Current Series | Mark’s Gospel: Discovering the Real Jesus
Why are we studying the Gospel of Mark? | Getting to know Mark | Current Reading Guide
WHY ARE WE STUDYING THE GOSPEL OF MARK?
by Chuck Land
In 2010 and probably beyond, Crossbridge Church will be studying the Gospel of Mark verse by verse at our Sunday Worship Gatherings. Our church will be eight years old this fall, and we have never preached through a whole gospel narrative before. Below you will find a great introduction to the book by one of my mentors from afar, Tim Keller.
There are two main reasons we are studying the Gospel of Mark in this season of our church’s life.
One reason is that Crossbridge is committed to being a Biblical church. We want to be a church that knows, loves, worships, and serves the God of the Bible. One of the main ways to know Him is to dive headfirst into the scriptures that He inspired. We do that by preaching through books of the Bible.
“All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” -2 Timothy 3:16.
It is the scriptures that God has ordained to be the main tool by which the Holy Spirit speaks to us and reveals to us Himself. We want to “eat this book” as our main meal at Sunday gatherings, and make it the centerpiece of our Community Groups that meet through the week in various homes.
I will preach topically from time to time depending on how I sense the Holy Spirit is leading me, but even then we will be hanging out in texts from the Bible as our main source of information and inspiration.
The second reason is that we need to know the real Jesus on His terms, in His own reality. There are a lot of views of Jesus out in our culture right now. The activist Jesus, the hippie Jesus, the conservative Jesus, the original Jesus, the Jesus is my homeboy, and a host of others are on display in our bookstores, the internet, and television. What we do if we are not careful is we end up remaking Jesus in our own image in our minds. That is, we take a little of the Jesus our Grandma told us about, a little from the lady in Vacation Bible School from when we were growing up, a little from the TV special we saw, and a little of what we think He must be like, and then we have Jesus!
But do we have and know the real Jesus? See, a relationship with a real person will sometimes have conflict because you don’t always agree on priorities and perspectives, but a Jesus that we make up based on own thoughts and memories can’t really challenge us or confront us. Worst of all, a Jesus we make up can’t change us or save us! When all we have is a Made-up Jesus, then all we have is us.
My prayer for us is that we will learn to love the Bible more in this series, and learn to know and love the Real Jesus more. The Real Jesus is who we desperately need to know. The Real Jesus is what our city needs proclaimed to it.
May God empower us to be a community of faith that resembles and glorifies the real Jesus, the Lord of Glory.
GETTING TO KNOW MARK
“An Introduction to the Gospel of Mark”
by Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New York City
The Gospel of Mark is generally believed to be the first of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). It is considered the model and often the source for the other gospels.
What the Gospels Were Not
They were not basically instruction. Although the gospels contain dialogues and teaching (like Plato’s philosophies), they were basically focused on the historical events surrounding one historical figure—Jesus. Yet, they were also not really biographies, because they show little interest in most of Jesus’ life. What kind of biography ignores all but the last three years of a man’s life, and then spends one-half of its length on his very last week? However, though they are historical, they are not really histories. When we compare the four gospels, we learn that they do not necessarily give accounts of Jesus’ life in the same order in which they occurred. Not only that, they say very little about outside events. There is little effort to put Jesus’ life into the broader context of the history of the day. The writer ignores events that the writer of a normal history would include. Finally, the gospels are not legends or myths. Many people have believed they are myths since they contain miraculous elements.
What the Gospels Were
What then is a gospel? The word gospel (Mark 1:1) does not mean either “teaching” or “record,” but “news.” An angel was a herald or messenger that brought news of some historical event that had already happened. The most common examples in Greek literature are “evangels” about a victory in war or the ascension of a new king. We have found an inscription of a royal proclamation that begins: “The beginning of the gospel of Caesar Augustus.” Emperors who had ascended to power or who put down a threat would send out heralds announcing the good news about the strength or inauguration of the kingdom. That messenger would always be proclaiming some historical event (e.g. a coronation, a great victory in battle) which would introduce a radical new state of affairs, a new situation for the people, for they now had to relate to him as king.
