegedly high, late gospel says in John 1 .14

the Word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us. The very term you'd use of going into a tent.

And so, it's John 4 that tells us that Jesus was tired from His travels as He sat down next to the well in Samaria.

He was a human being. The Word became flesh. We believe that Jesus was the

God -man. Not the God who pretended to be a man. He was the God -man.

100 % God, 100 % man. One person, two natures. That's what we believe.

And so, I'm not going to argue that the Gospel of Mark presents Jesus as a man.

It does, but interestingly enough, doesn't spend nearly the time that Matthew, Luke, or John does on emphasizing that very point.

Doesn't even bother to go there. In fact, Mark doesn't do what Matthew and Luke do.

There's no genealogy here. There's no, this person began this person and eventually you get down to Joseph who is supposedly the father of Jesus type thing that you have elsewhere.

You don't have a discussion of the virgin birth. Mark is the shortest of the Gospels. And Mark seems to be written not for a

Jewish audience because he had so many places where he explains Jewish traditions that you would not explain if you were writing to a particular audience that you can assume everybody already knows that.

And there's a lot of translations in it which translated means thus and so. This is clearly a

Gospel that was meant to go with the preached Gospel out into the world which was predominantly at this time speaking what we call

Koine or Common Greek. That's why it's written in that language. I don't think that the

Gospel of Mark was meant to replace the oral proclamation of the Church. In fact, that's one of the reasons

I think the Gospel of Mark ended where it ended. You might know that the end of the Gospel of Mark those last 12 verses traditionally there

Mark 16, chapter 16, verses 9 -20 that those verses are not considered to be original by a large majority of scholars today and I would agree with them on that.

I believe it's a later edition. And the reason that those verses came into existence that's not the only ending of Mark there's a couple of endings of Mark in various manuscripts is because people found it unnatural for it to end at that point when

Matthew and Luke in later generations once they started gathering together Matthew and Luke go farther. They thought

Mark should also go farther. But it seems to me if Mark is the earliest and it's the shortest it was meant to be something that guided the reader in presenting the

Gospel message but it was never meant to be an end unto itself. It wasn't meant to be the whole story. It was meant to lead to the testimony of the resurrection of Christ and the individual who is preaching his testimony of his encounter with Christ.

Maybe even using eyewitnesses to do that. That may be why it ended where it did.

And only later generations go oh well Matthew and Luke go farther so they cobbled together this longer ending of Mark.

Mark is in a hurry. Mark gives us remember these had to be handwritten on a codex and Mark would be the easiest

Gospel to carry with you. He doesn't give us a lot of extraneous details.

Now when he does tell a story he tells it rather fully. We've noted that when we compare Matthew and Mark when they're both telling the same story

Mark's almost always going to tell a longer version of it than Matthew is. But Matthew tells many more stories than Mark that's why his

Gospel is so much longer. And so with that in mind what are some of the evidences that we can obtain from the

Gospel of Mark concerning the deity of Christ? The deity of Christ.

Well let's look at Mark chapter 1. Mark chapter 1 verses 1 through 3.

Mark chapter 1 The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet Behold I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness make ready the way of the Lord make his paths straight.

Now, no long introduction like John.

No genealogies. No fluffy introduction.

It's just dive right into it. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus the

Messiah. I hope whenever you see the word Christ you realize that's not

Jesus' last name. Okay? He is not the son of Mr. and Mrs. Christ.

It is a title. And unfortunately because we use it as a singular name we miss that.

And we miss the Jewishness of the New Testament when we do that.

I don't have any problem that some of my Jewish friends who've come to embrace Jesus Christ you know, they'll use the

Hebrew name or something like that. That's fine. I don't have any problem with that. As long as you don't start trying to drag in legalism and everything else in the process.

But when it says the Gospel of Jesus it's the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah the

Anointed One, the Son of God. Now, notice a couple things about that verse.

Some of your Bibles might have a little note. And that note will point out that in some manuscripts the phrase the

Son of God is not found. Some might have a bracket around it. Something like that. Now, I want to commend our regular members and those of you who attend here for putting up with me who always stops in the middle of a sermon and tells you about things that sometimes you don't care about.

But I hope some of you recognize there's a reason why I do this. Why would

I stop now and point out a bracket or a footnote? Why not just keep the flow going?

Well, because I happen to know the kinds of responses and the kinds of attacks that exist out there that I don't want you to be unprepared for.

And if you've heard it here in the community of faith then you're ready to deal with it out there when someone throws it at you hoping to knock you off stride and to silence you and to keep you from giving a testimony to the

Gospel. There are some early manuscripts that do not have the phrase the Son of God. But a wide variety of manuscripts which come from a wide variety of areas do have that reading.

