Commencement of the Kingdom

Starting school with a syllabus. What is a syllabus? It tells you the purpose of the class. Then it tells you what you will cover during the semester. Chapter 1 is sort of like a syllabus for the book of Mark.

Believing the Gospel message of Jesus means that we follow His example and we trust His authority.

The Message of Jesus

We see that John the Baptist was arrested. What role did John the Baptist play?

-He was to “go before” the Messiah.

-So now that John the Baptist is arrested what this tells us is that the time for Jesus’ ministry has started, the “forerunning” is over.

-But it will also foreshadow what will happen to those who follow Jesus, challenges will come.

Now Jesus starts to proclaim the “good news of God” in Galilee.

Jesus doesn’t start in the place with the most influence, he starts in the place with average citizens.

-Not California, or New York, he starts in Missouri or Kentucky.

We will see later that Jesus will call the disciples to “preach”, and for the “Gospel” to be proclaimed. It will refer back to this passage. This plays a central role in the entire book.

The time is fulfilled

What does this mean?

It means that what God has promised His people will be fully realized. There will be a Messiah that will fulfill all that had been spoken in the Old Testament. The “decisive moment has now arrived”.

The kingdom of God has come near

The promises of God are being fulfilled, but they are both being fulfilled and will be fulfilled in the future.

Jesus is the kingdom of God coming near.

Repent and believe the good news!

There is a response that we should have to God’s good news. This is the “basis of discipleship”.

-It is the call that the prophets had for the people in the OT, for Israel to return to the Lord their God after they had turned away from Him.

It is a response of intellectual understanding of the truth but if an emotional commitment and acceptance of this truth.

Repent is to run from your sins, and believe is what you turn to.

The Mentorship of Jesus

If you could have ONE person mentor you in ONE thing, what would it be?

Four aspects of disciples:

The call is to follow Jesus

The call is to anyone who is willing to listen

The call is to total service of Jesus

The call is to fellowship

Who does Jesus call to be his disciples? Those is insignificant positions of power.

To be mentored by Jesus cost them a lot. They left everything they had. It is a change of lifestyle.

The were following him into the unknown

The Ministry of Jesus

Within a 24 hour period Jesus performs a series of miracles and preaching. It provides an overview of the ministry of Jesus. What we will learn about the ministry of Jesus and the authority he has, is that the expectation others have of him and what Jesus came to do are often different.

V. 35 the disciples find Jesus praying, unbothered by the challenges we find so urgent. The disciples are confused, “you could get a bunch more followers if you could just come with us!” But that isn’t the mission Jesus has. He isn’t trying to build success or a following, he is coming to share the Gospel and the Kingdom of God.

Jesus tells them why He has come in v. 38

Mark shows the authority that Jesus has:

Over spiritual forces

In the teaching of Scripture

Over life

Over sin

There is a demon-possessed man already in the synagogue, showing the spiritual deadness present.

-Jesus deals with the demon not by saying a specific phrase, not by ritual, not by a special object, he just speaks with godly authority and he removes the demon.

-Jesus tells the demons to “be silent”. We will see this theme, Jesus does not want His identity known yet. V. 45 shows us why, because it would hinder his mission.

Jesus then heals those with sickness. Many “healers” have a technique, or a pattern of how they heal. Jesus does not have that, Jesus has authority. He isn’t the Wizard of Oz, he is the creator God.

-We also see that Jesus isn’t going to people to heal them, they are coming to him. This isn’t Jesus primary purpose, as he has stated, but it reveals the authority with which he comes and gives him an opportunity to share the Gospel with them.

-We can come to Jesus with our pain and He can heal us, but our physical issues are secondary to the spiritual ones.

People realize that the teaching of Jesus is teaching then that of their other teachers, he had authority!

To make this man “clean” in v. 39-45 is more than just healing his physical condition. In that time, to have leprosy was to be concerned cursed by God, to be “unclean”. Jesus shows that he does not come just to heal the physical, but to cleanse others from sin.

-Jesus is “moved with compassion” because of how this man has been dealt with in society. By the taboo in society with how those with illness were handled.

-We can ask ourselves how we handle those who seem “opposite” to us in culture.