Why is this important to grasp? When Christians chose the word evangelion to express the essence of their faith, they passed over words that Hellenistic religions used, such as illumination (photismos) and knowledge (gnosis) or that Judaism used such as instruction or teaching (didache) or wisdom (sophia). Of course, all of these words were used to describe Christianity, but none achieved the centrality of gospel. This means that the word gospel was chosen to communicate:
First, that the gospel is news about what God has already done for you, rather than instruction and advice about what you are to do for God. The primacy of his work, not our work, is therefore the very essence of Christian faith. In other religions, God reveals to us how we can find or achieve salvation. In Christianity, God achieves salvation for us. The gospel brings news primarily, rather than instruction.
Second, that the gospel is all about historic events, and thus it has a public character. “It identifies Christian faith as news that has significance for all people, indeed for the whole world, not merely as esoteric understanding or insight” (William Brownson). In other religions, the stories of miracles and other special events in the lives of the founder are not essential. Whether or not Buddha did Miracle X, does not affect whether the 8-Fold path to enlightenment works or not. But if Jesus is not risen from the dead, Christianity does not “work.” The gospel is that Jesus died and rose for us. If the historic events of his life did not happen, then Christianity does not “work,” for the good news is that God has entered the human “now” (history) with the life of the world to come. But if Jesus came historically, then all people should acknowledge and believe in them.
Date
Most scholars believe that Mark was the earliest of the four gospels. (Careful study shows that Matthew and Luke followed Mark at many places rather than the other way around.) Also, there is no clear reference at all to the momentous event of 70 A.D. — the fall of Jerusalem to Roman forces after a Jewish rebellion and the complete destruction of the Temple. It is difficult to believe anyone writing after 70 A.D. could have left such an event out (or even have left it implicit). There is, therefore, no good reason to date Mark any later than 65 A.D. This means that Mark was writing about events just 25-30 years before.
That is very important to recognize. It means that there were thousands of eyewitnesses to all these events still alive when this document was written. That has two implications. First, it means that the author had abundant sources for producing an accurate account. He did not have to rely on legends that had been handed down and that could not be verified. Second, it means that there is a control making it very difficult for an author to fabricate accounts. For example, it would be nearly impossible to successfully publish a (false) story in the year 2000 that a meteor crashed in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1970 killing dozens of people. There are too many people still alive who lived in Bethlehem at the time. Better to make up a story about the meteor crashing in Bethlehem in 1770. Then your story will be harder to disprove. Thus the dating of Mark before 70 A.D. encourages us to trust his reporting.
Author
The author never names himself (though cf. Mark 14:51-52), but the unanimous testimony of early church fathers (who knew the apostles and their disciples) was that the author was John Mark, a friend of the apostle Peter. Mark’s home was a frequent meeting place of the apostles in the very earliest days of the church (Acts 12:12). He was a cousin to Barnabas, Paul’s companion, and was on several journeys with Paul. Later, he worked with the St. Peter, and was with him in Rome when he died under Nero’s persecution in the mid-60’s A.D. In 140 A.D. Papias, wrote: “Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately all that he remembered of the things said and done by our Lord, but not, however, in order.” This is, therefore, “The Gospel according to Peter.” Unlike Matthew, Luke, and John, it begins where Peter comes into Jesus’ life. Peter is usually present, as if the stories are from his perspective. Vivid details are present when Peter is there, but are often missing when he is not. It even leaves out words of praise for Peter (e.g. Matthew 16:17) included in the other gospels.
Form
Mark was a brand new genre (or type) of literature. There has never been anything like the four gospels. Reynolds Price calls it a “new thing entirely.” It is almost as if a whole new literary form had to be invented to bring a whole new, unique message. (New wineskins for new wine!)
READING GUIDE
Marks Gospel Reading Guide June 6 – June 20