And it is a very, very strong reading. And I think there's a very good reason textually and contextually to read it as the

Son of God. Because it seems to me that we have in the

Gospel we're going to go to this as our second text this morning but I just want to direct your attention to the fact that we sort of have what might be called a bookends here.

What is a bookends? Well, an author will frequently state something at the beginning of a book and then restate it toward the end of the book as a means of unifying the message that he's attempting to communicate.

And there is no question that in Mark chapter 15 right at the end of the book we have in the story of the death of Jesus these words.

Beginning in verse 37. This is the second text we'll look at in a few moments. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.

And the veil the temple was torn in two from top to bottom when the centurion who is a

Roman soldier, a well -trained veteran Roman soldier who was standing right in front of him saw the way he breathed his last he said, truly, this man was the

Son of God. This man was the Son of God. And so you have a bookend.

And if you don't read Mark 1 .1 if you start Mark 1 .1 and you just have the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ then go as it is written now you don't have the bookends there.

It would seem that Mark is clearly indicating to us something about who

Christ is and hence there's internal evidence as well as the external evidence for the reading the

Son of God. And so I think that it is appropriate for us to read it in that particular way.

But I don't want you to miss something. Sometimes, and again, I sometimes sound like a broken record but sometimes you have new folks and I cannot assume that you remember everything

I've ever said because, well, I've slept since the last time I spoke so I don't remember everything that I've ever said.

So I repeat some things. But we as individuals, as Christians especially tend to become so comfortable with the text.

And that's a good thing. We are exposed to all of the text around here.

I mean, on Sunday evenings I'm reading through the Old Testament and right now we're describing the building of the tabernacle.

It's scintillating. Exactly how many brass rings and how long the cubits and what color of the thread.

Ooh, it's almost David and Goliath level stuff, you know. And we all know that.

But you know what? When I stand up here and I read that part of my mind is going, well, you know, visitors are going, wow, these guys are great.

After that praise band too, this is great. This is wonderful, you know. But part of me in the back of my mind is thinking this is a testimony to our people on a regular basis that we actually believe what the

Bible says and it says all Scripture is God -breathed.

And when you skip any of it what you're saying is might be God -breathed, but not quite up to our levels.

Got a little problem with that. I really do. And so, one of our problems is we read that first verse and because we're comfortable with the text, we know how the story ends, in other words, it's easy for us to just go, okay, that's just an introduction.

But think with me for just a moment. The Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What does that tell you about Jesus? Could we have the Gospel about Isaiah?

I mean, Isaiah was a holy man. Isaiah saw God. Isaiah had his temple vision.

Ezekiel saw all sorts of visions. I mean, some people have some questions about Ezekiel. I mean, there's all these people.

I mean, Moses talked face to face with God so much so his face glowed.

But could you have the Gospel about Moses? You might have the

Gospel that Moses wrote, but the Gospel of Matthew ain't about Matthew. And the

Gospel of John ain't about John. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about Jesus Christ.

And so, right from the start, take yourself out of our familiarity and ask yourself the question, what's being said about this

Jesus, the Messiah? The good news about Jesus, the

Messiah. The very fact that it can be identified as the Gospel and that it's attached to Him.

And then note something else. Just a few verses down. Look at verse 15. When Jesus comes...

Actually, verse 14. After John had been taken into custody, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the what?

Gospel of whom? God. Well, I thought this was the Gospel of Jesus, the

Messiah. But Jesus is preaching the Gospel of God. Mark, just on a literary level here, you might want to be a little careful or careful with your terms because someone might think that you're putting

Jesus and God on a very similar level here. I mean, if you're using the one word Gospel and you call it the

Gospel of God, but you start off talking about the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I mean, someone might get the idea that this

Jesus Christ guy is something more than just a human. Yeah, they might. And then notice, when

Jesus preaches the Gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in what?

The Gospel. What Gospel? Well, the Gospel He's proclaiming. What's the

Gospel about? Him. Well, yeah, He's like the King of the

Kingdom. And it's about what He's going to do. Wow.

Isaiah never did anything like that. Abraham never did anything like that. Moses didn't even do anything like that.

Are we really sure that Mark presents to us this merely human

Jesus? By the way, I was going to mention to you, sometimes we get somewhat intimidated because someone stands there and they've got as many letters behind their names as the alphabet does.

And they tell us with great confidence, well, Mark, we know Mark presents to us a very non -developed

Christology. Doesn't that sound great? What does that mean? Well, what they're actually saying is

Mark presents to us a very low view of Jesus. But they like to use very large words to say things that they could have said in much more simple words.

