The Bible Binge: The Whole Story in 14 Months: Fear is Never Boring (Mark 1:1-15)

Three Investigators

Have you ever read a really good book and wondered what it would be like to be in that story. When I was a kid, I loved reading the 3 Investigators books, that follow 3 teenagers as they solved mysteries. I found myself wanting to be the fourth investigator. Great books and movies pull you into the story and create a longing to be part of that story.

Live-action Roleplaying games have been popular since the late 70’s especially here in Texas. These games allow people to play characters in stories that are evolving in real time. Dungeons and Dragons is probably the most popular of these kinds of role-playing games. Characters find themselves in very elaborate plots and storylines in which they are actively working toward an outcome of the story. These kinds of games allow people to immerse themselves in stories, outside of reality, as an escape from reality, in many instances. And in most cases, these are stories that offer the players a sense of control.

The book of Mark beckons us to join the story… the story of Jesus. We are drawn into Jesus’ world and his story becomes our story, but it is not a story that we control. In fact, this is a story that is unsettling. It takes us places that undermine and subvert our understanding of the world and our own story.

The Bible Binge

Over the next 14 months, we’re going to be taking a trip through the entire story of the Bible. All 66 books of the Bible in 14 months.

The Bible Binge is:

A Bible reading plan

A Bible talk series

Tracking with the Bible reading plan

Two or three Bible talks per book

A Bible study

This gets us into our Bibles more. And along the way, we will see the Bible as One Story about Jesus, in all sorts of different ways. We’re beginning with the book of Mark, which is one of the biographies of Jesus in the New Testament. Mark is the shortest of the biographies, and, for the most part, doesn’t have long sections where Jesus is teaching, like Matthew and John. What Mark does have is a lot of stories.

Mark is Action packed

And those stories have a lot of action. Jesus is always doing something or something is happening to him. This resonates with our popular movies that are full of action. This biography of Jesus can be read in one sitting, and it keeps moving at the fast pace. Mark wants us to keep up with Jesus. But there’s also this: all of this action imposes itself onto us and wastes no time in compelling us to see ourselves in this story.

Mark begins with the Gospel

There’s no formalities. There’s no setting the stage. Mark starts his biography with this simple statement:

Mark 1:1 “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

If you’re expecting a little more working your way into the story, this isn’t that. This is abrupt. This is where Mark begins his biography of Jesus. Each one of these phrases are important.

The Beginning

We might be inclined to think of this phrase as simply the opening summary of the first few verses. When the biography is complete in chapter 16, we realize something different. In Mark 16, Jesus says “Go preach the gospel to all of creation” and as a result, it says, the disciples went and proclaimed the gospel everywhere. So when Mark starts at the very beginning by saying “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus”, what he is saying is that the entire biography is giving us the beginning of the gospel. We know that the gospel starts in Genesis. But what Mark wants us to see is that the Gospel as a story reveals itself in the Person of Jesus… and continues in the proclamation of His people, the church. There is a beginning that continues.

The Gospel

And what is meant by the Gospel here in the book of Mark. We have that in our passage today:

Mark 1:14–15 Jesus went to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. The kingdom that Israel has been waiting for is now here in the person of Jesus. The kingdom of a king who is coming to provide salvation and the forgiveness of sin has finally come.

The Son of God

And he’s not just a king. He’s God himself. We’ll look next week at a running theme in this biography.. that the Messiah is the Son of God. But God has himself shown up on earth and is bringing the kingdom that had been promised for centuries. The story of Mark, the story that pulls us in, is the story of a Messiah who shows up with the Good News that He has come to save you and to save me.

Mark ends with fear

But here’s where Mark is so much different than the other biographies of Jesus, and where we are going to spend our time this morning. As we read the book of Mark over the next couple of weeks, yes, this is the Good News of Jesus, Good News that is to be celebrated. But all that is to be read through Mark’s idea that not all is as it seems. There is something dark going on. The action-packed biography is more like a thriller. It’s not boring. But there is a lot of fear.

This is timely because this is Halloween week. Amazon and Netflix have all the scary stories at the top of their lists. What they don’t have is the biography of Jesus written by Mark. No biography of Jesus, in fact, no book of the New Testament highlights fear like the Book of Mark. Fear is everywhere. As you read, circle the words like “fear”, “afraid”, and “terrified”. If this is “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”, this Gospel isn’t all “wine and roses”, as our friend Judy likes to say. This Gospel is unnerving. This Gospel is subversive. Here’s how the Gospel ends:

Mark 16:8 They went out and ran from the tomb, because trembling and astonishment overwhelmed them. And they said nothing to anyone, since they were afraid.

