Mark 2 part 2
Notes
Transcript
What is a gospel?
What is a gospel?
The “gospel” is the Greek word for “good news”. So we often use “gospel” and “good news” interchangeably. We get words like “evangelize” and “evangelical” from the Greek word for gospel. The word “gospel” can refer to the good news itself (message of Christ, the kingdom of God, and salvation) or the 4 books containing the gospel. Later in the NT, “message” and “proclamation” are used interchangeably with “gospel” or “good news”.
The 4 Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) tell the story of the “gospel”. We often equate “the gospel” with the confession formula that Paul uses in 1 Cor. 15, Rom. 1:1-17, 2 Tim. 2:8ff, 2 Cor. 4, and other places. 60 of the 75 times the NT uses the word “gospel”, it is in Paul’s letters.
We’re sometimes surprised, therefore, that the books called “Gospels” don’t contain the confession formula clearly. The Gospel of Mark does not contain clear instructions on how to become a Christian. But it says that it is about the gospel! The Gospel of Luke doesn’t have clear instructions on how to become a Christian, but the sequel (Acts) has the whole or partial instructions up to 28 times!
Let’s find out what Mark means by “The Beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. It’s more amazing than we normally consider it.
The Synoptic Problem
The Synoptic Problem
Matthew, Mark, and Luke share so much material, they are called the Synoptic (“with”=”see”) Gospels.
We do this all the time in the modern world.
The Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Mark is well-attested beginning in the first century to have been written by Mark, aka John Mark, a disciple of both Peter and Paul. Although he travelled with Paul in Paul’s early ministry (Col. 4:10), after a disagreement with Paul, John Mark and Barnabas left to return to Jerusalem (Acts 15:37-39). Sometime after that, Mark followed Peter to Rome (1 Peter 5:13).
Based on Papias writing around AD 90, Mark recorded what Peter’s memory told him and wrote down the Gospel for the church at Rome around AD 64, around the time of arrest or death of Peter. The Gospel preserves what Peter taught after his death.
The audience of Mark, therefore, is the church in Rome. However, the church in Jerusalem is in mind also, based on the content, as well as the church universal.
Trouble with authorities: 5 stories in Mark chapters 2-3:12
Trouble with authorities: 5 stories in Mark chapters 2-3:12
Many notions of the messiah existed in Jesus’s day. Many individuals in the first century called themselves “messiah”.
Mark uses “Son of God” and “Son of Man” to redefine this term. The person described would be more than the savior of the Egyptian Exodus (Moses) and of the Babylonian/Persian Exodus (Cyrus), although with aspects of both.
5 disruptive stories:
He could forgive sins (healing of the paralytic)
He associated with the “wrong” people (Levi and the tax collectors)
Prayer and fasting (Jesus at the wedding vs. John’s fasting)
Reason for the Sabbath (eating grain on Sabbath)
Healing on the Sabbath (man w/shriveled hand)
Rather than a sitting holy man dispensing teaching, Mark presents an active Jesus to emulate. He defines forgiveness, friendship, prayer/fasting, and worship through action.
“The scribes and the Pharisees are seated in the chair of Moses.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates. For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.
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I also gave them my Sabbaths to serve as a sign between me and them, so that they would know that I am the Lord who consecrates them.
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. People came and asked him, “Why do John’s disciples and the Pharisees’ disciples fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them, can they? As long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast. But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins. No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins.”
The question is not whether the disciples will, like a new patch or refilling an old wineskin, make room for Jesus in their already full agendas and lives. The question is whether they will leave behind business as usual and join in the wedding celebration. Will they become entirely new skins for the expanding “fermentation” of the kingdom?
On the Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to make their way, picking some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” He said to them, “Have you never read what David and those who were with him did when he was in need and hungry—how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest and ate the bread of the Presence—which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests—and also gave some to his companions?” Then he told them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Jesus entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a shriveled hand. In order to accuse him, they were watching him closely to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath. He told the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand before us.” Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. After looking around at them with anger, he was grieved at the hardness of their hearts and told the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. Immediately the Pharisees went out and started plotting with the Herodians against him, how they might kill him.