That's how you get tenure. It's true. But, I have challenged some of the leading scholars in the world.

I've had an opportunity that most of you aren't going to have. For example, some of you have been in the room when

I debate a man by the name of John Dominic Crossan. John Dominic Crossan is recognized as being one of the world's leading historical

Jesus scholars. He's on CNN. He's even on the History Channel.

Now, that's a credential that's pretty tough to come by these days, let me tell you. And, Dr.

Crossan's a wonderfully nice fellow. He really is. As I've said many times, he's my favorite heretic.

And, I've told him that. And, he knows that that's exactly him. And, the last email he wrote to me, he signed it,

Dom, your favorite heretic. So, he knows that, he's aware of that. I mean, he doesn't really believe in a personal

God and he thinks that Jesus was crucified and taken down from the cross, buried in a shallow grave, dug up and eaten by dogs. There's really no afterlife.

Okay, so we're not talking Orthodox Christianity here, alright? But, he is so a part of the standard view of things that very often they don't even think about any other views outside of what's just sort of already sort of accepted.

And so, he too had this view, you know, the Jesus in Mark. He's sort of out of control at the cross.

The Jesus of John is in control of everything. There's this huge difference there. So, during the debate,

I challenged him on that. And, I showed numerous references from Mark chapters 14 and 15 where you have a direct parallel with exactly what

John says. How can you... And, it's just sort of like, you're challenging that?

Yeah. And, so what I'm saying to you is, if you really read Mark and you listen to what

I have to say over these next few sermons, don't be intimidated by someone who has a bunch of degrees after their name.

Because, it may have been a long time since they last read Mark. I'm serious. Some of you saw the debate that I did with, again, a well -known scholar.

I was on a different subject, but just to illustrate this. And, I was pushing him. He's an inclusivist.

He presents the idea that pretty much any act of faith toward any God is going to be accepted by God as faith in Jesus.

And, therefore, you're going to be saved by being a Buddhist or a Muslim or whatever else it is. And, I wanted to ask about what

Jesus taught in John chapter 6. And, he's just like, well, you know, you've got the

Calvinist reading. You've got the Arminian reading. You know, and I said, but what about... I just kept pressing. And, so finally, he sort of stops and says, well, alright,

I'll look at it. It's been a few years since I've been there. And, he's turning through the

Bible. And, then he's standing there and he's reading it. And, this is a teaching scholar. This is a

New Testament scholar who's teaching right now. But, hadn't been in John chapter 6 to think about that for years.

So, just because there's a bunch of degrees after the name doesn't mean this person is actually overly in contact with the text.

And, when you can present an argument that starts at Mark 1 and ends at Mark chapter 15, that's a powerful argument.

So, do not be intimidated. I wanted to make that reference to you. Now, I mentioned to you the fact that we have here these amazing words.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We saw the book ending. But, then notice the quotation from Isaiah.

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet. Now, some of your translations might say, as it is written in the prophets.

Again, take a moment here. I want to explain it so that someone can't sneak up on you and use it as a weapon.

If you look the texts up that are quoted, you'll discover they're from two books.

They're from Malachi and Isaiah. Starts, though, in Malachi. And so, what happened?

Well, early on, scribes not familiar with how the Jews cited the Old Testament.

There was an unfortunate major division between the synagogue and the church early on.

You can see it in the pages of the New Testament. And it got worse. So much so, that after a while, very, very, very few

Christians could even read Hebrew, for example. Even though it started off as primarily a Jewish movement, there were only two early church fathers that wrote anything of any length that could actually read both

Greek and Hebrew. And so, familiarity with how Jews would have been citing the

Old Testament, and that's what's the background to this, became very, very foreign to people.

They didn't have that kind of knowledge. And so, scribes, if you're looking at this, they go, well, behold, I send my messenger ahead of you.

That's actually from Malachi. And the rest of it is from Isaiah.

So, the voice, when crying, the will is to make it. That's from Isaiah. The copyist before me must have gotten that wrong.

Because it says Isaiah. Well, the problem is, they didn't recognize that when you're citing from the

Old Testament, especially remembering that Old Testaments were written on scrolls.

And, you know, it's really hard. Can you imagine Bible drills using scrolls? Okay, Zechariah 12 .1.

I've been Genesis. You know, 27 minutes later, I got it.

You know, it's not nearly as exciting as it would be today. But you'd have huge, huge, massive forearms.

I mean, it'd just be like Popeye. It'd be great. But they would cite this, because they would actually break it up into different scrolls.

But the minor prophets were put together in one book, and they'd be at the end of the major prophets.