Demons are afraid of Jesus, the disciples themselves are afraid of Jesus, his enemies are afraid of Jesus, and even the resurrection is causing so much fear, people run away from the tomb.

In Mark, the popular story that shows up in children’s books is related in a way that we don’t typically tell the story. Jesus and his friends are in a boat, out in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, and there’s a storm, Jesus is asleep in the boat, they wake him up, and Jesus calms the storm. We see the fear when they wake up Jesus. We would too. But here’s how Mark relays the story, after Jesus has calmed the storm:

Mark 4:41 And they were terrified and asked one another, “Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!”

This isn’t a moment where his friends are saying, “Yay, Jesus. Way to go Jesus. You saved us. This is great. This proves you’re God. We never doubted you Jesus”. I mean that’s the way we tell these stories. But that’s not what Mark is saying. Three big words there: They were terrified. They were absolutely terrified.

The entire book of Mark is like this. Mark wants us to see that the Messiah who had been predicted is unsettling. He’s come to disrupt our lives. He’s come to challenge what we think is the meaning of life. He’s come to upend our notions of power and glory. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus is anything but power and glory.

The Gospel comes in suffering and defeat

Jesus is an enigma in Mark. The disciples can’t figure it out. And fear rules. And all of this is true because their expectations of the coming of the kingdom was someone who would be riding in on a white horse to save the day. That’s our prince. “Some day our prince will come.” And when that prince comes, we expect the carriage ride and happily ever after. But that’s not the gospel. Our prince comes in suffering and defeat.

And he’s talking that way. At one point this prince says,

Mark 8:35 “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me and the gospel will save it.”

That’s not power and glory. That’s shocking. That’s not how we would write the script. This is the biography of Jesus. When it is all said and done, Jesus loses His life in order to save us. And Mark makes sure that we don’t miss it:

Mark 15:29–30 Those who passed by were yelling insults at him, shaking their heads, and saying, “Ha! The one who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself by coming down from the cross! He saved others. He cannot save himself.”

Whoever loses his life because of me and the gospel will save it. That very notion is on the line at the cross. If we had the power to avoid the cross, we would have used it. Princes don’t die in humiliation. Saviors of the world don’t lose. In fact, many of the actors who star in action movies have clauses in their contracts that they will never lose a fight in a movie. They cannot have a scene in which they don’t win. And even if their contract allows for them to lose a fight, there is absolutely no movie in which they lose at the end. That doesn’t sell at the box office. And it certainly doesn’t do much for their career as an action hero.

Action and Fear: Fear is never boring

Jesus loses his life to save us. That’s the gospel of the Kingdom in Mark. That’s Jesus. There’s a lot of action. And there’s a lot of fear. And that fear forces us to reckon with Jesus. A pop philosopher from Cincinnati in the early 80’s wrote: “fear is never boring”. But the point of that phrase is to embrace fear in order to take control of your life. And that is what our world would have us do. We simply need more control. We need more power. More glory. We need to win. We face our fears so that we can be in control. And while there is some practical application in that, ultimately, even this is not enough.

And Jesus subverts all of it. Salvation, and in fact, our lives as the result of our salvation are to be marked by suffering and defeat. Jesus saved our lives by losing his. We save our lives by losing to others. Forgiveness is so subversive. Jesus lets us off the hook. We spend our lives letting others off the hook. That’s the paradox and irony and mystery of the biography that Mark writes.

The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus gives us a Jesus that terrifies us. How can he be who he says he is if he just lets me off the hook because of my sin and He dies for it? That’s terrifying for me because I want to earn Jesus’ pleasure. I want to earn his smile. I want to make God proud of me. And if I can’t do anything to make God proud of me, I’m no longer in control of what He thinks of me. I’m no longer in control of my destiny and frankly that’s terrifying. Unsettling. I don’t want that kind of a Savior. And I don’t want that kind of Savior because it’s not just about controlling what God thinks of me, I immediately realize if Jesus is doing that for me, I’m supposed to be doing that for my family and my friends and my coworkers… my neighbor.

But that’s the Savior we need. That’s the gospel we need. We need a grace that terrifies us with its unconditionality. We need a grace that terrifies us with no strings. We need a Savior who forgives our sins, not because we were good enough or repented enough, but because he loves us. That is terrifying forgiveness. It’s the forgiveness we need. It’s the forgiveness that is FOR YOU in the book of Mark. And that’s the story we’re being pulled into.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

Suffering and defeat. Right here. FOR YOU. Jesus lost his body, lost his blood, lost his life, to give you this. To give you forgiveness, life, and salvation. This Table is subversive. In weakness, Jesus gives us everything we’ve ever needed right here.

Benediction

Numbers 6:24–26

May the Lord bless you and protect you;

may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.