And so, you'd identify it by the major prophet that was the head of that scroll. And so, if you're quoting a mixed citation of Isaiah and Malachi, you're going to go with the major prophet, because that's how the

Jews cited the Old Testament. But later scribes, once they didn't know that any longer, they didn't really have contact with the

Jewish way of doing things, then they got confused. And so, they just put in the prophets rather than Isaiah the prophet.

But then, having noticed that and explained that, if it's ever thrown in your direction, and you might say,

I'll never remember that. You'd be shocked at what the Holy Spirit can bring to your recollection at the right time. You really would be.

Many of you can testify to that. But, you listen to these two texts, and you have the assertion, first of all, that there is going to be this sending of a messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way, and then the voice of uncrying in the wilderness make ready the way of...

And this is where, again, you need to recognize in the Old Testament, the divine name is called the

Tetragrammaton, YHWH, which we slaughter in English as Jehovah. That name appears thousands of times.

And it's normally rendered as L -O -R -D in all caps in our English Bibles. It makes straight the way of Yahweh.

Make His paths straight. And then, immediately after that, you have verse 4,

John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. So, here's the messenger. He's the one that's been sent by God.

This is prophesied in the Old Testament. Here comes the messenger, and he's preparing the way for whom? For Yahweh.

Now, a lot of people say, well, it just means, you know, the angel of the Lord is sometimes referred to as the

Lord, or it's just a representative thing. But the first meaning of the text, the first statement that it makes, is prepare, make ready the way of Yahweh.

Make His paths straight. And so it fits with the idea that the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the

Son of God. Now, again, some of them might say, yeah, but Son of God, everybody's a

Son of God. I mean, that's certainly what you get down at the Episcopalian church. Everybody's a

Son of God, right? Certainly, in the Old Testament, there are uses of Son of God that do not mean deity.

There are angels who are called Sons of God, and there are men that are called Sons of God, and individuals that are called

Sons of God, but the Son of God is totally different than saying, well, we're all the children of God in the sense that He made us.

The Son of God. That's something completely different.

And given that time is running out on us, I guess that would be a good way to get to our second text, which, as I said, is in chapter 15.

Mark chapter 15. Let's read it once again. This is at the end of the crucifixion.

Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed His last. In the veil the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

When the centurion who was standing right in front of Him saw the way He breathed His last, he said, truly this man was the

Son of God. Now, immediately, once again, in most quote -unquote scholarship of the world, what you'll be told is it shouldn't be the

Son of God. It should be a Son of God. And when you look at the

Greek, there is no article in front of the word Son. Now, there is in front of man, but that would make sense.

It could be translated properly from the Greek language as this man was a

Son of God or the Son of God. You just simply cannot tell by the way that it's written. And think about it for a moment.

How much theological training does a centurion have? A centurion's training is in one thing.

The military. And especially in those days, he is a trained killer.

He has seen a lot of death. And if he's in the backwaters of the

Roman Empire, which is what Jerusalem would be considered at this time, he's probably an older man.

He's probably a veteran. Maybe toward the end of his career. Maybe a little bit past the prime, shall we say.

But he's not going to be a novice. And hence, we don't know what kind of religious beliefs he would have had.

And if he had said this man was a Son of God, that may have been the highest confession that he could even begin to understand because he doesn't have the

Old Testament background. I mean, maybe he's been in Jerusalem for a while.

Maybe he's been talking to some folks. We don't know. We're not told. But the fact is, there was something about this man.

He has seen minimally hundreds of people die this agonizing death.

Nothing new to him. You and I would be shocked out of our socks if we just don't see things like this except on a screen where it's not real.

But he has seen this over and over again. And yet, there's something about this death.

There's something about this man that makes him say, truly, truly, this man was the

Son of God. Now, Wednesday night, we saw again in Matthew 16, for anyone to know who

Jesus is, for Peter to say, you are the Messiah, you are the

Christ, the Son of the living God, requires what? It requires the revelation of the Father. What did

Jesus say to him? Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, Peter, but my Father who is in heaven. And so, centurions can be the objects of the revelation of who

Jesus is just as much as anybody else. There's something about this man that causes this hardened centurion, a man who would have been involved in pagan worship to say, this is the

Son of God. And above his head is, up there on the cross, this is

Jesus, the King of the Jews. There was something going on there. Was he watching the women?

Was he watching the Jewish leaders and their obvious hatred toward this man? We're not told.

We're not told. But one thing we are told that I want you to take notice of. This centurion shows up again.

This centurion shows up again. No, we're not talking about Acts 10 or anything like that.

We're not talking about later on in the Gospel story. It's right here in Mark 15. I think it's very, very important for you to see this because if you look down below at verse 44, it says,

Pilate wondered if he was dead by this time. And summoning the centurion, he questioned him as to whether he was already dead.

And ascertaining this from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. Now, why do

I point this out to you? I think it's vitally important. You can go online today and you can buy all sorts of books that are filled with conspiracy theories about what really happened to Jesus.

And Jesus didn't really die. He revived in the tomb and the disciples met him at a predetermined place and then they foisted all this upon the world and all sorts of wild zaniness actually put forward as if this is sound historical reading of the text.

But they very frequently skip over this little part. In fact, my Muslim friends, there's a well -known

Muslim speaker, probably still the best -known Muslim speaker in the world today even though he's been dead for 10 years almost.

Ahmed Didat used to go around giving a talk called

Crucifixion or Crucifixion, F -I -C -T -I -O -N. And he likes to say that Mary was coming and he actually makes the argument when it says to anoint the body, he tortures the language and completely violates all meaningful linguistics to say that she was actually coming to massage the body because she must have seen signs of life when they took him down from the cross, you see.

And so that's why she was coming. But they never actually deal with this text because they can't.

They'll say things like, well, you know, there wasn't any doctor there. You just don't know. I mean, even to this day in some places people wake up in a coffin, right?

Yeah, that has happened once in a while. Problem is that's not due to the fact they were crucified.

And we know of only one person in all of history that survived a partial crucifixion.

Hadn't received the death blow. Jesus received the death blow. He received the spear thrust. We know of nobody in all of history that received a full crucifixion and survived it.

And without wanting to get graphic, can you imagine what it's like to take someone off of a cross? Can you imagine what it's like to pull the nails out?

The resultant damage that comes even from that and this somehow helps you to revive?

The whole idea is absolutely insane. But leaving that aside, we have an incredible argument here.

Because if you were to ask, well, who in ancient Roman society would be one of the best people to be able to recognize whether someone's dead or not?

May I submit to you, a Roman centurion. There are very few people in that society, even in the medical profession, that would have seen more death than a centurion.

They've gone through the battlefield after the battle. Nope. Finish that one off.

Yep, not going to waste my time with that one. They know. They know how to stop the beating heart.

They know what death looks like. And this centurion is summoned before the governor.

If he's wrong, it's his head on the platter. So he's not going to go and say, well, yeah, he looked pretty bad.

If the governor says, is he dead? He's not going to say yes unless he's sure that he was.

And so here you have the centurion as witness to the fact that Jesus died.

The crucifixion was real and it accomplished its end. Jesus truly gave his life upon the cross of Calvary, but it is the same centurion who upon looking at this one...

You see, Mark doesn't give us much of... It's a very fast account. Even the crucifixion is a sub -clause.

None of the... It's not like Mel Gibson, man. The gospel writers and Mel were on different ends of the planet when it came to this.

The gospel writers do not dwell on the details. There isn't ten paragraphs about nailing nails into Jesus' hands.

It's a sub -clause. And they crucified him. Having reached a place, they crucified him. Because everybody knew what that meant.

You didn't have to describe it. But Mark's in a hurry. He's not given a lot of details.

He doesn't give us all the conversation between Jesus and the men on each side of him. And the fact that initially they're both mocking him, but then one has a change of heart and Jesus says to him, truly, truly,

I say to you, you will be with me today in paradise.

That's not there. And the other statements, they're not mentioned in Mark.

So we don't know what causes this, but we have a centurion. And remember, who is

Mark writing to? Pretty much the Roman world. Here's one who defines that world.

And the confession of his faith is, truly, this man was the

Son of God. Does Mark present to us a merely human

Jesus? Well, we've started off. It doesn't seem that way. Started off, we've seen some amazingly high statements.

But we've just started off. I hope in the Lord's providence he will bring you back again this evening so we can continue this study and that all of us can continue to be encouraged to recognize the

Word of God, harmonious, complete, whole, and it testifies to us that we might know who

Jesus Christ really was and who he really is even to this day. Let's pray together. Indeed, we are thankful, our

Heavenly Father, for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are thankful that that message was orally preached and then written down for our benefit and preserved for us over the centuries.

And that by your Spirit, you continue to cause it to come alive in the hearts and minds of your people to this day.

That is why we are here. And we thank you for it. It is all of our hope. But Lord, if there be any in this place who have not yet bowed the knee to this one who gave his life that we might have eternal life, may this day be the day when they hear the

Gospel with living power and they turn to Jesus Christ. We thank you for this time.

We thank you that we have been able to proclaim this truth without interruption or without distraction. We ask that you would be with us in the rest of this day.